Re: [anti-spam-wg@localhost] Contacts

["Dr. Jeffrey Race" <]

Thank you for your encouraging comments.  Please see interleaved notes.
Before releasing this draft version I had already thought carefully
about your points concerning the registrar.   In fact the registrar
matter is key.   If that doesn't work, all else fails because there
is no way to ensure traceability. an essential social mechanism
for order.

On 19 Jan 2003 21:54:37 +0000, Nick Foobar wrote:
>Jeffrey, your document states many things which many people would like
>to see.  However, your proposed role for registrars is completely
>unworkable in practice:
>>> Registrars shall ensure that contact data are active and that contact 
>> addresses (e.g. Postmaster and RFC-recommended role accounts) are 
>> properly operated by registrants.   Failure to provide correct current 
>> and complete contact data, failure to enable or to properly operate a 
>> role account, shall be deemed a cause for Admonishment and, if default 
>> continues, Enforcement per infra.
>>Let's take a scenario which happened regularly during my time as lir
>manager:  ISP registers contact X for company Y in RIPE database. 
>Contact X leaves company without notifying ISP, and information in RIPE
>database becomes stale.  Who's to blame for this?  How can it be
>rectified?

My draft states that every entity shall assign responsibility for
care of internet resources to a business unit and to a person.  This
is standard procedure in any well-run operation.  It becomes part
of someone's job description.  When you take over the job you read
the book.  We did it in the Army.  It is part of the ISO 9000 process.
If responsbility for essential business processes is not defined and 
enforced, the organization is negligently managed. 

>As for dealing with the complexity of the problem, take the difficulty
>of dealing with an individual situation like this, multiply the
>situation across 10E{3,4,5}'s of records for each company, multiply by a
>suitable factor to take into account the difficulty of maintaining
>multiple contact databases per company (it happens and it's not going to
>change), and then multiply by the number of LIR's.  It is a practically
>impossible task. 

It's not at all impossible; you just have to assign the resources and
management attention to it.   You might as well say invading Iraq is
impossible because it is so complicated.   If order is attacked with
catastrophic consequences, society must invest the resources to 
restore order.

I have encountered your objection in dealing with spam-enabling ISPs,
who claim it is too complicated and time-consuming to play whack-a-
mole with spammers.   However when threatened with blocklisting 
they suddenly find they can do it (within hours) using alternative
methods which were always available to them.

>RIPE requires that members adhere to its policy documents, but policing
>these is an entirely different matter,

Every (good) parent knows that "requiring" something without an
enforcement mechanism for non-compliance ("you're grounded") 
produces anti-social offspring in significant numbers of cases.
This is what the Internet faces.   The same principles of human
behavior apply.   That is the unique approach embodied in my
draft.


 and certainly something that RIPE
>could not do without very significant effort and investment of
>substantial resources on an ongoing basis. 

Now that is really the point of it all and my thanks to Foobar for
evoking it.

At the dawn of the Internet peer pressures functioned to enforce
good behavior, because numbers of participants were small and
because the compensation structure of the participants was not
tied to the profits of the entity served.   These two founding
assumptions have disappeared, so a new mechanism of imperative
coordination is required.   It requires investments.   Every
successful social organism does.   This is the only one that 
will work.

 And if you're looking for a
>means of combating spam, the money required to provide this service
>would almost certainly be better spent elsewhere.

And may we see your draft please?  :)

Kind regards to all.

Jeffrey Race