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

[Paul Wouters <]

On Mon, 3 Feb 2003, der Mouse wrote:

> No, but it _is_ your job to make sure the address sapce you have been
> assigned is not used irresponsibly.

Where does it say that? Just like domainname registration companies have
no influence over the use of a certain domainname, neither has any
organisation that (sub)assigns IP addresses any responsibility over
what people do with those addresses.

>  If you don't require your
> customers to maintain working contacts, you must take on that function
> yourself; anything less is irresponsible.  (Which was where we came in;
> the RIPE NCC as not only being irresponsible in this respect but is
> strongly resisting fixing it.)

RIPE NCC is paid for by its members. You are asking the (mostly wel behaved)
members to pay for the extra costs for them and RIPE-NCC to keep updated
information on customers' customers' customers?

> Of course not.  This has nothing to do with spam (and even less to do
> with SPAM), except that spam was the form of abuse that got me into it
> (by bringing me into contact with a netblock where RIPE is (or at least
> was) ducking its responsibility).

It is not ducking responsibility. It has none in that area.
 
> More like "get to call address space owners to account for how their
> resources are being used to damage the rest of the net".  I don't
> expect any provider to be spammer-free.  What I *do* want is for
> providers to kick spammers off promptly, and there are only a few that
> do that. 

In other words, your noble view of the net is not the realistic commercial
view that most netizns now have. Spending more resources on correcting
spammer information is just going to add another fake company layer that
is not updating its addresses.

> There's a rogue registrar - not just provider, but
> *registrar* - up right now whose containing RIPE netblock has been
> sitting on their thumbs for well over a year (the first complaint I can
> lay ready hand on is dated 2001-08-25).  And nobody is willing to call
> them to account for hosting a spam-supporter despite repeated
> notifications, over a long period, of the problem.

There are a number of blacklists you could inform and use, or just manually
block them from the little part of the net that you control, and hence
where you can do what you want. If your method is appreciated, you'll get
more commercial customers. When you grow bigger, more of the net will
behave like you do. It is the Hacker Ethic. If you can't motivate others
to fix it, do it yourself.

Don't get me wrong, what you wish (or rather demand) is something that we're
all in favour of. Except that in a time with the economy in our sector is
very bad, neither the LIR's, nor the RIR's, have the extra money to spare
on this.

In short, you're "making an elephant out of a mouse" :)

Paul 
-- 
God devised pigeons as a means of punishment for man. Probably after
the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha he wanted to make sure that people
would never again feel comfortable enough in a city to repeat the sins
committed there, and he created the pigeons as a means to make the city
dwellers' lives more miserable, as a constant reminder of their past sins.