[anti-abuse-wg] RIPE Charter

You all already know that I'm no good at all at this whole brevity thing,
but I'll try.

First I must thank Sander Steffann <sander at steffann.nl> for helping me
to understand the rather confusing relationship between "RIPE" and 
"RIPE NCC".  The latter has a formal legal charter, which I assume
is a binding legal document under Dutch law.  The former (RIPE itself)
is in contrast a rather informal amorphous (and egalitarian!) blob
of participants which nicely bends over backwards to be inclusive,
even to the extent of admitting into its club Americans of dubious
repute, if not to say sanity, including even those who have never
contributed a single guilder to the common enterprise.

But this still leaves me with the question:  To which entity do the
various RIPE documents, and, in particular, ripe-001 apply?  To which
entity are these documents "binding" legally or otherwise?  Either?
Neither?

Are the documents ripe-001 and more generally, ripe-XXX merely informal
statements of intent, or mission, which have binding legal effect only
upon "RIPE" which does not itself even exist as a legal entity?  Is
ripe-001 only an informal statement of original intent for RIPE, one
which has now neither any legal enforcable force or effect upon either
RIPE or RIPE NCC?

That would seem to be the case, legally speaking.  RIPE NCC has formal
Articles of Association, and the ripe-001 document is not a part of that.
Thus, in the unlikely event that there were to be found some apparent
conflict between the RIPE NCC Articles of Association and, for example,
the ripe-001 document, then the terms of the former would override and
nullify any conflicting provision of the latter, correct?

Sorry.  I'm sure that most subscribers to this list don't have the least
interest in exploring any of this legal fine print or mumbo jumbo.
However I am persuaded that no progress can be made without reference
to the fundamental documents and baseline intent of these associations,
both formal (RIPE NCC) and informal (RIPE).  If general agreement can
be reached on anything... a proposition that is itself still dubious
at best... then it is only likely to be arrived at within the context
of, and with all due respect for all those generally accepted agreements
which have already and previously been achieved.


Regards,
rfg