[In the message entitled "Re: Nato warns of strike against cyber attackers" on Jun 8, 14:30, Brielle Bruns writes:]
Legit customers get caught in the cross-fire, and they suffer - but at
the same time, those legit customers are the only ones that will be able
to force a change on said provider.
They contact us, and act all innocent, and tell people we're being
unreasonable, neglecting to tell people at the same time that the
'unreasonable' DNSbl maintainer only wants for them to do a simple task
that thousands of other providers and administrators have done before.
I'm somewhat familiar with the concept
But yes, this indeed is currently the only effective way to cause change
at the ISP level. Ferg is very correct in that Change Is Coming at
the goverment level. That is the wrong place for it to happen, but it
will also be very effective.
I'm hopeful that more networks will take it upon themselves to make it happen
before it is forced on them.
Perhaps a government operated black-hole list, run by same friendly folks
that run the no-fly list, with a law that says no US ISP can send packets to
or accept packets from any IP on the list.
Now that would be some real fun to watch!
Personally, I think that's a horrible idea -- there's a real slippery slope
to subjective blocking of "offensive" sites (not just malicious ones) like
what they are trying to do in Australia.
But again, since U.S. providers have demonstrated that they do not have the
desire, nor the will, to police themselves, it is hardly a surprise that
Government intervention is being considered as an alternative.
I think residential-broadband ISPs need to follow the lead of [e.g. Qwest,
Comcast, etc.], which are making a legitimate attempt to identify, notify,
and mitigate abusive/botnetted customers.
Also, the U.S. leads the rest of the world in hosting providers which are
hosting Eastern European criminal malfeasance -- this is a fact.
In other words, as things stand now, U.S. providers kind of deserve
whatever the U.S. Government dishes out, since they have show that they do
not have a willingness to police their own backyards.
