So what you're saying is that ARIN should publish data on the rightful users of the number resources in some online database?
(maybe they could call it WHOIS)
-- Dave
So ARIN is in the process of verifying their contacts database. Organizations with an unreachable contact might be a good place to plant a "dig here" sign. Maybe when one of us retires, we could engage in a little research project as a community service or something. A first step might be matching ASN resources to unreachable contacts. Then to collect the low hanging fruit, find the ASNs found above that are NOT in the routing table and attempt to match those up with organizations and see if those organizations even still exist. For the ones that obviously no longer exist, create a report of the ASNs and any other number resources associated with that organization and provide that information to the registrar. Then you go through the ones that ARE in the routing table. Any of those organizations that are obviously defunct would be the next higher level of fruit. This would be particularly true if a historical look at routing information shows the AS was in the table at some point, disappeared after the organization went defunct, and then suddenly appeared again in a completely different region of the planet with name resources pointing to a completely different organization than the number resources. Then if a suspicious operator is discovered, it must be reported to their upstream, the registrar with involved with the number resources, and the community. See how this goes? It takes someone working on this that has access to a lot of information and has the time to do it. It also has to be someone that isn't a "loose cannon" and can dig through it in a methodical fashion and whether or not "spam" has come from the address space really has no bearing on the process. At least it has no bearing on the process up to that point. All that is being done is to "weed" the database of defunct resources. So while the DMV doesn't go after car theft, this is more along the lines of stealing a neighbor's license plate from that old car in the back field, making a sticker to put on it, and driving around as if it is a legitimate plate. The DMV records would show who that license plate belongs to and a police officer in a traffic stop would find out in short order that the plate is defunct but the database available to internet operators is so poor that there really is no way to be sure if the data being returned is actionable or not. G