[db-wg] Abuse Complaint procedures

>     The RIPE NCC allocates address space to ISPs and other organisations.
>     These organisations are responsible for the activities originating
>     from the address space allocated to them. Since the RIPE NCC is NOT
>     the organisation using or responsible for activities originating from
>     the address space, any concerns or responses should be directed to
>     them.

Which is a very nice theory, except that RIPE has flat-out refused, to
me, to either ensure that address space contacts are correct or pass
along complaints.

Perhaps the policy behind that has changed.  I hope so.  But until I
see some evidence of it, I still consider RIPE fundamentally rogue -
wanting the authority to assign address space, but not accepting the
concomitant responsibility, the same responsibility they say everyone
they assign address space to has.

Responsibility has to be matched with authority the way up the chain,
from individual hosts all the way up to ICANN; whenever authority and
responsibility are mismatched, you get abuses, growing more and more
severe until either the mismatch is corrected or the system collapses -
and RIPE is no exception.  (Neither is anyone else, of course.)

No, I don't think scattershotting individual complaints to every
address in sight is sane behaviour.  But when there is a long-standing
pattern of persistent abuse, or an address space holder that
persistently refuses to provide working contact addresses, the RIR in
question needs to step in and assume the responsibility their assignee
isn't.  (And, of course, if a RIR persistently refuses to do so, ICANN
needs to step in and take whatever steps are necessary to correct the
situation.)  These are last-resort steps, of course; except in cases of
nonworking netblock contacts (which in routine cases should be quickly
corrected), I wouldn't go as far upstream as RIPE until everyone lower
had proven comatose or rogue for months.

No, I don't expect that to happen anywhere near the RIR level in the
foreseeable future.  With the US Government at the top of the pyramid,
the rot goes clear to the top, and I don't expect it to be fixed until
the root cause is fixed: until whatever entity is at the top of the
assignment chain (ICANN or its analog) is not beholden to any national
government and cares more about the net's running smoothly than about
lining their own pockets.  (And that's what I see it as; ICANN
shouldn't *need* any money from any government, with all the money
pouring up the pyramid from every address space assignment and domain
registration.  What is that money *for*, if not to pay for the
infrastructure?)

And that, I don't expect to happen soon.  Perhaps not even in my
lifetime.  Possibly not even in the Internet's lifetime.  (And people
wonder why I wish I knew a trade other than computers....)

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