Hi,
This seems odd. I can't seem to find any mention of charging for bulk whois access in the RIPE NCC AGM or the PDP.
the ncc _seems_ to have taken upon itself, with no public mandate or bottom up process, to incrementally make the nic a members only organization. as the nics are here to serve the internet, this is a major change. if the ncc is not here to serve the internet, then we may need to rethink how we handle internet coordination.
somemthing smells very broken here. maybe we are just misinformed.
Yeah, that does sound broken. Let's hope that it is indeed miscommunication.
Looking at http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-558 (the activity plan for 2013) the RIPE Database Proxy Service is indeed listed as a member-only service, and the members approved of that activity plan. So the NCC and the NCC board can't be blamed for this. The members (and yes: that includes me) should be careful what they vote for... IMHO the proxy service should have never been included in the member-only-services list, and I suspect that many members didn't realize the impact of approving this change in the activity plane. Another point is whether the NCC members are the ones to decide such a change. It is their money that funds the RIPE NCC whois service, but it is not their data... - Sander