ARIN is on hold. The US Government has decided to look into the issue of how to issue IP address. The FNC and the Interim Inter-Agency Task Force has meeting with the ARIN board. They want ARIN to solve the portability issue. ARIN said that it can't solve that.
There will be a Federal Register of Notice so anyone can comment. This will delay the start of ARIN until September (assuming there is no issues from the Notice responses that can't be addressed effectively).
ARIN was proposed to create a non-profit IP Registry to administer the allocation of IP numbers to the Americas, South Africa and the Caribbean. As things have developed, there will probably other regional registries created. Specifically, there will likely be one for South America and one for Africa.
There have been some interesting questions on the mailing list. Here are the answers.
ARIN will enable ISPs to have a more direct voice in the address allocation policies.
IPS Subscription for bulk registration
Individual assignments to end sites
What is going to happen with the changes involving NSF? To the end of the cooperative agreement, there is no problem. We want to get things set up before the end of the cooperative agreement.
Why does the US government need to approve this? Since this effort would require a transfer of authority from NSI to ARIN, and NSI is under a cooperative agreement to do this from NSF, the US government must approve.
What does the $1000 membership fee get you? You get to vote and get to help set policy.
What is grandfathered? Everything is grandfathered that was previously allocated. ARIN may change this in the future. The maintenance fees apply to the number of blocks.