[db-wg] NWI-13 Geofeed Legal Analysis

Hi Massimo

On Fri, 29 Jul 2022 at 04:11, Massimo Candela via db-wg <db-wg at ripe.net> wrote:
>
>
> Hi,
>
>
> On 28/07/2022 15:52, Randy Bush via db-wg wrote:
>  > and, being a researcher, i have no clue about
>  > this research spin at all.
>
>
> I also don't understand where the research context is coming from.
> Usually, researchers don't have the need to correct the geolocation of
> so many prefixes to require something like geofeeds.
>

I think this was an attempt by the legal team to find some way to
justify having the "geofeed:" attribute based on the current defined
purposes.

>
> And I really don't understand why the geofeed attribute would not be
> covered by the current purpose of the RIPE database, as described in the
> article 3.
>
> Geofeed matches "Facilitating coordination between network operators
> (network problem resolution, outage notification etc.)"
>
> Geofeed wants to correct geolocation problems. The geofeed attribute is
> exactly a way to "coordinate between network operators" (with, or
> without, the intermediation of geolocation providers). Geolocation
> problems impact the availability/performance of content/services. The
> medium is the network. Geolocation problems are network problems.

No, "geofeed:" is not covered by this purpose. It may be provided by
network operators but it is not 'used' by them. It has nothing to do
with 'network problem resolution, outage notification etc'. It is, as
I suggested, data that is used by external services. As are all the
other items I mentioned in that list.

>
>
> On 28/07/2022 16:58, Laurent Pellegrino via db-wg wrote:
>
>  > It's sad to see real solutions around geolocation (which helps users
>  > in many ways) overthought and killed in the eggs.
>
> In general, the solution has not been killed.
>
> It would have been nice to have a neat "geofeed" attribute. However,
> geofeeds are successfully used with remarks in LACNIC, APNIC, AFRINIC,
> and RIPE. Comments are used in ARIN.
>
> Add a remark/comment "Geofeed https://url-to-my-file" and you are good
> to go. At the moment most of the data is produced with this approach anyway.

This is not the way to go. We should never accept the overloading of a
free text attribute with structured data as a solution to any problem.
Let's fix the core problem and bring the purposes into line with the
contents and usage of the database.

cheers
denis
co-chair DB-WG

>
> Ciao,
> Massimo
>
> --
>
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