Subject: Re: [Asrg] draft-irtf-asrg-bcp-blacklists-07

From: Jose-Marcio Martins da Cruz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2011 09:18:43 +0100

+1 in favor of 07 draft.

(Sorry for top posting... no need to reed the rest).

Jose-Marcio

Steve Linford wrote:
> On 28 Feb 2011, at 23:49, Richard Welty wrote:
>
>> please list me as being in favor of this draft.
>>
>> richard
>
> I also am in favour of the 07 draft. So if this is a vote, here's mine.
>
>    Steve Linford
>    The Spamhaus Project
>    http://www.spamhaus.org
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Asrg mailing list
> [email-masked]
> http://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg

-- 
  ---------------------------------------------------------------
  Jose Marcio MARTINS DA CRUZ           http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr
  Ecole des Mines de Paris
  60, bd Saint Michel                      75272 - PARIS CEDEX 06
  mailto:[email-masked]

---

From: Michael McConnell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 08:30:19 +0000 (GMT)

On Mon, 28 Feb 2011, Joe Sniderman wrote:

> On 02/28/2011 08:43 PM, Rich Kulawiec wrote:
>>
>> I'm in favor of the BCP with its current wording.  Not that I completely
>> agree with every last bit of it, but I think it's an awfully good first
>> stake-in-the-ground, and that we should plant it, take a deep breath,
>> then start thinking and debating about what the second stake should
>> look like.
>
> +1
>
> While I'm not 100% pleased with the current wording of the conflict of
> interest section, it is close enough IMHO. Count me in favor of the BCP
> (with its current text) as well.

+1.

-- Michael McConnell
    Eridani Star System

---

From: "Emanuele Balla (aka Skull)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2011 09:36:21 +0100

>> (with its current text) as well.

Add me too.

-- 
Paranoia is a disease unto itself. And may I add: the person standing
next to you may not be who they appear to be, so take precaution.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://bofhskull.wordpress.com/

---

From: Matthias Leisi <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 09:48:37 +0100

>>> (with its current text) as well.

+1, including the above paragraph.

-- Matthias

---

From: Graeme Fowler <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2011 09:16:25 +0000

> then start thinking and debating about what the second stake should

It's not often I have agreed with RSK word for word :) but I agree with
that.

Graeme (representing the vastly smaller end of the scale)

---

From: Blaine Fleming <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2011 03:28:03 -0700

ditto

--Blaine

---

From: Neil Schwartzman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 10:21:17 -0500

> please list me as being in favor of this draft.

<aol> +1, and agreed. Heck, I may have even been the person to suggest this clause, some years ago at the IRTF meeting when the ASRG was resurrected. Charging for delisting is just plain bad business.

Allow me to take a brief moment to draw a significant line between the Spamhaus business model, and one based upon delisting. For those too drunk, blind, or somehow mentally deficient to spot it for themselves, it is simple. One charges the beneficiaries of a given DNSBL (Spamhaus) and thus motivates a blacklist operator to run the very best product possible. The other, such as previously done by SORBS, or now UCE Protect, motivates the DNSBL operator to list as many IPs as possible (1) for financial profit.

(Tangentially, were I an employee, particularly senior middle-management, like a Director, of a firm where presumably non-unionized staff went on 'strike' I would find that reason to rouse the CEO from his nightly reveries, not sit back and watch things play out. As it stands, the unanimity of the vote is noteworthy, and I doubt Messagelabs and Nortel are going to take this lying down. An abnegation of professional responsibility, in my mind.)

(1) UCE Protect claims to have listed a significant number of IPs in the past week:

Spammer listings within the last 7 days:
Level 1: 1767801 IP's, Level 2: 21354 Allocations, Level 3: 583 ASN's. Last Updated: 01.03.2011 13:01 CET
--
Neil Schwartzman
Executive Director
CAUCE
The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, North America Inc.

http://cauce.org
http://twitter.com/cauce
IM: caucecanada
Tel.: +1 (303) 800 6345

---

From: Matt Sergeant <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2011 11:28:55 -0500

> <aol>  +1, and agreed. Heck, I may have even been the person to suggest this clause, some years ago at the IRTF meeting when the ASRG was resurrected. Charging for delisting is just plain bad busin…
The original wording was designed to cover this, it said (and jeez, this 
was back in 2003!): " If all things listed in your criteria for listing 
are cleared up then there should be no reason to not remove the IP 
address. No /extra/ rules for de-listing.". We simply made it more 
explicit (and better English).

