[anti-abuse-wg] Authorities, or lack thereof

Suresh Ramasubramanian <ops.lists at gmail.com> wrote:

>What remains is policy proposals that are effective in getting such
>allocation requests denied and/or revoked.  Which seems to be more of a can
>of worms here than in any other RIR.

I thank my friend Suresh for bringing to my attention a really more
important issue, and one that I should have really considered before
I made any of my recent posts imploring all within the Working Group
to work on solidifying a firmer and more complete defintion of "abuse".

As the Chair has courteously pointed out to me, the charter of this
Working Group, such as it is, already is fairly clear that "spam" and
"spamming" are most definitely issues within the remit of this Working
Group.  But that begs the larger question:  Assuming for the moment
that there existed a case in which all or a majority of this Working
Group were convinced that a given particular allocation of number
resources was registered for, and was being used exclusively and com-
pletely for the production and distribution of spam, then at that
point would either the Working Group, or its Chair, have either the
authority or the responsibility to (a) direct or (b) request or (c)
suggest that RIPE NCC withdraw/cancel/retract said allocation?

If neither (a) nor (b) nor even (c) applies, then regardless of the
formal or working definition of "abuse", it would seem to me... in-
tending no offense to any person here present... that the Working
Group could not reasonably be viewed as anything other than a paper
tiger, utterly devoid of teeth and/or authority, and thus of no
particular value or use or significance to anyone or any thing...
but I am more than willing to be convinced otherwise.


Regards,
rfg