FD: Implementing COPS treaty

Grosseschnauzer

Grosseschnauzer

TNPer
As proposed by Grosseschnauzer:

LAW 22

Section 5. Crashing, Phishing, or Spamming
A. Definitions
As used in this Section:
“Crashing” refers to any action which could cause a forum to go out of service or lose information, including the deletion of posts, the deletion of the forum, spamming, or any other act of such kind.
“Forum” refers to the official offsite forums of The North Pacific.
“Off-site property” refers to any forums, websites or Wiki pages owned or maintained by resident citizens of The North Pacific, or any other Nationstates nation, organization or region, outside of nationstates.net.
“Phishing” refers to any attempts to gain forum controls or passwords by deception, especially by posing as administrators or moderators.
“Spamming” refers to any action undertaken by non-region nationals to waste space on forums or to cause forums to crash. This includes any attempts to force a DOS error on forums and any attempts to flood the RMB of a region which is not that nation’s normal abode.
B. Prohibited Acts
1. All forms of forum crashing, spamming and phishing are prohibited and may be punished as criminal acts.
2. No Nation of The North Pacific may order, condone, or accept as legal, those acts prohibited by Clause 1 of this subsection.
3. Punishment for the commission of these prohibited acts may include any penalty deemed appropriate by law, including ejection or banning by the Delegate, or restrictions or banning by official forum administration, or both.
Click to expand...

For reference here is the treaty:

The Convention on Off Site Property Security

Preamble:

We, the undersigned, disgusted with the inexcusable practice of forum crashing and its attendant evils, wish to use this treaty as a means to work for the eradication of the practice.

Definitions:

Crashing: any action which could cause a forum to go out of service or lose information, including: the deletion of posts, the deletion of the forum, spamming, or any other act of this kind.

Legal: In accordance with the rules of Nationstates as set out on the site.

Off-site property: Any forums, websites or Wiki pages owned or maintained by a Nationstates nation, organization or region.

Signatories: The regions and nations who sign and the organizations on whose behalf they sign the treaty.

Spamming: Any action undertaken by non-region nationals to waste space on forums or to cause forums to crash. This includes any attempts to force a DOS error on forums and any attempts to flood the RMB of a region which is not your normal abode.

Phishing: Any attempts to gain forum controls or passwords by deception, especially by posing as administrators or moderators.


I

We, the undersigned, do agree to adhere to all the regulations set out below and do hereby accept the right of all nations, regions and alliances to create and maintain off-site property without hindrance, annoyance or any behaviour which could prevent the free exercise of this right. We commit to specifically refrain from all forms of forums crashing, spamming and phishing and condemn these acts as illegal and destructive. We also agree that no such act shall be ordered, condoned or accepted as legal by us or those nations and regions whom we represent and influence.

II

We agree that proper geopolitical requirements and cooperation are a key to preventing those who engage in acts proscribed in this treaty from continuing to do so. Signatories to this treaty agree to multilateral cooperation and further agree to enact laws against acts proscribed in this Treaty on a regional or organisational basis as one of the requirements for full membership. To fulfill the second requirement of membership we further agree that nations and entities that engage in these acts will gain no safe haven in member regions and organizations. To that effect we assert the right of all members to bring charges and try those that engage in these acts within their court system.

III

In order to be a member of this Treaty, a prospective member region or organization must meet the above requirements of Section II, ratify it within their region or organization and send a legal signatory to post their acceptance of the Treaty terms within the ACCEL and TWP areas where the original Treaty will be held in trust for all member regions and organizations. This treaty shall be binding and shall remain in effect from the time a signatory is added to the list, to the time they post a request to leave the Treaty. While the decision of a signatory to leave this treaty shall be unfortunate, it shall not be construed as support for, or intention to commit any of the acts condemned in this treaty. This treaty shall be considered supplementary to and not a replacement for any treaty in force between any and all of the signatories.

