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<div style="direction: ltr;">What Randy said applies in spades to the original strong community that the Internet used to be.</div>
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<div style="direction: ltr;">Today and over the past several years we have -</div>
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<div style="direction: ltr;">1. Organisations evolving into or being taken over by corporations who are more concerned with profit (keeping a bad customer despite pressure to the contrary) or cost saving (doing the bare minimum or less to maintain an abuse
team) or both </div>
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<div style="direction: ltr;">2. Many bad actors themselves becoming part of the ecosystem for example registrars, LIRs, employees in RIRs like the unfortunate afrinic case and similar.</div>
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<div style="direction: ltr;">The system that Randy describes - policy making based on consensus and mutual trust - is unfortunately undermined by various actors for one reason or the other, and this does lead to more and more demands for a change. I agree
the change proposed - a vote - might be too radical a solution, but this discussion has been going on for more than eight years by my count.
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<div style="direction: ltr;">I sent this to nanog in early 2011 and Richard Cox was heaved out of this wg some months before that
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<div style="direction: ltr;">https://ripe.net/ripe/maillists/archives/anti-abuse-wg/2011/msg00000.html</div>
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<div style="direction: ltr;">I am not entirely sure the discussion has moved all that much in the past decade beyond this exact point - how to pressure ripe to deal with shady actors getting themselves LIR status or appropriating large legacy netblocks belonging
to defunct companies.</div>
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<div style="direction: ltr;">--srs</div>
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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size:11pt" color="#000000"><b>From:</b> anti-abuse-wg <anti-abuse-wg-bounces@ripe.net> on behalf of Randy Bush <randy@psg.com><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Monday, May 11, 2020 5:17:57 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> Brian Nisbet <brian.nisbet@heanet.ie><br>
<b>Cc:</b> anti-abuse-wg@ripe.net <anti-abuse-wg@ripe.net><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [anti-abuse-wg] About "consensus" and "voting"...</font>
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<div class="PlainText">brian,<br>
<br>
excuse my continuing to rant. if i write a long message, it can not be<br>
good :) as with spam, you have a delete key.<br>
<br>
i think we all dislike spam and other forms of network abuse. but this<br>
is the only working group whose goal is negative, to stop something.<br>
even the wg's name is composed of two negative words.<br>
<br>
when i said:<br>
<br>
> for a large segment of the community, and that which was pretty much<br>
> the original population, there is an underlying physics and shared<br>
> experience of moving packets, routing, circuits, bgp, ixen, ... that<br>
> gives us a common experience and understanding.<br>
<br>
underlying that culture is the imperative to see that packets get to the<br>
desired destination. routing, internet exchanges, dns, even ipv6 :)<br>
it's a culture built on cooperation at its very core: bgp, exchanges,<br>
dns replication, ... in order that packets go where they need to go.<br>
<br>
so there will be a reflexive dislike of things which propose to stop<br>
packets from getting to where they were intended to go. proposals to<br>
break routing, rescind address allocations, etc. evoke reactions similar<br>
to proposals for capital punishment. they seem extreme and go against<br>
ingrained cultural norms.<br>
<br>
but many of the citizens of the anti-abuse wg perceive that there is a<br>
war. as the general community dislikes 'abuse', there is emotional<br>
desire that the anti-abuse warriors will 'win'. but wars escalate. and<br>
what was at first defensive often becomes offensive. and the tools of<br>
the defenders become hard to tell from those of the attackers. e.g., to<br>
a router geek, rescinding an address allocation may 'feel' similar to a<br>
route hijack and therefore invoke a negative response. the upside is<br>
that the anti-abuse wg gets significantly higher attendance :)<br>
<br>
but this is no longer our mothers' internet. how does a pacifistic<br>
culture of cooperation deal with anti-cultural behavior? darned if i<br>
know, my daughter was the political scientist.<br>
<br>
back to consensus and voting<br>
<br>
given the cultural tensions above, it is likely that there will be<br>
issues where agreement is either very long in coming or not reached at<br>
all. other than patience, how do we deal with that? historically, it<br>
has been what dave clark said a few decades back, about when ripe formed<br>
<br>
We reject: kings, presidents and voting.<br>
We believe in: rough consensus and running code.<br>
<br>
when the ietf went through its ever ongoing omphaloskepsis on decision<br>
making, pete resnik produced a rather nice document, rfc 7282.<br>
<br>
to move from that to a win/lose voting system will be very hard in a<br>
cooperative consensus based culture. how do you motivate such a radical<br>
change? sad to say words such as 'democracy' ring hollow in today's<br>
world.<br>
<br>
we the abused should be careful not to grow up to be abusers.<br>
<br>
randy<br>
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