Matt.

______________________________________________________________________
This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System.
For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email 
______________________________________________________________________

---

From: Michelle Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2011 17:43:03 +0100

Kelly Molloy wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 4:38 PM, John Johnson <[email-masked]> wrote:
>   
>> On 02/28/2011 04:49 PM, Richard Welty wrote:
>>     
>> please count me as also in favor, if not already
>>     
>
> Add me as well.
>
> In fact, Claus, you can add my name and email address to your webpage
> as supporting the BCP. No reason to leave all the work to Chris and
> Matt.
>   

As I had joined the discussion on the payment aspect you can add me as well.

Michelle

---

From: Michelle Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2011 17:57:35 +0100

> Allow me to take a brief moment to draw a significant line between the Spamhaus business model, and one based upon delisting. For those too drunk, blind, or somehow mentally deficient to spot it fo…

SORBS had no financial gain due to charging.

Michelle

---

From: Joe Sniderman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2011 14:01:24 -0500

On 03/01/2011 10:21 AM, Neil Schwartzman wrote:
> <aol> +1, and agreed. Heck, I may have even been the person to
> suggest this clause, some years ago at the IRTF meeting when the ASRG
> was resurrected. Charging for delisting is just plain bad business.

> Allow me to take a brief moment to draw a significant line between
> the Spamhaus business model, and one based upon delisting. For those
> too drunk, blind, or somehow mentally deficient to spot it for
> themselves, it is simple. One charges the beneficiaries of a given
> DNSBL (Spamhaus) and thus motivates a blacklist operator to run the
> very best product possible.

Yes, and this is a good thing. It encourages the provider of the data
(the DNSxL) to be loyal to the consumer of the data, rather than the
subject of the data.

Spamhaus charges to query its blocklists. Hypothetically, if Spamhaus
were to begin listing IPs (or domains on DBL) that did not meet the
listing criteria, it would risk losing paying customers. This applies to
any DNSxL (positve reputation included) that is funded primarily by its
users rather than its listees.

> The other, such as previously done by
> SORBS, or now UCE Protect, motivates the DNSBL operator to list as
> many IPs as possible (1) for financial profit.

Yes - in theory (the lists mentioned are not prime examples IMHO), and
this applies to whitelists as well.

That said, UCEProtect has previously been very quick to ban listees from
having the option of paying for delisting, and from what I understand
also sells hardware filtering appliances so it would hurt that end of
its business if it listed IPs that didnt meet its listing criteria.

The "fine" SORBS used to charge, IIRC was required to paid to charity,
*not* to SORBS itself, so there would be little or no financial motive
there to list IPs that did not meet its listing criteria.

There are some rare DNSxL's that have managed to be listee-funded and
maintain impartiality. ISIPP is probably a prime example. Listee pays to
be listed, AFAIK list operators determine the category. Some of their
categories make excellent whitelists, while others make excellent
blacklists.

The risk that a blocklist will list IPs solely to collect a delisting
fee, or that a whitelist will list non-qualifying IPs solely to collect
an accreditation fee, is to some extent mitigated by the fact than a
DNSxL doing so will be less widely used, and therefore there will be
less incentive for a listee (or hopeful listee, in the case of a
whitelist) to pay up.

No matter how its sliced up though, its *usually* a really bad idea.

> (Tangentially, were I an employee, particularly senior
> middle-management, like a Director, of a firm where presumably
> non-unionized staff went on 'strike' I would find that reason to
> rouse the CEO from his nightly reveries, not sit back and watch
> things play out. 

Agreed.  Frankly I think it stinks far worse than any delisting fee
possibly could.  I'm highly disappointed to say the least.. I've been a
real "fan" (for lack of a better word) of UCEProtect up until this escapade.

> As it stands, the unanimity of the vote is
> noteworthy, and I doubt Messagelabs and Nortel are going to take this
> lying down. An abnegation of professional responsibility, in my
> mind.)

Quite the contrary, I suspect (and hope) that both Messagelabs and
Nortel will see it for the nastiness and absurdity that is, and take the
high ground by not getting all macho or legalistic about it.

-- 
Joe Sniderman <[email-masked]>

---

From: Esa Laitinen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 20:28:33 +0100

> (the DNSxL) to be loyal to the consumer of the data, rather than the
There is potential for conflict of interest here, though: what if the
consumer of the data (i.e. paying customer) is also involved in spamming?

