Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote on 01/08/2026 16:31:
That suggests that some capacity building is in order. They have what
is effectively a fiduciary duty to IP space.
So they can no more not develop competence in this than a bank manager
can disclaim all competence in assessing whether a loan that they
disburse is going to be repaid or not, used for illegal activity or not
etc.
Suresh,
the RIPE NCC has a fiduciary duty to registration of IP space. How those
number resources are used is an issue for the courts and the law.
Your comparison with the bank manager is inapplicable for a lot of
reasons, the main ones being that a bank is not a registration authority
and - unlike money - an IP address isn't at risk of disappearing into
thin air when the holder walks out the front door.
If you want to claim that the bank manager is still on the hook to do
some due diligence to ensure that it's not obviously being used for
illegal activity, there's no problem pulling out another somewhat
inapplicable comparison and say that road / motorway operators don't
seem to be bound by any sort of due diligence for use of their
resources, and knowingly allow their roads to be used for all sorts of
crimes, many heinous. There are plenty of situations in society where
abuse of a resource or a registration can cause harm and where we don't
require any sort of due diligence: cutlery vendors don't check their
customer out if someone walks in to buy a carving knife; the IEEE isn't
on the hook if their MAC addresses are used in NICs which are used for
network abuse, and so forth.
The point is not that that you can't invoke comparisons of dubious
comparative value with other organisations or societal structures, it's
that the RIPE NCC is in something of a unique position, being a
registration organisation for a large number of countries for numbers
which are used for international communications. We don't have a direct
analogue anywhere else.
Nick
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