[Apologies for duplicate emails] Dear Colleagues Some time ago, the RIPE Data Protection Task Force recommended that all RIPE Database objects should have a mandatory "mnt-by:" attribute. This is to prevent easy corruption of data, either accidentally or maliciously. There were three object types where this attribute was optional. DOMAIN objects have already been changed to make this attribute mandatory. The RIPE NCC is now ready to deploy mandatory "mnt-by:" attributes on PERSON and ROLE objects. A test server was made available in February with this feature. Details can be found in the mail archive at: http://www.ripe.net/ripe/maillists/archives/db-wg/2010/msg00084.html This feature will be deployed during the week commencing 18 October 2010. Initially, the only impact on maintainers of data in the RIPE Database will be when PERSON or ROLE objects are created or modified. These operations will fail if the data is not maintained. Additional warning messages will be generated when other objects are modified that reference unmaintained data. These warnings will not cause any database operations to fail. For new users of the RIPE Database, there is a start-up application to create the first pair of PERSON/MNTNER objects available at: http://apps.db.ripe.net/startup/ This is now the only way to create the first set of data objects in the RIPE Database. Note the URL is different to the one in the mail archive message above. Regards Denis Walker Business Analyst RIPE NCC Database Group