IV

Given the scope and purpose of this treaty, signing the treaty does not necessarily mean that signatories are in political or diplomatic agreement on any other matter bar the matters attended to in the text of this treaty. It is the hope of the signatories that, given that forum crashing may affect regions of all sizes and political views, this treaty shall be signed by as many regions and organizations as possible. Any and all signatories are hereby granted the right and encouraged to invite others to sign this treaty.

Founding Regions and Primary Signatories:

ACCEL

The West Pacific

Signatories:

Lazarus (qualified. Signed on 08/19/2007)
Click to expand...


I, Lewis and Clark, Elected UN Delegate of The North Pacific, with the authority invested in me by the Constitution, hereby sign The Convention on Off Site Property Security (COPS) Treaty and introduce it to the Regional Assembly.

Signed this 18th Day of January, 2008
Click to expand...

This proposal is now in formal discussion. When any issues have been discussed, then this will move forward to a vote.
 
I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, Falconias, but at the time this treaty was voted on, L&C was serving as the elected Delegate under the current Constitution, as the legality of the treaty was never disputed.

This law is needed because the treaty is not self-executing. In order to fully adhere to the treaty, we have to enact a law making the prohibited conduct illegal under our laws.

I followed the language of the treaty in drafting the proposed law, but used definitions in order to simplify the form of the law.
 
I notice some language issues that are either redundancies or a serious flaw, depending on how literally you interpret it.

“Forum” refers to the official offsite forums of The North Pacific.
Click to expand...

“Off-site property” refers to any forums, websites or Wiki pages owned or maintained by resident citizens of The North Pacific, or any other Nationstates nation, organization or region, outside of nationstates.net.
Click to expand...

So far so good. "Forum" refers to z13, "offsite property" is any other organization's forum. Okay?

B. Prohibited Acts
1. All forms of forum crashing, spamming and phishing are prohibited and may be punished as criminal acts.
Click to expand...

"Off-site property", the only term that we define to cover forums by other regions, is never actually used in this law. You can argue that "forum" in B.1. implicitly refers to any forum, but that directly counters what we explicitly defined it as in the previous section.

Ergo: We declare any attack on our own forum as illegal, but say nothing about attacking the forums of other regions.

The other signatories of this treaty may have understandable objections to this.
 
Ermarian, my intent is to fulfill the treaty mandate, I sought to literally track the treaty language in drafting the statute language. The treaty calls for the broader meaning of "off-site property" as part of the required statute language.

I'm not sure there's a way around this given the treaty language and mandate. The treaty, in general terms does call for this region to outlaw actions by its residents against off-site property of other regions, which does make sense in defining what conduct is to be prohibited.

Any suggestions? I'm all ears.
 
“Phishing” refers to any attempts to gain forum controls or passwords by deception, especially by posing as administrators or moderators.
Click to expand...

I take issue with this. While I agree that attempting to access the forum controls should be banned, I think trying to trick someone into giving you the password to a secret forum in order to view its contents should not be.

It is an important part of intelligence work in NS, and is incidentally how I dug up most of the Crimson Order's documents back when I turned on them. Plus, you really can't do any damage to the forum or a user's account, unlike stealing the Admin or account passwords.

Perhaps make the difference between getting passwords the forum controls or someone's account and just a protected subforum clear?
 
As I pointed out in my original post introducing this proposal in Preliminary Discussions, that definition comes verbatim from the text of the COPS treaty, word-for-word. TNP has already accepted the treaty obligation to enact a law that implements the provisions that intend to make the conduct illegal. The purpose of this legislation is to fulfill that treaty obligation.

If an amendment to the COPS Treaty is needed, that needs to take place in the appropriate venue with the other signatories.
 
Any suggestions? I'm all ears.
Click to expand...

It'd probably suffice to just extend the B.1. prohibition to all "offsite property" (as defined above) instead of only "forums". This would make it clear that the law does, in fact, apply to all off-NS sites (not just our own), and it includes stuff like wikis.

As you stated that the treaty aims specifically at making us pass a law that states we won't be attacking others this way. So the entire definition of "forum" as "the forum of the North Pacific" might not be needed - our law applies only to us, and we don't need to forbid ourselves to crash our own forum.

