[anti-abuse-wg] WHOIS (AS204224)

In message <563A6462.7080708 at yahoo.co.uk>, 
denis <ripedenis at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

>You{r} talk about privacy and this whole thread is about making lots of 
>personal data public and how many over engineered processes can be put 
>in place to the detriment of all the good folk to trip up a few of the 
>bad folk.

Excuse me, but I think that perhaps you have been reading some
entirely different thread on some entirely different mailing list
someplace.  Either that or else you're employing scare tactics to
try to derail what was a simple discussion about validating contact
data which is already in the public data base.

I started this thread, and have actively participated throughout.
I, for one, *never* proposed or even vaguely suggested "making lots
of personal data public" to use your words.  That is a grotesque
mischaracterization of the discussion up till now, I think.  It's
totally out of left field and has nothing whatever to do with the
(informal) proposal on the table.

Personal data _is_ already and currently present in the publically-
accessible RIPE data base.  You may personally object to that fact.
If so, then fine.  State your objection and make a proposal for
change.  But please do not put words in other people's mouths.

Speaking only for myself, I made no suggestion whatsoever to increase
the amount of personal information present in the data base.
Mr. Luck, for his part, has clearly and vigorously expressed the
view that the amount of such information in the data base (and/or
in the publically accessible part thereof) should be decresed to zero.
But the decision to do, or not do that is totally orthogonal to
the separate decision of whether or not to check the data for
validity.  The data can be checked and left public.  The data can
remain both unchecked and public.  The data can be checked and can
be hidden behind a paywall.  Or the data can remain unchecked and
can disappear behind a paywall, just as, it appears, Mr. Luck
would prefer.

I object also to your use of the loaded phrase "over engineered processes".
This is clearly intended to make it sound as if some exceptionally
complicated Rube Goldberg Apollo Moon-shot system is being discussed.
That is not the case.  Millions of businesses world-wide allow end
users to create accounts on their corporate web sites, and the vast
majority of those then COMFIRM and VALIDATE those account creations
by sending the person who is alleged to have created the account a
magic cookie (often embedded within a URL) and asking them to return
that in some fashion.  Many other businesses employ an analogous
process only with telephones.  Still others perform an analogous
process with snail-mail.  If these all constitute "over engineered
processes" then I'm sure that news will come as shock to all those
millions of businesses who have spent time and money to implement
and deploy theses systems.

>Seriously, with a review of the data model we can end up with:...

So let me see if I understand this...

So on the one hand, performing even just some simple process to
try to validate data fields that are already in the public data
base is an "over engineered" solution, but YOU want to totally
re-engineer the entire data base from the ground up.  Is that
about the size of it?  Did I miss anything?

I personally have no reason to be either for or against the idea
of entirely throwing out the existing data base and redesigning
and re-implementing it from scratch.  If that proposal seems
worthwhile to the majority, then by all means it should be done.
What I _do_ object to is having a pie-in-the-sky redesign-from-scratch
proposal thrown into the mix while discussing what started out as
an exceptionally modest, simple, and above all *incremental*
and purely *procedural* change... a change that would have no effect
at all on either the content or the structure or the permissions
associated with the data base as it currently exists.


Regards,
rfg


P.S.  I do understand that many people have ideas... some of them
excellent, some of them less so... about how the structure, content,
or public-accessibility of the data base should be changed, going
forward.  I do not begrudge anyone who advances such ideas.  I only
request, humbly, that discussion of these other ideas not be
confusingly intertwined with discussion of the (admittedly still
informal)  _procedural_ proposal that I've put forward.  That only
serves to confuse matters all around, befuddling everyone.