In message <CAKvLzuEjrfJ6zxuxOffwV+iwvSviyAObVdnGiQ96keybezH3uQ@mail.gmail.com>, denis walker <ripedenis@gmail.com> wrote:
Now personally I totally agree with you. I think it is crazy to have address space documented in the RIPE Database that is owned by unidentified and unaccountable people. When writing policy proposals we have to be clear that it will only apply to legacy space that is subject to a contract with the RIPE NCC. We can't impose policies on this unaccountable space.
Excuse me denis, but we Americans like to call a spade a spade, and this... everything you've written and that I've quoted above... is all nothing but bovine excrement, sleight of hand, and legalistic obfuscation. You throw up irrelevant arguments about who owns the IP space, when everything that *I* have said makes it clear that I don't give a damn about THAT can of worms. The *real* question has nothing whatever to do with who owns or who controls the various chunks of legacy IP space in question. The *actual* question is just this: Who owns the RIPE data base? Does that belong to RIPE, or what? Can RIPE from time to time make adjustments in the contents of the data base, e.g. it order to regularize and normalize it, as may be either necessary or convenient FOR THE USER BASE, or is either RIPE or RIPE NCC, actually, formally, and (most importantly) *legally* constrained and prevented from ever even sweeping out the ancient, annoying, and counterproductive cobwebs from its own data base? You know... the one that it maintains and that it publishes for the benefit of every Internet user on planet earth? As long as RIPE and RIPE NCC do not materially screw around with the alleged legal (or extra legal) rights of the alleged "owners" or "registrants" (as you may prefer), e.g. "rights" (asserted but never even proven) to the full use and enjoyment of said IP address blocks, then who the hell gives a damn if RIPE performs a small amount of data base clean-up, adjustment, or modernization from time to time? Nobody, that's who. And to be clear, I have *not* made *any* suggestion that RIPE or RIPE NCC should do anything whatever that might have *any* material impact on, or effect on *any* of the alleged rights of *any* legacy block registrant. To suggest otherwise is to grossely mischaracterize both my goals and what I have actually said. The data base may be brought into a more consistant and regularized state without having any effect whatsoever on *any* registrant... except that it may make their stuff a bit easier to find via WHOIS queries, as I have illustrated. Have you ever gone to a dentist and had your teeth cleaned? Or are you walking around now with the most smelly and unsightly mouth on your side of the Atlantic? Routine maintenance and/or periodic upgrades destroys nothing of value. Quite the opposite. These things -preserve- a resource so that it will have lasting value. Have there not been, over time, innumerable other "enhancements" made to the data base to make it more internally consistant or more useful? If so, then what is the problem with simply arranging that every IP block allocation has an associated org: field and an associated organisation: record? What makes this simple, reasonable, and minimal adjustment into some sort of inviolable sacred cow? Is it just the fact that this rather obvious fix was suggested by one of those brutish, ill-mannered and ill-tempered Americans that makes the idea unacceptable? I say again, EVERY OTHER ONE of the other four Regional Internet Registries support WHOIS queries that make it trivially easy to obtain lists of ALL of the IP blocks currently assigned to a given organization. Every one. But as is often the case, Europe insists of its right to make things more complicated than they either need to be or than they should be. I suppose that by now I should not be surprised. I'm sorry, but I am short on patience these days, and I'm frankly offended that I find myself obliged to kill quite this many electrons just to defend an altogether simple and indeed trivial proposition that in any sane world would require no defense. Regards, rfg P.S. I am *still* waiting for my suggestion to force all handles in the data base to upper case to receive at least some comment. But I guess that I shouldn't get my hopes up. P.P.S. What the devil ever happened to plan to cease publishing the so- called NOAUTH data base? My dim recollection is that that was supposed to happen at the end of the first quarter of 2020, or at the end of the first quarter of 2021, or at the end of the first quarter of 2022. I confess that I don't even remember anymore, because the past 2+ years have all been kind of a blur for me. I feel quite sure however that this was supposed to have been completed by now, and yet it appears that the NOAUTH data base is still being published.