Dear all, the RIPE NCC is considering relaxing the requirements for obtaining a maintainer. This has certain consequences that we would like people to consider and then put forward comments either supporting or rejecting this proposal. We propose the following new policy: - The RIPE NCC will create maintainers for all users whose person/role object is mentioned in any object in the RIPE database except if it is only mentioned in other person or role objects. - If the person/role is not mentioned in any other object, the maintainer will not be created. This should allow all users to protect their data but prevent the database from becoming some sort of "phone book". Some consequences of this would be: - The RIPE NCC would no longer do any identity checks on the requester (compliance with the policy will be, of course, checked). - Users may wish to protect objects that already have (soft) maitainers. A clear example would be a user protecting a domain object with a soft maintainer (eg: auth: NONE) with their own maintainer (which may have PGP on it). - Users with inetnum,route,etc objects are strongly encouraged to protect their objects with a strong maintainer to prevent accidental or malicious "protection" by other users. Note: Any object can have more than one maintainer. To modify/delete an object only one maintainer authentication needs to be matched. In order to add a maintainer to an object that already has one (or more) the user will need cooperation from one of the previous maintainers. Waiting for your comments, Joao Damas RIPE DB Group RIPE NCC