-- 
Mr. Esa Laitinen
Tel. +41 76 200 2870
skype/yahoo: reunaesa
Blog: http://happiloppuuahistaa.blogspot.com

---

From: Al Iverson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 13:33:30 -0600

On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 1:28 PM, Esa Laitinen <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 8:01 PM, Joe Sniderman
> <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>

I think the conflict is avoiding by not taking money for delistings.
Charging for usage is a wholly separate animal. Either say "who cares,
let the spammers use my data" or have a policy wherein you reserve the
right to stop providing data to anybody at any time, and cut spammers
off.

I'm not seeing an intersection of the two issues here.

Al

---

From: Matt Sergeant <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2011 14:34:33 -0500

> consumer of the data (i.e. paying customer) is also involved in spamming?
If they want to pay me to run a blocklist which lists them... go right 
ahead :)

---

From: Jose-Marcio Martins da Cruz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2011 20:39:16 +0100

> consumer of the data (i.e. paying customer) is also involved in spamming?

This is probably an exception.

Normal customers will subscribe (let me use the word subscribe instead of pay) in order to use the 
DNSxL to help him fight spam. Spammers will subscribe, probably, to check if him is blacklisted.

This means, the DNSxL list provider shall tell what's the intended good usage of the list.

---

From: Andrew Kirch <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2011 14:54:30 -0500

On 3/1/2011 2:39 PM, Jose-Marcio Martins da Cruz wrote:
>
>
> Normal customers will subscribe (let me use the word subscribe instead
> of pay) in order to use the DNSxL to help him fight spam. Spammers
> will subscribe, probably, to check if him is blacklisted.
>

I think that it is clear given the length of this discussion that there
is not a clear consensus among DNSBL operators, and that the text should
be removed from the draft.  Furthermore, I quite honestly don't care if
DNSBL operators extort spammers.  (I am not currently operating a DNSBL,
and am now considering the extort spammers and those who host them
business model).  As long as this is clearly disclosed in the listing
policies, there is no ethical problem.  Spam is theft, and we must
remember that this is the problem.  ISP's typically now have a clean up
charge in their TOS/AUP (the viability of collecting this I will leave
to discuss another day), there is no ethical reason why a DNSBL should
not have the same policy.  Charging end users to avoid spam is
profiteering off of crime.  Better to charge the criminal scum, and
those who host them.

Andrew

---

From: Kelly Molloy <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 12:04:10 -0800

> profiteering off of crime.  Better to charge the criminal scum, and

ISPs have a clean up charge because they incur direct costs when their
customers spam, and it's set forth in the contract between the
customer and the provider and everyone agrees to it. The people who
own the IPs listed in a DNSBL don't have a contract with the operator.
If you want to recover from them, use the courts. A DNSBL operator
doesn't have standing to punish or fine anyone; they're not the
police.

--kelly

---

From: Seth <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 15:05:56 -0500 (EST)

> very best product possible.

Why do you believe there is no incentive to run a not-quite-as-good
product if either (1) it's a lot cheaper to do that, or (2) doing that
provides more revenue (e.g. not listing a large customer who would
cease being a customer if listed)?

>  The other, such as previously done by SORBS, or now UCE Protect,
>  motivates the DNSBL operator to list as many IPs as possible (1)
>  for financial profit.

Then why not list 0/0 and maximize revenue?  Obviously, the
willingness of listees to pay for (expedited) removal depends on the
amount of usage the list gets, and false positives tend to decrease
that usage.  There is therefore the same sort of tension between doing
what provides immediate revenue and keeping the list going (and,
presumably, profitable) in the long term.

> Level 1: 1767801 IP's, Level 2: 21354 Allocations, Level 3: 583 ASN's. Last Updated: 01.03.2011 13:01 CET

Given automatic 7-day delisting, at least for Level 1, isn't that
actually the full size of their list?  Their page seems to indicate a
decrease in the size of Level 1, which would argue that way.

Seth

---

From: Martijn Grooten <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 20:08:27 +0000

> If they want to pay me to run a blocklist which lists them... go right

ISPs or SaaS-solutions (if they offer both inbound and outbound filtering) may well be users (customers) of a blacklist for their inbound filtering and at the same time occasionally find their outbound IP addresses listed on the same blacklist.

