[anti-abuse-wg] Enabling community self-help?

* Shane Kerr:

> Contrariwise, the RIPE NCC is unable to unwilling to change its role
> from a fundamentally administrative to one that involves setting
> network usage policies.

Certain network usage policies.  They do seem to care if you use IPv6
PI space to connect customers. 8-)

> Plus it is hard to get the RIPE NCC membership to support mechanisms
> which cost them money and limit their freedoms.

Is it?  As a first approximation, RIPE NCC only executes the policies
set by the RIPE community.  Their function is mostly bureaucratic, so
as an organization, RIPE NCC inevitably has a tendency to acquire
additional responsibilities, diversify and grow.  This is especially
important because we're approaching the end of address scarcity.

> On the 3rd hand, some people in the RIPE community (including me)
> also feel that it is very, very difficult to define what the required
> actions would be in the case of reported abuse. This reporting
> mechanism itself might indeed be a source of abuse (rivalries between
> companies could be fought by each accusing the other of hosting
> criminal activity).

Yes, that's certainly a problem.

> Maybe it makes sense to make something like a web forum for each
> allocated resource, or perhaps for the organization responsible for
> each.

We'd have to find someone host such a site in the U.S. because
otherwise, the hoster will be responsible for such user-generated
content.  There are also privacy issues.

Alternatively, with heavy moderation, the net result would not be that
much different from Spamhaus' ROKSO list, would it?