The US DoC has as much say for ARIN as it does for the RIPE NCC.
The US DoC, through IANA functions, says, e.g., what IP Address blocks each can allocate. That seems to qualify as 'much say'
So it seems that you and Ray are in agreement. All the other details are not terribly relevant to RIR policy discussions because we have processes and structures to make sure that everything is done properly. We have no plans to change any of the structures because at the present time, they seem to work OK. As for the matter that started this, central ULAs, there is not need to worry about who controls what. The fact is that it is customary for new address types to be defined *FIRST* in the IETF and even if there is the possibility of an alternate process, we would not dream of exercising that unless the customary process, via the IETF, had broken down. The IETF process cannot be considered broken just because a draft has expired. In fact, expiry of a draft indicates that the original authors no longer care enough about the matter to progress it further. The WG chair of IPv6 Operations has already offered the v6ops list http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/v6ops-charter.html For those people who *DO* wish to progress a draft for Central ULA addresses. This is a sign that the IETF process is open for business in this case. At this point, I think it is inappropriate to continue the Central ULA discussion on the RIR policy lists. In fact, if any policy were to come out of such a discussion, I would vote against it even though my company could potentially benefit from something like a Central ULA address block. But at the same time, my company supports the IETF process in general and I don't believe we would want to be perceived as usurping the IETF. That is why I would vote against any policy proposal that is not based on an RFC. I urge all of you who have an interest in Central ULA addresses, both pro and con, to take your discussion to the v6ops list. And I urge the people in favour of Central ULA addresses to write an Internet draft explaining just what it is that you want to do. At this point in time, there is no valid draft document so I don't even know what it is that you are discussing. --Michael Dillon