There is some potential conflict of interest there, albeit not one that worries me a great deal. I believe that the more honest blacklists, the ones that list their customers' IP addresses/domains if they think there is a need for that, will be the better ones and, ultimately, the ones that survive.

I actually find the various possible conflicts of interest not the most important problem with (speedy) delisting fees. I think it is simply wrong for an entity to hand out fines for bad behaviour if they have not been given permission to do so, either by the entity that is being fined (which may have explicitly or implicitly agreed to T&Cs that include the possibility of fines) or by some kind of higher authority (of which there isn't really one on the internet). Even more so if there isn't a way for those being fined to contest that decision with an impartial arbiter.

This is all regardless of whether such fines have an effect on the amount of spam being sent, whether they educate their users, whether they are given to those who deserve it and whether those receiving the fines actually benefit from them.

Oh, and for whoever is counting: +1 on the draft from me.

Martijn.

Virus Bulletin Ltd, The Pentagon, Abingdon, OX14 3YP, England.
Company Reg No: 2388295. VAT Reg No: GB 532 5598 33.

---

From: Jose-Marcio Martins da Cruz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2011 21:29:07 +0100

>> This means, the DNSxL list provider shall tell what's the intended

Hmmmm.... don't use my arguments this way... ;-)

> profiteering off of crime.  Better to charge the criminal scum, and

Well, there are two possibilities :

* charge users to help them to be protected against spam. IMHO, this is the only purpose of DNSBLs.

* charge "criminal scum, and those who host them".

Well, for the second possibility, there are two ways of see this :

* as long as I know, nobody is accredited to act as some sort of "Internet Police". The only 
possibility to apply fines or condamnations are by means of some legal actions imposed by some 
official administration.

* the other possibility, getting money from spammers to delist them and let them continue 
spamming... I'm not a lawyer but I assimilate this as some sort of "money laundry".

Two more cents...

I was a little shocked when looking at uceprotect.org site, by the phrases : "we will stop all 
spammers in this planet" and "WARNING: Do not play around here. You have no idea who we really are, 
and what will happen to you!"...

---

From: "Peter J. Holzer" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 21:36:28 +0100

On 2011-03-01 21:29:07 +0100, Jose-Marcio Martins da Cruz wrote:
> I was a little shocked when looking at uceprotect.org site, by the 
> phrases : "we will stop all spammers in this planet" and "WARNING: Do not 
> play around here. You have no idea who we really are, and what will 
> happen to you!"...

Hmm:

% wget http://uceprotect.org
| 2011-03-01 21:32:47--  http://uceprotect.org/
| Resolving uceprotect.org... 217.23.49.208
| Connecting to uceprotect.org|217.23.49.208|:80... connected.
| HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
| Location: http://www.nsa.gov [following]
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| --2011-03-01 21:32:47--  http://www.nsa.gov/
| Resolving www.nsa.gov... 12.120.172.8
| Connecting to www.nsa.gov|12.120.172.8|:80... connected.
| HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
| Length: 18099 (18K) [text/html]
| Saving to: “index.html”

Now we know who they really are ;-).

	hp

-- 
   _  | Peter J. Holzer    | Web 2.0 könnte man also auch übersetzen als
|_|_) | Sysadmin WSR       | "Netz der kleinen Geister".
| |   | [email-masked]         | 
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ |  -- Oliver Cromm in desd

---

From: Seth <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 15:38:43 -0500 (EST)

> I think the conflict is avoiding by not taking money for delistings.

Consider: BigISP is a large user of DNSBL, and pays a lot of money to
DSNBL for that usage.  BigISP gets a high-paying spammer it doesn't
want to remove, and tells DNSBL "If you list us, we'll stop using you
and stop paying you."

How is there no conflict of interest in that case?  There's no charge
for delistings involved.

> right to stop providing data to anybody at any time, and cut spammers

Charging for _anything_ means you have customers who have financial
influence over you.

> I'm not seeing an intersection of the two issues here.

Does this help?

Seth

---

From: Seth <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 15:40:22 -0500 (EST)

> If they want to pay me to run a blocklist which lists them... go right 

I trust you, personally, to do the right thing; however, I recognize
that a conflict of interest *exists*.

Seth

---

From: Jose-Marcio Martins da Cruz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2011 21:49:52 +0100

> | Location: http://www.nsa.gov [following]

Not sure. They're cheating.

