[address-policy-wg] Legal counsel on 2008-08 (Initial Certification Policy in the RIPE NCC Service Region)

Sander,

thank you for your reply.

On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 4:01 PM, Sander Steffann <sander at steffann.nl> wrote:
> Hi Martin,
>
>>> You miss the next sentence of the legal advise:
>>> "In the absence of such legislation, a court cannot order the revocation of certificates."
>>>
>>> I think the legal statement (when read as a whole, not cherry-picking the parts you like) was clear enough.
>>> Sander
>>
>> Now if the statement could only guarantee for the future that it no
>> court could do anything of the sort, it'd actually be useful.  Since
>> it doesn't, I think the sensible thing to do is to account for the
>> fact that laws can change
>
> I fully agree. Mind you, they could just as well just make a law that says "You may not route any packets to/from addresses that appear on list X" and we would have exactly the situation everyone seems to be afraid of, and it doesn't need RPKI. As soon as laws don't allow 'your network, your rules' anymore then anything can happen... But that is something that we'll have to steer through voting, not address policy :)

Now we're getting to a useful point in the discussion I think. :)

See, I've come to learn so far in life that whenever something
"becomes possible", lawyers, eavesdroppers and other state machinery
wants to do it, and it's a very rough machine.

How well does that "You may not route any packets to/from addresses
that appear on list X" thing scale today?  Is it technologically
feasible?  Does it stretch outside of judicial boundaries?

And, the slippery slope has already been started upon, some nations
have decayed further than others:  See various block lists, DNS and
other.  "Your network, your rules", you said?
  I agree with what you said earlier about how LEA's ought to go for
the source if they want to shut something done, and that is not a
power I think it is reasonable to campaign for having taken from them.
 I did read http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/component/content/article/102-transcripts2010/632-158
, where Andrew isn't all too happy about RPKI by the looks of it.  One
thing he says, is: "So my question is, are we sure that RPKI would not
produce the same problems?  I'm very happy to be convinced to the
contrary, but please do not -- more technology, because very frankly I
cannot go back and tell that to the powers that be and (off
microphone) the next three years hoping that nothing will happen,
because something that will happen, then I will have to pay the price.
 I will go back to you and tell you, why didn't you tell me the truth?
 What were the risks?  And we can discuss and try to find a solution."
 in reference to a technology that gave more power to one government
than others.  You can sort of conclude from this that the EU will want
EU to have equal access to this new technology, and I can only
infer/guess to their actual motives. Furthermore I do see relevance
between the citation above and the discussion we're having, but it's
possible me and Andrew are coming from two 180 degree separated
vectors on this question. :)

Sander, I remain fully unconvinced that lowering the effort for
censoring the internet will make no or negative effect on the amount
of censorship done.  If you really think different, perhaps we should
make a bet. :)

Kind Regards,
Martin