Re: The right to refuse, was: Re: Principles of Spam-abatement

Vernon Schryver wrote:
> > From: Yakov Shafranovich <research(_at_)solidmatrix(_dot_)com>
...
> > How many ISPs actually 
> > willing to do that (although ComCast begun shutting down accounts of 
> > hijacked machines)?  What monetary incentive would the ISPs have to do 
> > that? And even if the IETF publishes the BCP, there is no way to enforce it.
>
> At $30/month, an ISP can't afford to do much watching for spikes.  It
> certainly can't hold the hands of users who couldn't be bothered to
> install virus defenses or not open attachments.  About all that a
> "consumer grade" ISP can afford to do is preemptively block outgoing
> port 25, 135, etc. for all customers.  I've been complaining for years
> that is slum tenement Internet service, but it seems to all that must
> users are willing to pay for, in money and in acquiring and using
> technical expertise (e.g. virus filters and not opening attechments).
I agree with you - most ISPs do not have enough profit to do anything 
other than unilateral measures like port blocking. Another similar 
unilateral measure that very few ISPs started doing is to shut off 
accounts of customers with hijacked machines. One of my family members 
has an account with AceDSL, a small DSL provider in NYC, and had his 
account suspended because one of the computers in the house has been 
infected with a worm (Comcast claims to have started doing that with 
hijacked machines used for spam). Of course, this like port blocking is 
a rather harsh measure which might not be profitable for an ISP for an 
ISP to do in the long run.
> If the IETF would officially define "slum tenement Internet service"
> (with better words, of course), then truth in advertising laws, the
> value of product differentiation to ISPs, and savvy users might make
> port 25 filtering universal where it is needed and absent elsewhere.
> That would stop lunacy like blacklisting any IP address whose reverse
> DNS name contains the substring "dsl."
I am not sure if it's the IETF's role to define such definition. But in 
any case, the problem is that given the current situtation that ISPs do 
not have sufficient incentive to deal with the problem at the end 
points, is there anything that the IETF can really do aside from 
providing some standards and publishing BCPs?
> > I do not see how the IETF can do anything to force ISPs to handle abuse 
> > complaints more seriously. This is why people tend to to block ISPs and 
> > IP blocks unilaterally in order to force ISPs to take action (not to say 
> > that I necessarily agree with it). The only two things that I see here 
> > that can be done by the IETF is either to facilitate easier abuse 
> > handling by ISPs via standard formats for abuse reports;
>
> ISPs don't need to exchange abuse reports, but to deal with their own.
> There's no value in standardizing the unidirectional stream of abuse
> reports from the spam-hostile part of the Internet to the spam friendly
> part that largely ignores reports of abuse.
Given that most ISPs do not make that much profit, what anything change 
in the long run about their ignorance of abuse reports?
Yakov