The result you've got is for http://uceprotect.org. If you try http://www.uceprotect.org, you'll see 
their real web site.

Either way, I don't think this kind of lack of transparency can be part of a BCP.

---

From: Steve Linford <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2011 21:05:26 +0000

> want to remove, and tells DNSBL "If you list us, we'll stop using you

In your scenario the DNSBL is entering into a pink contract with a spam-friendly ISP to facilitate spam to the DNSBL's other paying customers.

You could help bolster your scenario by using as example some criminal botnet gangs as the DNSBL customers, since they can pay much more to the DNSBL to let tons of botnet spam through. If a DNSBL is going to make a pink contract with an ISP to let spam through for money, why stop there?

(it's a rhetorical question, no need for an answer)

  Steve Linford
  The Spamhaus Project
  http://www.spamhaus.org

---

From: "Peter J. Holzer" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 22:06:44 +0100

> Not sure. They're cheating.

I am sure. They are playing silly games, trying to scare the
kidsspammers. Of course they have nothing to do with the NSA, anybody
can set a redirect.

> The result you've got is for http://uceprotect.org. If you try 
> http://www.uceprotect.org, you'll see their real web site.

Yup, I know. I just thought it was amusing, and it fit the ominous "You
have no idea who we really are".

	hp

---

From: Seth <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 16:12:29 -0500 (EST)

Kelly Molloy <[email-masked]> wrote:

> The people who own the IPs listed in a DNSBL don't have a contract
> with the operator.  If you want to recover from them, use the
> courts. A DNSBL operator doesn't have standing to punish or fine
> anyone; they're not the police.

Listing in a DNSBL (that's used to the detriment of the listee,
e.g. for blocking email) is itself a punishment, and the DNSBL
operator clearly has standing to list in the DNSBL.

There's no "fine" involved in any case, because nobody is forced to
pay anything.

Seth

---

From: Neil Schwartzman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 16:14:59 -0500

> (it's a rhetorical question, no need for an answer)

Let's use another example. Spamhaus has, IIRC listed Microsoft IPs. (lve.com spam hosting about 18 months ago?). Surely your largest customer beat you over the head to have them delisted, no? Paid you enough to delist them, and put the rest of your users in jeopardy? 

If an DNSBL is respected well enough to be used by a large ISP (and very few are, and relatively few do, respectively), one assumes they respect the quality of the data well enough not to try to interfere, lest said DNSBL go public. Besides which, let's say Spamhaus took a bribe. How long until hotmail figures if they can take an indirect bribe, they can take one directly. Thus, the credibility goes out the window, and soon after, the contract with the DNSBL.

Anyway, this is my last post on this subject; the Chair has called the question and we should probably best serve the issue by reviewing the document, suggesting changes, and trying to achieve consensus.

http://cauce.org
http://twitter.com/cauce
IM: caucecanada
Tel.: +1 (303) 800 6345

---

From: Seth <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 16:50:47 -0500 (EST)

Jose-Marcio Martins da Cruz <[email-masked]>

> * charge "criminal scum, and those who host them".

There are more than those two possibilities.

First, there is no necessity to charge anybody; many lists don't.

Second, there are people who are neither users of the DNSBL nor
criminal scum or those who host them, who might be charged.

> * as long as I know, nobody is accredited to act as some sort of
> "Internet Police". The only possibility to apply fines or
> condamnations are by means of some legal actions imposed by some
> official administration.

That's the only way anybody can be *forced* to pay.  A DNSBL that
charges for (expedited) delisting isn't forcing anybody to do
anything.

> * the other possibility, getting money from spammers to delist them
> and let them continue spamming...

If there were a way to stop them from spamming, we wouldn't be having
this discussion in the first place.

> I'm not a lawyer but I assimilate this as some sort of "money
> laundry".

That has nothing to do with "laundering money".

Any DNSBL that took money not to list spammers would get little usage,
so there would be essentially no benefit to paying it.

A DNSBL that takes money to delist immediately, and is quite willing
to re-list 3 seconds later if the spam continues, isn't particularly
harming its customers for allow spam for 3 seconds.

Seth

---

From: Jose-Marcio Martins da Cruz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2011 23:06:56 +0100

Seth wrote:
> Jose-Marcio Martins da Cruz<[email-masked]>
> wrote:

> harming its customers for allow spam for 3 seconds.

