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Re: [anti-spam-wg] Non-cooperation of RIPE ISP in investigating report of email abuse (spam)

  • From: der Mouse mouse@localhost
  • Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 17:29:08 -0500 (EST)

>> FWIW I would love to see IP resources withdrawn from spammers,
>> politicians, accordian players and other such dregs of society.

Spammers, sure.  Politicians and accordion players, I would resist,
unless they are also abusing the net; the reason I support yanking
resources from spammers is not that they're "dregs of society", but
rather that they're abusing the resources in question.  (I suspect you
were being humourous here, but I think it's important to draw a
distinction between "this entity is a scumbag" and "this entity is
abusing these resources".  The latter deserves resource yankage, the
former does not (unless, of course, it is accompanied by the latter -
which it often is).  It's the difference between abuse *of* the net and
abuse *on* the net.)

> As would lots of other people I'm sure, all it needs somebody who is
> strong and determined enough to get those people together and work
> out how this can be done then push it through PDP.  A new working
> group maybe?  Perhaps Der Mouse is up to the job?

Mouse may be up to it in some respects, but quite possibly not in
others.

I am not really a RIPE constituent, since I'm in North America rather
than Europe, though as I understand it that doesn't matter for these
purposes if the other people involved are willing to listen to me
anyway.  More serious is that I do not have a leader's personality; I
find corralling people difficult at the best of times.

I am also inclined to doubt it will help.  I don't expect the effort to
succeed, since it involves convincing people to, mostly voluntarily,
accept more responsibility than they have now, with no specific
compensation.  Furthermore, even if it does succeed, I don't expect it
to make any long-term difference, since the rot will still be present
at the root of the tree; the only way I can see it making any lasting
difference would be if ICANN/IANA sees it as a successful experiment
and worth adopting.

And I'm also not entirely sure I'm willing to.  Please take the rest of
this paragraph with a big "as I see it" caveat; I could keep peppering
that all through the following, but it gets repetitive and cumbersome.
This is actually part of RIPE's job (where "RIPE" means the entity that
assigns resources, collects payment, enters into contracts with (eg)
LIRs - is this what some of you have been calling the NCC?).  For me to
do it amounts to my doing their work for them, without even getting
paid to.  They're being paid to manage these resources, which involves,
or should involve, exactly this sort of thing.  I am not, and I find
myself reluctant to volunteer to do for free a job someone else is
being paid to do but is shirking.  (Okay, end of "as I see it" mark.)

And, like many people, I am not exactly rolling in spare time.

I might be willing to anyway, in the hope of improving Internet
governance in general, but I'm not sure that hope is large enough to
overcome the reasons not to.  (Though I'm not sure it's not, either.)

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