Hello Jeroen,
On 17 Nov 2025, at 16:13, Jeroen Massar <jeroen@massar.ch> wrote:
On 17 Nov 2025, at 15:52, Edward Shryane <eshryane@ripe.net> wrote: [..]
An example WHOIS entry on how this could look like could be a good example.
I think having both the URL of the company register (so that one does not have to figure out what it is), be that a link to a contact address that one has to call to get details, or that has a public lookup interface can help a lot. Eg Switzerland has https://zefix.admin.ch <https://zefix.admin.ch/> enter the name and one can see what is behind the company and if that looks like something that is legal or barely legal.
We plan to include a URL to the company register on the database web query page, where possible (based on the number format and the legal country: attribute value).
However I'd prefer not to encode the number as a URL in the reg-nr: attribute itself. Making a link for interactive users to click is convenient but makes it harder for client programs to parse (there's no standard URL format for registration numbers that I'm aware of). Also we may not be able to identify a URL for all types of registration numbers (it depends on the registry). And if a URL ever changes, it's easier to update the web application than re-synchronise all affected registration numbers to the RIPE database.
Agree, a separate attribute, eg "reg-url" would be the way to go indeed.
Maybe a "reg-country" option separately to indicate the country could be useful (e.g. in the case of Germany as one example), while the "reg-url" could point directly to the registration entity's site.
It would also allow easily grouping which registry each comes from, thus per URL, similar to 'source'.
To then automate or so automatic fetching would be something the user can do. though most of these sites do not allow automation and require payment, but that is then upto the client to handle, RIPE NCC should not be bothered with that.
To be clear, we propose to only add the registration number to the RIPE database in a "reg-nr:" attribute. It is for the client to decide how to process the registration number. We will only include a URL to the company register on the database web query results where possible. Regards Ed Shryane RIPE NCC