Re: [dp-tf] Quadlogy of person proposals

[Leo Vegoda <]

Denis,

On 17 Jul 2007, at 15:59, Denis Walker wrote:

[...]

> I see some conflict here between your right not to be identified  
> and my
> right to know who is spamming me. Maybe I want to complain directly to
> the spammer. But if I have to go to the ISP and ask them to  
> identify the
> end user they may just say "sorry we can't give out confidential
> customer information". Then I have to go to court of the police to  
> even
> write a letter of complaint to the spammer.
>
> The RIPE DB is a registry of IP Address information. If we hide the
> bottom layer we change the whole concept.
That is a fine principle but probably doesn't fit well with a world  
where most consumer network operators are not in a position to fix  
the problem. If a consumer's machine is part of a 'botnet' and  
sending spam then calling them on the telephone and complaining is  
unlikely to be effective. Network operations intelligence sits in ISP  
and (some) enterprise networks most of the time, not consumer end  
sites. As such, that is the contact information that is needed in the  
RIPE database.

If the problem with going through the police or the courts is that  
they take too long then the police and courts need to improve their  
interfaces to allow efficient handling of complaints about illegal  
activity. Putting the consumer's contact information in the RIPE  
database is very unlikely to help resolve this kind of problem and  
might even encourage vigilantism.

Regards,

Leo