This policy proposal has been accepted and has been implemented
The new RIPE Document is: ripe-806
You're looking at an older version: 1
The current (published) version is 2The war in Ukraine has highlighted the fear of some resource holders that resources may be transferred to an aggressor under duress. It would be a great comfort to some resource holders if it was possible to signal to the RIPE NCC in advance that transfers should not occur for a predetermined period. Not all resource holders want this, so it is not a solution for everybody, but it is a solution for some.
While the situation in Ukraine was the trigger to write this policy, it does not exclusively apply to that situation. There are other situations where a resource holder may want to lock their resources to protect them from transfer, such as protecting specific resources from being transferred by mistake, or to make sure a disgruntled employee can’t cause problems. This proposal doesn’t list all possible reasons someone could use this policy, it merely offers the possibility for those who want it.
The important part is that this is a voluntary lock, not something that is forced on RIPE NCC Members or other resource holders. This proposal does not tell RIPE NCC to unilaterally limit any right that a resource holder has, but it gives resource holders the extra right to ask the RIPE NCC not to process any resource transfers for a certain amount of time.
There is no policy, but on request of the community, the RIPE NCC implemented a temporary voluntary lock mechanism following the RIPE NCC Executive Board resolution EB#163-R-02 [1].
The form to request this can be found at: https://www.ripe.net/manage-ips-and-asns/resource-transfers-and-mergers/registry-lock-request-form.
If this new policy is accepted, it will replace or succeed the current temporary solution.
This document defines the guiding policy for the RIPE NCC to offer a Voluntary Transfer Lock to resource holders. It applies to all transferable resource types (IPv4, IPv6 and ASN) registered with the RIPE NCC. It explicitly does not apply to sub-allocations and assignments made by LIRs. It also does not apply to legacy resources.
The transfer lock option provided by this policy is completely voluntary and will not affect resources where a lock has not been explicitly requested by its resource holder.
This policy allows any resource holder whose resources are registered with the RIPE NCC to inform them which of these resources must not be transferred for a certain amount of time. The RIPE NCC will then respect the resource holder’s wishes and prevent those resources from being transferred, despite any requests to the opposite, during the time of the lock.
This policy only defines the constraints on the implementation of a Voluntary Transfer Lock. It explicitly does not prescribe a specific implementation by RIPE NCC. When requesting a Voluntary Transfer Lock, the procedural documentation published by the RIPE NCC is leading. These procedures must comply with the constraints set by this policy.
The author of this policy proposal feels that the arguments supporting the proposal outweigh the arguments opposing the proposal. No single policy will ever fix all possible scenarios, but if an option like this is never offered, we will never know how many resource holders would have used it. In the author’s opinion, considering the current situation in our service region, the risk of asking the RIPE NCC to spend money to implement a policy that is not widely used is outweighed by the peace of mind it may offer resource holders in distress.
[1] board resolution EB#163-R-02 https://www.ripe.net/about-us/executive-board/minutes/2022/minutes-163rd-executive-board-meeting