If one consider that spammers money is dirty money (criminal activity as one said)... and if part of 
the DNSBL revenue comes from this dirty money, how do you name this ? Probably not "money laundry", 
but surely not something legal.

But well, I'm afraid we are "beating a horse already dead"...

---

From: Seth <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 17:13:05 -0500 (EST)

Steve Linford <[email-masked]> wrote:

> You could help bolster your scenario by using as example some
> criminal botnet gangs as the DNSBL customers,

The key point was later: If you have any customers, for anything, then
you have a potential conflict of interest when a (potential) customer
wants something that conflicts with what you would otherwise do.

If a spammer offers you $1 million to give a concert at Carnegie Hall
if you don't list him, then you have a conflict of interest.  There's
no charge for usage, listing, delisting, or anything else related to
the DNSBL involved.

Seth

---

From: "Chris Lewis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 18:17:44 -0500

On 3/1/2011 10:21 AM, Neil Schwartzman wrote:
> <aol>  +1, and agreed. Heck, I may have even been the person to suggest this clause,

Nope, you can't take credit for that.  It was in the original drafts in 
2003, it and a clause on symmetry in listing/delisting were considered 
highly problemmatic (for much the same political and/or theoretical 
reasons we've seen here) during work on the document at MAAWG in 2004/5 
or thereabouts, but Nick (scribe at the time) managed to save the latter 
clause by rewriting it in its current form.

The reason for its reappearance is manyfold.  First and foremost is that 
I'm continually reminded, through experience/exposure with all portions 
of this industry, that it's _necessary_.  It just kept rearing its ugly 
head.

Secondly, experiences with a couple of documents at MAAWG have 
demonstrated the importance of ignoring the politics and drawing the 
line in the sand clearly and where it needs to be - remembering it's 
still drawn in sand.  If circumstances/events prove it needs to be 
redrawn in a slightly different place, well, that can be fixed.

My grandfather went surprisingly far for someone who had only gotten an 
eighth grade education.  Some of the things he always told me was:

- The only thing worse than making the wrong decision, was not making 
one at all.
- If you can manage to get it right more than 50% of the time, you were 
gold.
- If you were not right, be the first to admit it, fix it, and move on.

Surprisingly applicable even in software development - part of the 
reason I'm able to get away with stuff at $ork nobody else was ;-)
Applicable to BCPs and whitepapers too ;-)

---

From: Bill Cole <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2011 19:12:16 -0500

On 1 Mar 2011, at 11:28, Matt Sergeant wrote:

> The original wording was designed to cover this, it said (and jeez, 
> this was back in 2003!): " If all things listed in your criteria for 
> listing are cleared up then there should be no reason to not remove 
> the IP address. No /extra/ rules for de-listing.". We simply made it 
> more explicit (and better English).

That bit (2.2.4) is properly distinct from the CoI/payment bit (2.2.5) 
because there can be both inherent and prudent forms of 
hysteresis/asymmetry between listing criteria and delisting criteria.

---

From: Andrew Kirch <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2011 21:42:19 -0500

On 3/1/2011 5:06 PM, Jose-Marcio Martins da Cruz wrote:
> If one consider that spammers money is dirty money (criminal activity
> as one said)... and if part of the DNSBL revenue comes from this dirty
> money, how do you name this ? Probably not "money laundry", but surely
> not something legal.

Dis-incentivising.

---

From: "Chris Lewis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2011 22:31:20 -0500

> but surely not something legal.

While this particular horse isn't particularly relevant (if not dead), 
there are a variety of illegal things it could be, depending on the 
circumstances.  The key is whether the DNSBL operator can be shown to 
have _known_ that the delist request corresponded to ongoing illegal 
activity.  If it can, it could be accessory, conspiracy, racketeering or 
other things.

---

From: Andrew Kirch <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2011 23:57:25 -0500

On 3/1/2011 10:31 PM, Chris Lewis wrote:
>> as one said)... and if part of
> activity.  If it can, it could be accessory, conspiracy, racketeering
> or other things.
Those who are not lawyers should not practice law.  In fact, this is
another failing of this section of the draft.

Andrew

---

From: Jose-Marcio Martins da Cruz <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2011 09:34:40 +0100

> activity. If it can, it could be accessory, conspiracy, racketeering or

Right ! And finally, IMHO, the less there will be "money transactions"
in the DNSBL management the better will be. Surely, charging the user
for a service perfectly defined isn't a problem.