So here is a rough proposal for consideration:

Section 5. Crashing, Phishing, or Spamming
A. Definitions
As used in this Section:
“Crashing” refers to any action which could cause a forum to go out of service or lose information, including the deletion of posts, the deletion of the forum, spamming, or any other act of such kind.
“Forum” refers to the official offsite forums of The North Pacific.
“Off-site property” refers to any forums, websites or Wiki pages owned or maintained by resident citizens of The North Pacific, or any other Nationstates nation, organization or region, outside of nationstates.net.
“Phishing” refers to any attempts to gain forum controls or passwords by deception, especially by posing as administrators or moderators.
“Spamming” refers to any action undertaken by non-region nationals to waste space on forums or to cause forums to crash. This includes any attempts to force a DOS error on forums and any attempts to flood the RMB of a region which is not that nation’s normal abode.
B. Prohibited Acts
1. All forms of forum crashing, spamming, and phishing and otherwise attacking any off-site property are prohibited and may be punished as criminal acts.
2. No Nation of The North Pacific may order, condone, or accept as legal, those acts prohibited by Clause 1 of this subsection.
3. Punishment for the commission of these prohibited acts may include any penalty deemed appropriate by law, including ejection or banning by the Delegate, or restrictions or banning by official forum administration, or both.
Click to expand...
 
Ermarian, you do recognize that your suggestion would make the law broader than the treaty requires, right?
The question is whether there is a need to go beyond the treaty requirements. Other views are welcome.
 
Ermarian, I'm going to take a middle road on your proposed changes to the draft of the bill.
The definition of "Forum" needs to remain, because there are uses of the word "Forum" that are intended to mean just these forums, and not all forums.
I'll also go part-way on the change you propose to B.1.; I'm not sure how we could enforce as broad a scope as you are suggesting, much less have the means to obtain the evidence in those circumstances.

Section 5. Crashing, Phishing, or Spamming
A. Definitions
As used in this Section:
“Crashing” refers to any action which could cause a forum to go out of service or lose information, including the deletion of posts, the deletion of the forum, spamming, or any other act of such kind.
“Forum” refers to the official offsite forums of The North Pacific.
“Off-site property” refers to any forums, websites or Wiki pages owned or maintained by resident citizens of The North Pacific, or any other Nationstates nation, organization or region, outside of nationstates.net.
“Phishing” refers to any attempts to gain access to off-site property forum controls or passwords by deception, especially by posing as administrators or moderators.
“Spamming” refers to any action undertaken by non-region nationals to waste space on the Forum forums or to cause forums other off-site property to crash. This includes any attempts to force a DOS error on forums and any attempts to flood the RMB of a region which is not that nation’s normal abode.
B. Prohibited Acts
1. All forms of forum crashing, spamming and phishing are prohibited and may be punished as criminal acts.
2. No Nation of The North Pacific may order, condone, or accept as legal, those acts prohibited by Clause 1 of this subsection.
3. Punishment for the commission of these prohibited acts may include any penalty deemed appropriate by law, including ejection or banning by the Delegate, or restrictions or banning by official forum administration, or both.
Click to expand...
 
Normally the practice here on z13 is not to delete posts, but to move them, if necessary, to a lock box.

But "Deletion of posts" is an admin action that takes place infrequently, but legitimately. If there is a post that seriously breaks invisionfree's TOS or real life laws, then simply moving it to a hidden section of the forum will not do. Invisionfree could close down the whole forum if the posts are left on the forum at all.

This is an issue I have dealt with twice in my time as admin, and it is a legitimate concern. we cannot jeopardise the whole forum for the sake of one post.

I would hate to think that someone who had his post legitimately deleted could seek to prosecute under the COPS treaty.
 
I would also have liked this act to cover the harvesting and distributing of IP addresses and E-mail addresses. This has happened twice, once when details were harvested from this forum, and once from another forum of The North Pacific. Both were done by people who had admin controls.
 
