Although it is very late to respond, but still... Leo Vegoda wrote:
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.
This is actually where the irt: object should come into the picture. It was designed, on purpose, to support that split of interests or responsibilities. Using irt:, an ISP could *very effectively* declare itself "responsible" for operational and security/abuse complaints - while still having the fact registered that a particular address block has been assigned to a customer (and as such not being counted as a self-assignment). Btw, for PA space, we can even support a "search list" or "escalation path" by registering an irt: for the different blocks in the hierarchy :-)
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.
Dream on... :-) But yes, I agree, in principle.
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
Wilfried