[anti-abuse-wg] Definition of Abuse

ox <andre at ox.co.za> wrote:

>So, If you do not agree with the final definition, please contribute?

I don't.

The bottom line here is that "abuse" should probably be all of the crap
that there is universal or near universal agreeent is "bad" *and* that
*fails* to rise to the level of being SOOOOOOOOO terrifically awfully
bad that we acually want to risk calling in the already exceptionally
busy (and notoriously ham-fisted) LE people to deal with it.

This would include, at the low end, just for example, spamming.  You're
*not* going to run down to your local police station screaming "Mommy!
Mommy!  He spammed me!  Make him stop!"  You're not going to do that
because (a) it would be silly and because (b) when you got there, even
the cops would tell you how silly you were, and how much "real" work they
have to do, e.g. monitoring terrorists and catching bank robbers.

So basically, all the stuff that we, as rational adult experienced
Internet users agree that we *would* want to call LE in on is called
"crime".

Meanwhile, everything else that we can all agree is "bad" and that
"shouldn't happen on the civilized internet" but that *DOES NOT* quite
rise to the level where it makes any sense to call in the LE people
(e.g. route squatting, spamming) is "abuse".

We call this stuff "abuse" rather than "crime" because everybody agrees
that it shouldn't happen, but 99.9% of all governments, all around the
world, are too stupid to understand any of this stuff, and as a result,
you won't find a single country, anywhere in the world, that has formally
made route squatting a crime, and also, even my own idiotic country has
actually *legalized* spamming.  So spamming is not a "crime"... at least
not here in the United States, and at least not ACCORDING TO OUR MORONIC
LAWS.

Spamming *is* however "abuse" on and of the Internet, and most of us,
being adult experienced Internet usesrs would and do agree on that,
*regardless* of what the law might say in any given meatspace geographical
jurisdiction.  We know that certain things are "abuse" (e.g. spamming),
even if the moronic bribed luddites in our respective national legislatatures
do not.

So, to review:

	crime -- Defined as whatever the dumbass meatspace legislators
		 in various dumbass meatspace jurisdictions say it is

        Internet abuse - Defined as whatever most or all of *us* (actual
		 experienced Internet users with a technical clue) say
		 it is.

You can draw a simple Venn diagram, consisting of two circles, each
representing the above two things.  And there is and will be some overlap,
the amount or exact edges of which will be different in each different
meatspace jurisdiction.  But to the extent that there is overlap, we
agree that FOR OUR PURPOSES we prefer that for all those things that
might qualify as being -both- "abuse" -and- "crime" we make a judgement
call and say that we would prefer LE to just butt out and let us handle
it, because if THEY do it, they will either phuck it up (a la Aaron Swartz)
or they will waste their precious resources which should be used elsewhere.


Regards,
rfg