[anti-abuse-wg] the final question ...

Frank,

"Frank Gadegast" wrote the following on 09/04/2010 11:23:
> So here the final question:
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Is the community willing to combine the assignment of ranges
> with specific rules how to use them and how not to use them
> and should the misuse of the applied resources have consequences ?
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
> If we get consensus about that, the problem will be solved
> all together, because than its only detailed work.
>
> But: if we not get consensus about that, we could stop
> talking about abuse on this group and the spammer
> will have won, also on this list ...

The community will never reach consensus on this, but this does not mean 
that those who wish to abuse the network will win.  The point here is 
that what you believe is abuse is not what others believe is abuse.  For 
a start, you are still focusing almost entirely on spam (from everything 
you've indicated, but I'm happy to be told I'm wrong), whereas others 
consider UBE to be a symptom and annoyance now, rather than the real 
problem.

There are members in the RIPE service region who have incredibly 
different concepts of what consitutes network abuse, there are likely to 
be some intersections in most cases, but I think that the binary 
proposal of reach consensus or declare defeat is a very blinkered one.

I am, it should be pointed out, not adverse to attempting to build at 
least rough consensus on this, but I do not believe that it is an 
either/or situation.  Nor do I believe that, if consensus is reached, 
everything else will just work.

There is work ongoing to look more closely at what the RIPE NCC can do 
in reaction to a properly judged case of network abuse, in compliance 
with proper legal requirements and procedures and hopefully we'll hear 
more about that soon, but the bald statement you have above is dangerous 
in a variety of ways and far too light on detail to be any sort of real 
question.

Brian.