[anti-abuse-wg] Verification of abuse contact addresses ?

In message <alpine.LRH.2.21.1903121026191.22599 at gauntlet.corp.fccn.pt>, 
=?ISO-8859-15?Q?Carlos_Fria=E7as?= <cfriacas at fccn.pt> wrote:

>On Mon, 11 Mar 2019, Fi Shing wrote:
>
>> Why can't it be both?
>> 
>> 12.5% annual fee incurred daily, to a maximum of 7 days, with resources being decommissioned if the
> abuse contact is not updated
>> within that time.
>
>This is probably something for the RIPE NCC AGM, not for the PDP...
>
>But i seriously doubt such a proposal could even fly onto an AGM agenda.
>
>(i'm not saying i agree or disagree, however 7 days seems a bit short)

I agree with Carlos.

What I was proposing was an -annual- additional fee assesment.

It could perhaps be calculated as as additional 1% tacked on to annual
fees due for each month that the contact information is incorrect and/or
non-functional.

Doing it on a monthly basis would provide some incentive to not wait
a full year before taking action to correct the issue(s).

But there's kind-of a Catch-22 here.  Ideally, if RIPE NCC were to
access such a penality, it would be the decent thing to do to
-inform- each party against which the penalty is being accessed.
And it would be rather inconvenient (for RIPE NCC) if it was obliged
to do so strictly via snail-mail.  The easiest way would be to
inform the affected parties via email.  But if their email contact
addresses aren't working...

Well, I guess you all can see the problem.

Question: Does RIPE NCC have contact email addresses for all resource
holders that work, and that are NOT being published in the relevant
WHOIS records?  I would guess so.  I mean it is necessary to use an
email account/address in order to create a login account on the RIPE
web site, which is in turn necessary in order to manage one's assigned
resources, right?

If so, then perhaps the solution to this whole problem is for RIPE
NCC to just simply place those working email addresses into the
relevant RIPE WHOIS records in each and every case where it is
determined that the email contact addresses within the public WHOIS
records simply aren't working.

Another idea:  There are different ways in which RIPE NCC could make
life slightly less pleasant for the troublesome few who neglect to
keep theire public/published contact email addresses current, up-to-date,
and working.  The most drastic of these would be reclamation of the
relevant number resources, and I do think this approach would be a
very hard sell, politically, within the RIPE community... as well it
should be.  That is a very drastic response to a (relatively) small
infraction.  But this is quite certainly *not* the only lever of
influence that RIPE NCC has at its disposal.

What about reverse DNS delegation?

I see no compelling or persuasive reason why a party that has neglected
to Do The Right Thing and keep their published contact info up-to-date
should necessarily continue to enjoy the benefits of properly delegated
reverse DNS.

Furthermore, the delegation of reverse DNS authority is something that
RIPE NCC could discontinue easily, quickly, and from the comfort of their
desks (i.e. without having to get up and buy stamps and go to the local
Post Office -and- without having to try to reach people by phone).  And
conversely, once the issue has been resolved, for any partcular block
of IP addresses, RIPE NCC staff could easily and quickly turn the
reverse DNS delegation back on for that block and could do so the same
day as the (WHOIS contacts) problem is resolved for that particular block.

This seems like a rather simple and elegant solution for enforcing at
least some minimal level of disipline among the holders of RIPE-issued
number resources.


Regards,
rfg