Flem, let's see what can be done within the scope of this proposal.

The treaty language sort of implies that it is the deletion of posts without proper legal authority that is prohibited, and not all deletions per se; and "authorized" in the context of these forums is our practice of only doing so to eliminate violations of the Invisionfree Terms of Service.

So I think that issue can be addressed by adding the word "authorized," which I'll highlight in purple.

The second issue is not as easy to fix where this bill is concerned. In the two instances you cite, someone given access to the ACP legally abused that access in order to engage what would otherwise be deemed "phishing" under the language currently used in the draft bill. Let's see if adding language that underscores the normal reason for phishing (collection of personal information) can address that issue. (I'm limiting that clause to this forum, but I'm open to using "off-site property" in general if I can be convinced that is even enforceable.)

Section 5. Crashing, Phishing, or Spamming
A. Definitions
As used in this Section:
“Crashing” refers to any unauthorized action which could cause a forum to go out of service or lose information, including the deletion of posts, the deletion of the forum, spamming, or any other act of such kind.
“Forum” refers to the official offsite forums of The North Pacific.
“Off-site property” refers to any forums, websites or Wiki pages owned or maintained by resident citizens of The North Pacific, or any other Nationstates nation, organization or region, outside of nationstates.net.
“Phishing” refers to any attempts to gain access to off-site property forum controls or passwords by deception, especially by posing as administrators or moderators for any unauthorized use. This includes the collection of personal information kept at the Forum.
“Spamming” refers to any action undertaken by non-region nationals to waste space on the Forum forums or to cause forums other off-site property to crash. This includes any attempts to force a DOS error on forums and any attempts to flood the RMB of a region which is not that nation’s normal abode.
B. Prohibited Acts
1. All forms of forum crashing, spamming and phishing are prohibited and may be punished as criminal acts.
2. No Nation of The North Pacific may order, condone, or accept as legal, those acts prohibited by Clause 1 of this subsection.
3. Punishment for the commission of these prohibited acts may include any penalty deemed appropriate by law, including ejection or banning by the Delegate, or restrictions or banning by official forum administration, or both.
Click to expand...

Does that work?
 
The level of traffic is one reason why I'm not moving things along too quickly. I have a feeling that traffic has been low since many people have spring break going on at some point in March.

I plan to send out a message to all RA members when these four bills go to a vote. I want to get this started before the end of the month.
 
Here is the final version of the bill in the form it will be voted on:

As proposed by Grosseschnauzer:

LAW 22

Section 5. Crashing, Phishing, or Spamming
A. Definitions
As used in this Section:
“Crashing” refers to any unauthorized action which could cause a forum to go out of service or lose information, including the deletion of posts, the deletion of a forum, spamming, or any other act of such kind.
“Forum” refers to the official offsite forums of The North Pacific.
“Off-site property” refers to any forums, websites or Wiki pages owned or maintained by resident citizens of The North Pacific, or any other Nationstates nation, organization or region, outside of nationstates.net.
“Phishing” refers to any attempts to gain access to off-site property controls or passwords by deception, especially by posing as administrators or moderators for any unauthorized use. This includes the collection of personal information kept at the Forum.
“Spamming” refers to any action undertaken by non-region nationals to waste space on the Forum forums or to cause forums other off-site property to crash. This includes any attempts to force a DOS error on forums and any attempts to flood the RMB of a region which is not that nation’s normal abode.
B. Prohibited Acts
1. All forms of forum crashing, spamming and phishing are prohibited and may be punished as criminal acts.
2. No Nation of The North Pacific may order, condone, or accept as legal, those acts prohibited by Clause 1 of this subsection.
3. Punishment for the commission of these prohibited acts may include any penalty deemed appropriate by law, including ejection or banning by the Delegate, or restrictions or banning by official forum administration, or both.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
TNP wasn't an original signatory to the treaty.

The version posted here is the "snapshot" of the treaty in the form that the RA voted to approve the treaty.

I'm not exactly sure where the original is kept, but it should show TNP as an additional signatory.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top