I Matthew Brown, would like to request that there be some sort of action, to allow the ripe database managers to contact ISP(s) when someone reports incorrect or outdated information. Good luck - and I mean that; I hope you succeed, though at this point I don't really expect it. I've gone a few rounds with RIPE myself on that issue; they appear to want the authority of "owning" (and being paid for the subdelegation of) address space without the concomitant responsibility. When you last commented on this subject in April, I suggested that you propose a policy to tackle the issue. Perhaps you are still developing your proposal. In any case, I look forward to reading it.
["You" and related words here refer to ICANN/IANA, not any individual except insofar as that individual is wearing an ICANN/IANA hat.] Why is it *my* duty to fix *your* screwup? The current, broken, system was put in place asking (or even telling) me; why is it up to me to fix its problems? Because I'm the person pointing them out!? *You* are being paid to run the Internet; go do your job! Asking me to make up for your failings - without pay, I note - is shirking your duty. In any case, my "proposal" is that ICANN impose responsibility along with authority: as a simple example (restricted just to address space assignment), it could establish an AUP that RIRs would have to comply with to keep their assigned space - and then enforce it (this step is not optional, or the fix won't actually fix anything). What would this AUP say? I don't know, offhand; I am not a policy author. I recall seeing RIPE say their sub-assignees have to conform to an AUP of some sort, at least de-jure; if that memory is accurate, that policy might well be a reasonable place to start.
The real problem is that ICANN/IANA lets them get away with it, and I see that (that the top of the governance pyramid does not impose responsibility on those to whom it delegates authority - and I don't mean just RIRs; the same problem recurs with domains) as the fundamental problem that is killing today's net with abusers and abuses. Sadly, you have misunderstood the policy development process. IANA does not set policy and nor does the RIPE NCC.
IANA (or perhaps ICANN; I'm not entirely clear where the boundaries between them lie) *has* to. They have been given the authority; they have to take the responsibility - or we have the kind of mismatch I wrote about in the quote above. When they delegate authority, such as by assigning address space to RIRs, they have to impose corresponding responsibility, or, again, we have a mismatch. If they - IANA/ICANN - accept the authority but not the responsibility, as you seem to be saying they have, they system will break. Is breaking, in the case of the Internet, and will break worse and worse until the mismatch is fixed. Sitting on their thumbs waiting for someone else to solve the problem, which is what I see them doing, is *not* a responsible thing for ICANN/IANA to do here. If this is being done because that's what the procedures in place call for, then the procedures themselves are broken and need to be fixed. /~\ 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