9.5. Contact Person vs Assignee or Owner

Many registries include designation of a technical or administrative contact associated with each entry. Often, this is recorded as contact information for an individual. It is unclear, though, what role the individual has with respect to the registration: is this item registered on behalf of the individual, the company the individual worked for, or perhaps another organization the individual was acting for?

This matters because some time later, when the individual has changed jobs or roles, and perhaps can no longer be contacted, someone might want to update the registration. IANA has no way to know what company, organization, or individual should be allowed to take the registration over. For registrations rooted in RFCs, the stream owner (such as the IESG or the IAB) can make an overriding decision. But in other cases, there is no recourse.

Registries can include, in addition to a "Contact" field, an "Assignee" or "Owner" field (also referred to as "Change Controller") that can be used to address this situation, giving IANA clear guidance as to the actual owner of the registration. This is strongly advised, especially for registries that do not require RFCs to manage their information (e.g., registries with policies such as First Come First Served (Section 4.4), Expert Review (Section 4.5), and Specification Required (Section 4.6)). Alternatively, organizations can put an organizational role into the "Contact" field in order to make their ownership clear.