Dear Wilfried and all,

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This is stated in the Terms and Conditions document article 8.2.g.

http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/terms-conditions.html

Thanks, Jochem,

this provision obviously has been added for this new version. Just checked, it was not present in ripe-173, effectively ruling out the possibility of operating a non-commercial LIR or internet service?

Are you able to provide the rationale for including this additional requirement?

Indeed it was not present, we added this clause to be able to verify the legality of the contributor and existence of the contributor. As you can read from the Standard Terms and Conditions a Contributor can be a natural person or a legal entity. This also covers non-commercial organisations, government entities etc. We try to get as much clarity regarding the question: Does the organisation we sign a contract with exist? and do we sign a legal contract with this organisation? for a legal contract we need to make sure that the contract is signed by an authorised person.

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With the re-sign of the RIPE NCC agreements we noticed that for several existing members we are not in the possession of any company registration papers. Therefore we have approached those members.

We are aware of the fact that not all organisations can submit an extract of the Trade register, in this case we request an equivalent document proving the registration of the Contributor's business with the national authorities.

Judging from recent experience, providing a VAT number, and a reference to the historic founding documents of a pretty old university are not considered to be an "equivalent document".

So, the other way 'round, what _is_ an "equivalent document" from your point of view?

Equivalent document is not well defined as we try to get confirmation of the legal status and existence of an organisation. Examples of document(s) are: - an extract from the trade register (which for commercial companies in many countries is easy to receive) - A copy of a founding document or charter signed by an authorised person - For another university we accepted a signed extract from the Official journal of laws from that country - An official paper on company letterhead signed by an authorised person, declaring the status and existence of the institute (for instance we accept this with ministries). - In case of natural persons we accept a copy of a passport. Also as a last resort we have accepted VAT registration papers although we initially prefer one of the above. And agree it is an additional bureaucratic procedure but this is a way we can sign an authorised legal agreement. Overall we have never denied anyone membership if they could not hand over an extract from the trade register but always we have come to an agreement regarding the equivalent document. And yes we do accept foreign language documents (but prefer English documents) Regards, Jochem de Ruig

And no, I won't be able to just grab the document from the university's archive, issued on 12th of March 1365 (no typo), and put it onto a copying machine...

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Regards,

Jochem de Ruig RIPE NCC

Regards, Wilfried