[ppml] Last Call for Comment: Policy Proposal 2002-6 REALITY CHECK

[Philip Smith]

At 11:52 14/11/2002 +0700, Dr. Jeffrey Race wrote:

>Well my firm is a continuing spam victim so I will pitch in here with
>a reality check.   Blocklisting IP address space is the ONLY thing that
>works to stop spam, and its use is definitely going to increase until
>the bodies in charge of allocating space become active rather than
>passive about the pollution of the space they manage.

What does spam have to do with the bodies allocating address space? Or to 
use an analogy, what does junk postal mail have to do with the people who 
allocate post codes. Nothing.

>I have had many quarrels with ICANN about this, who are somnolent
>in regard to such simple matters as brazenly fraudulent domain
>name registrations.

If someone fraudulently registers a domain name, how did they manage to 
register it? It must have got into the DNS somehow, so who put it there? 
Might be worth chasing the people who did that, because ICANN is too busy 
doing other things which don't matter.

>My attempts to get ARIN and APNIC to go after fraudulent or
>negligently managed IP address space have not, to put it gently, been
>crowned with glorious success.    If you can't even do that, then
>you have to expect the unhappy consequences you are whining about in
>this thread.

Okay, we're away off track here:

1. Fraudulent use of address space - if someone is using address space 
which isn't their's to use, I'd be interested to know why their upstream 
ISP is letting them use it. Wouldn't you?

2. What has negligently used address space got to do with the RIRs. They 
allocate to the ISPs, and on rare occasions to the end user. ISPs assign to 
the end-users, so if someone is negligently using this assignment, don't 
you think it would be a better idea to tell the organisation who has 
delegated responsibility of this address space to the end user?

>In fact, the managers of domain names and IP address space, if they
>want to avoid the nightmarish jungle the Internet is becoming, are
>going have to act on the spam issue.   There is just no other way;
>otherwise the Net will be destroyed as a valid medium for e-mail.

The management is distributed - step up the tree, not to the top. If the 
RIRs membership really want the RIRs to micromanage every single allocation 
they make, the RIR membership should step forward and suggest that.

>I have plenty of ideas what to do, which could be codified in RFCs.
>See <www.camblab.com/nugget/nugget.htm>.  Enjoy.

Write them up! Bring them to the ARIN meeting, propose policy. Bring them 
to the IETF, etc.

philip
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