Comment by observationist
7 hours ago
IP Reputation is only as meaningful as the duration of ownership. If it's the same owner for years, then reputation is meaningful, and that should count; if it changes hands every 6 hours being assigned to VPS clients or whatnot, then make the reputation stick to the /24 owner, and so on, with varying degrees of scope and duration, so that the responsible party - the shady companies renting their IPs to bad people - actually have their reputations stick. Then block the /24 or larger subnets, or aggressively block all ranges owned by the company, isolating them and their clients, good and bad.
That sort of pressure can work. But then you risk brigading and activist fueled social media mobs and that's definitely no way to run the internet.
What's the purpose of blocking them, anyway? Is it to make you feel good? To clean up logs? To reduce spam? With the residential proxy industry - which, I note, is directly boosted by such blocking practices and funnels money into organized crime - IPs don't mean a whole lot to those who can pay.
100% agree with your point regarding long term ownership allowing for meaningful reputation.
I don't necessarily think that's 'no way to run the internet' or even 'no way to run anything', in that people can choose to whom they listen in regards to blocking, protesting, boycotting.
As long as none of the different groups of opinions are forced on anyone else, then pick and choose those you apply and those you ignore.
With my lists of blocking, I classify them, personally, into different tiers such as Basic, Recommended, Aggressive, and Paranoid when I apply the rules to other people's (family) setups - I'm the only one that uses Paranoid.