Actually there were cases where we did like that, being put as a contact for the LIR. I don't think this should be the solution as it doesn't seem adequate at least. There were also cases where we would have to "speak" on behalf of both parties so it would be awkward if not unprofessional to be a contact person for both sides.

From our experience the need is just to "translate" (figurative and not) the messages between NCC and LIRs. It is a situation we meet often and I think it should be addressed in a clear procedural way. I don't agree with using tricks.

On Monday, October 24, 2016, Sander Steffann <sander@steffann.nl> wrote:

Hi Ciprian,

> There is, though, an important thing which I think the policy needs to address. The broker should be allowed to discuss with ripe on behalf of his customers. It has happened several times that we had customers who don't understand english very well and many times they would just ask us to write the reply and they would simply copy/paste it. It would help if ripe would allow us to directly pass on information and answer ripe's questions.

Your customer can add you as an official contact in the LIR Portal if necessary. That is the way LIRs can define who is permitted to speak on their behalf. I have done that in the past: got added as a contact, handled the case for them, and then was removed as a contact again. I can imagine that not all LIRs are comfortable doing that, but in that case the communication should go through the LIRs existing contacts anyway.

As there are already existing authorisation mechanisms for who can speak on behalf of an LIR I don't see the need to create a new one specifically for brokers.

Cheers,
Sander