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

[Dr. Jeffrey Race]

On Thu, 14 Nov 2002 15:14:00 +1000, Philip Smith wrote:
>What does spam have to do with the bodies allocating address space?

I didn't raise the subject.  List members were whining about the
pollution of IP addresses, as though (as Dickens wrote of the French
Revolution) "it were the only harvest ever known under the skies
that had not been sown--as if nothing had ever been done, or omitted
to be done, that had led to it"

>Or to  use an analogy, what does junk postal mail have to do with the 
>people who >allocate post codes. Nothing.
>

In fact plenty and the parallel is quite nice; thank you for raising
it.   If your company rents a postbox and allows its employees to
use it for fraud, the postal inspectors will shut the box, and possibly
launch a criminal prosecution against you.   

>If someone fraudulently registers a domain name, how did they manage to 
>register it?

There are separate databases for billing and for WHOIS.  The WHOIS
data are intentionally fraudulent.


>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.

In fact it is in ICANN's charter to police fraud, but they are
extremely resistant to the concept of obeying their charter, as you
have surmised already in other regards :)

>
>>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?

I apologize for the inclarity; I mean allowing allocated space to be
used to commit fraud, theft of service and the like.

>
>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?

Yes, in fact that is the SOP, but some ISPs intentionally profit from
these criminal activities, and until they are threatened, they will
continue to profit.   Same idea as the UUNet/WorldCom accounting
frauds.   Nothing happened to the criminals at the top of the organization
for a long time.  If the regulators had been doing their jobs the
accounting frauds would have been much smaller in impact.

And by the way, the irony is that UUNet/MCI are one of the biggest
profiteers, if not the biggest, on spam.   I offered a complete,
ready-to-eat, criminal prosecution (under Virginia Computer Crime Act)
to UUNet legal staff, who refused to take action.   I asked their
staff attorney under what direction this policy was taken.  He said
"Mr. Ebbers".   Is the picture clear now?

>
>>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.

Your suggestion is excellent and I am pleased to flag the issue for you.
Actions have consequences and no actions also have (like now) disastrous
consequences.   (Meaning: if you are not willing to act against abuse
of IP address space, don't whine in public newsgroups about its 
pollution, which is the predictable consequence when the policeman
are asleep.)

>
>>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.


I started writing up ideas for an RFC about six months ago but could
not gather any enthusiasm for it, so I decided to wait until the 
situation dramatically worsened, which it has now (some countries
becoming essentially intranets, Red China now on the verge; I am
proposing to local ISPs in Thailand where I spend much time to block all
traffic from that country due to egregious mismanagement of its internet
connectivity).

However I have a day job and kids to feed.   I am willing to 
work with anyone who feels as if he needs a mission in life.


Dr. Jeffrey Race, President
Cambridge Electronics Laboratories
20 Chester Street, Somerville MA 02144-3005     USA
              <www.camblab.com>
Tel +1 617 625-7645 (res) Tel +1 617 629-2805 (ofc)
Fax +1 617 623-1882           <jrace at attglobal.net>
Tel +1 617 823-2941/504-4124 (mobile--sometimes on)


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