[anti-abuse-wg] WHOIS (AS204224)

Ronald,

On 04/11/2015 20:49, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
> Brian,
>
> My apologies for not responding yesterday.  I've been working on
> what I think is a REALLY important project... one that even
> relates to some of what's been discussed here... and I just
> got totally caught up in that yesterday (and probably will
> again today).

It's absolutely fine. I know just how easily other work demands time!

> In message <56388A61.7040209 at heanet.ie>,
> Brian Nisbet <brian.nisbet at heanet.ie> wrote:
>
>> You said, at one point, that you did not see the point in reporting
>> these issues, or even just specifically the AS204224 issue to the NCC.
>> Given the investigations you've done, I amn't sure why not?
>
> Well, to be fair here, the "investigation" I've done here wasn't,
> like, you know, very deep or anything.  I just looked at a few
> pages on bgp.he.net (one each for three ASNs) which show all the
> bogon announcements, a page or two on RIPE's excellent routing
> history tool, fetched about three RIPE WHOIS records, and that's
> about it.

Which is still appreciated.

>> I accept
>> that the goal should be to improve the process, but surely reporting on,
>> and potentially dealing with, bad actors is still worth it if you've
>> gathered all the data anyway?
>
> Sigh.  Yes.  OK.  You're right, of course, and I should not have been
> quite so flippant when responding to the suggestion that I should
> file formal reports.  But there's only so much of me to go around,
> and at the moment I am hunting even bigger game.

Thank you, and good luck in your hunt!

> Please understand however that I will be doing so only totally
> reluctantly.  I hate formality generally, and I still have a VERY
> bad taste in my mouth over my past efforts to file formal reports
> (it makes me REALLY mad when people call them "complaints") with
> that other entity that I've promised not to talk about here anymore.
> Filing formal reports with them has, in the past, proved to be an utter
> waste of my time.

So noted. It is appreciated and, even if it's just this once, I know I, 
and I hope the NCC, would appreciate feedback on the process.

>> However the core point here is I will, once again, extend an invite to
>> you, to Suresh, to Sascha, to Jeffrey, to Aftab, to everyone on this
>> list who is interested in this issue, to work on a policy that might help?
>
> It's an entirely reasonable request.  However formality gets in the
> way, and slows things down.  I'll have to go and read and think about
> those documents (describing the formal proposal process) that people
> have been kind enough to point me at.  I am willing, but time is my
> enemy at the moment.  Perhaps I can draft something in the proper
> format and put it in the proper place next week.  I will try, if
> nobody else beats me to it.

That would be amazing, to be honest. As I think I've mentioned 
elsewhere, I have no expectation of having time to work on this until 
after RIPE 71, which means late November. I often find the first draft 
is the hardest as that gives a starting point. As I said to Suresh, I 
wasn't calling people out, per se, to do all the work themselves. My 
suggestion was more that we could work on it together, so if you do 
draft something up, perhaps you and I could discuss it off list before 
figuring out which WG it needs to go to etc. etc?

>> I do not believe the RIPE NCC are or should become the Internet police,
>
> Police have guns.  They have handcuffs.  They can arrest people.
>
> As long as RIPE's only power is to kick certain bogus and/or poorly
> maintained records out of the data base, there seems little danger
> that RIPE will functionally qualify as being the police of anything.

On a practical level this is, of course, true, but language is a funny 
thing and for whatever reasons, mostly probably bad, the phrase has stuck.

>> but change is made incrementally in this community and
>> maybe movement is possible in a direction that would be useful? And if
>> we make a policy and it's wrong, we can make a different, better,
>> policy. That's the beauty of it.
>
> You have eloquently made the case for the democratic process.  I can
> only agree.

As long as that democracy involves consensus and not voting, we're all 
good. :) (We, reluctantly, have voting for some decisions, but never, 
ever for policy development.)

Thanks,

Brian