In message <c7b0643d-54db-6a97-999a-fbb9ce0980b7@heeg.de>, Hans-Martin Mosner <hmm@heeg.de> wrote:
For resources allocated to legal entities (companies, organizations, etc.) an identification of the organization should be mandatory.
Would you agree also that such identification of non-person legal entities that are the registrants of number resources should be: a) public, and b) accurate and consistant with the bona fides that were submitted to RIPE NCC at the time the member was made a member, and at any & all times thereafter when the non-person member requested or was granted number resources? If you say yes to both, then I am compelled to point out there there is, as far as I understand it, *no* requirement, within the RIPE region, at present for there to be *any* correlation between what appears in any public RIPE WHOIS record and the actual bona fides of the corresponding member, the -actual- identity o which remain secret & hidden behind an opaque wall of stony silence, backed up by RIPE's legal counsel. In short, everything you see in any and all public RIPE WHOIS records is subject to the whims of the corresponding member, whose true identity may be well and truly hidden, and thus, the WHOIS data often is nothing more than totally made-up bovine excrement. I hasten to add that this is due not to any single mistake or specific deliberate policy choice on the part of RIPE or its members or its legal counsel. Rather it is due entirely to the fundamental nature of RIPE which is a -private- member-based corporation, the membership of which is composed almost entirely of -private- corporate entities whose most sincere and fervent wish is to be accountable to, answerable to, and transparent to absolutely no one, and often times not even to their own shareholders[1] and/or Boards of Directors[2]. In short, I have some time ago given up entirely in the idea that RIPE could be gradually "refomed" to be more accountable, e.g. to the billion+ ordinary people who now rely on the number resources that it distributes. Reform isn't possible for an organization that has stealthy secrecy and deliberate opacity baked in, as a guiding principal, from its very inception. Regards, rfg [1] The mere existance of "activist" investors like Carl Icahn illustrates the point that corporate entities many times do not even feel any special obligations to be honest, open, and transparent with their own shareholders, let alone the "unwashed masses" of the public at large. [2] The now well-known story of the rise and fall of the U.S. corporation known as "Theranos" and its all-too-clever former CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, vividly demonstrates that management sometimes (often?) has incentives to keep even a company's own Board of Directors in the dark. And if management isn't telling the truth to its own Board, then they quite certainly are not likely to be truthful, open, honest or transparent with the public at large.