Anti-spam Working Group

Draft minutes from RIPE 32

DRAFT MINUTES (VERSION 1.1)

     Anti-Spam Working Group
     RIPE 32
     Chair: James Aldridge, EUnet
     Scribe: Raza Rizvi, REDNET

     New WG chair needed. No volunteers came forward but Rodney Tillotson of
     UKERNA had previously volunteered to the chair by email.

     Clive Feather (Demon) gave a summary of the proposal for a EU Directive on
     ECommerce. This requires that the recipient of a message can indentify the
     sender of the mesage at reciept time. Liability of ISPs in the transfer of
     information has also been clarified.

     George Mills of The European Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email
     (http://www.euro.cauce.org) presented on the proposal for a EU Directive on
     ECommerce. This can be seen at
     http://www.ispo.cec.be/Ecommerce/legal.htm#legal

     In outline:

     What is a commercial communication
     Promotional offers must be identified
     Regulated Professions
     Electronic Contracts
     Liabilities of Intermediaries
             Mere Conduit
             Caching
             Hosting
             No obligation to monitor except for a specific purpose for limited time
             Once informed, must take immediate action
     Codes of Conduct
     Out of Court dispute settlement
     Court Action
     Cooperation between authorities
     Electronic Media
     Santions
     Exclusions


     If it goes past the proposal stage and is formally accepted, then it
     will be added to the journal of directives within 20 days and then be
     liable to enforcement by member states within 1 year.

     Article 6 and 7 are most pertinent to ISPs.

     Modification to the USENET Path list might be construed as a change of
     message and make ISPs liable to collusion with the poster.

     IRC/ICQ might count if they contain adverts.

     WG Charter:

     The chair believes that the group should have a technical element to
     it's existence. There were no dissentions to the contrary.

     General discussion:

     EUnet use RBL for SMTP at router level. It was noted that ORBS was now
     back in service.

     With regard to the RIPE database holding information on dialup or NAT
     blocks of address space it was stated that there were frequent
     arguments on the spam-tools list about the status of static vs dynamic
     dialup.

     Dial customers either send their mail via a relay or directly (using
     their own MX lookups). Apparently UUNET have said there is no reason
     why any of their dial customers should be doing MX lookups from the
     dynamic addresses they are given at connect time.

     It was pointed out that a company could hid it's whole organisation
     behind a single address using NAT and thereby might be at risk if that
     address were SMTP blocked.

     James Aldridge to speak to Database Working Group on further flags with
     input from Clive Feather about the need for dynamic dial blocks, static
     dial blocks, static dial blocks with NAT etc etc

     James Aldridge suggested the collection of Terms & Conditions/AUPs from ISPs
     to allow work on a code of conduct. No volunteers to chair this work. LINX
     and IETF may be working on a similar document.

     Centre for European Network Abuse Resolution:

     Originally viewed as a last resort but majority thought in RIPE 31 that
     it would end up being used as the first resort.

     Final point: California has a 2 year jail penalty for the sending of SPAM
     with a forgeed header - you have been warned...