The RIPE community decided that only the maintainers of objects in the database may make changes to data.
Fine; that means that RIPE's options are limited to bugging the assignee or revoking the grant of space. Seems somewhat crippled to me, but that's a RIPE-internal problem (if it's a problem at all).
The RIPE NCCs role is to implement this decision for the RIPE community. The RIPE Whois Database is a public database and therefore, although we (the RIPE NCC) aid in its operation, we are not responsible for its content.
RIPE - by which I mean the RIR, what you're calling "RIPE NCC" if I've understood you correctly - keeps trying to wash its hands of its responsibility this way. You can't. At most, you can, perhaps, make people think otherwise. But you handle the money, you accept address space from the IANA and you parcel it out in smaller pieces; you have to accept the responsibility that matches that authority. Or else, as I said before, you have a broken system, in which abuses grow more and more severe until the system collapses or changes bring authority and responsibility into line with one another. It's as inexorable - and as futile to try to fight - as gravity. (Indeed, I'd just write RIPE space off and let the process happen naturally, except that (a) I'd kinda like to be able to communicate with the people I know in Europe now and (b) the abuses involved produce effects that spill over into the rest of the net.) /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B