Privacy, Broadband, & the Database

>The name and address info in the RIPE database needs to contain the
>person (or organisation) responsible for a certain amount of IP space,
>in my opinion.

  I agreee, and the important word here is "responsible".

>So, if an ISP wants to be responsible for the IP space it hands out to
>customers, then the ISP should be free to fill in their own name and
>address.

  Doing that means that an assignment (*to the customer*, in the
  traditional sense) has not been performed.

>This gives ISPs the freedom to fill the RIPE db with names
>and addresses of customers (that saves them the hassle of dealing with
>for example abuse coming from that site), or putting their own name
>in it (meaning they have to respond actively to for example abuse reports,
>which is the ISP's job anyway).

  This is very similar to my reasoning regarding the usefulness of
  performing an assignment for a (small) site which does not fully
  (independently and in a responsible way) manage their address space.

  Wilfried.