[members-discuss] Administrative procedures within RIPE NCC: Any way to soften it ?

Hello,
even if Dutch law doesn't allow memberships transfers, this problem can
be solved easily. Just allow members to sign new SSA together with
termination of existing SSA and *without* requirement of sign-up fee
payment in such cases (where organisational change is properly documented).

This quite simple administrative procedure is not blocked by law, is
blocked only by current internal rules (designed and proposed to us
primary by NCC staff/board). And these can be changed/updated...


Out of curiosity - how many hijacks were caused by fraudlent
organisational changes and how many disputes over the resources was
there due to this (relatively to total number of changes)?

- Daniel


On 7/16/20 3:30 PM, Athina Fragkouli wrote:
> Dear Clement, all
> 
> Thank you for sharing your concerns and apologies for the late reply.
> 
> We recognise that providing documentation can take a lot of time and keeps you from your real work. However, we need to be clear on exactly who the resource holder is - to prevent hijacks as you note, but also to avoid legal disputes over the resources in the future. This is a risk when company structures are changing or companies are being spun off, and untangling this to see what is actually changing is not always straightforward.
> 
> Our transfer procedure was updated after a board resolution in 2016 which stated that all transfers, including mergers and acquisitions, must follow the RIPE transfer policy unless supported by documentation from a national authority[1]. This closed a well-known and abused loophole that members were using to transfer resources outside of the policy.
> 
> The other important point to note here is that under Dutch law, memberships are not transferrable. What we therefore need to establish in these cases is whether a separate legal entity is receiving the resources. If this is indeed what's happening, they will need to become a member. This is because a non-member cannot receive resources and they are not able to assume the membership of the company they are getting the resources from. Of course, if the receiving party is already a member, they will not have to open an additional membership to acquire the resources.
> 
> Finally, it is worth noting that we have invested quite a lot of effort into improving our due diligence processes. We have recently developed an approach that should ease a lot of the burden for members in terms of documentation. We will share some more details about this in the near future.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Athina Fragkouli
> Chief Legal Officer 
> RIPE NCC
> 
> [1] RIPE NCC Members and Multiple LIR Accounts - Decisions and Next Steps:
> https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/ncc-announce/2016-April/001031.html
> 
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