Why require a DUNS number?

[thegreatfatzby]

edit: as ever, when I went back to read again I saw that an individual can apply for an exception, although the "apply here" link does not have a link. Even assuming that, I still a) question the requirement for non-individuals and b) wonder where the line of individual would be drawn...so I'm leaving the question as is, and adding here a request to fix that link and then also specify what is meant better (unless you decide to get rid of the requirement :) )

Hey all, needed to re-read some of the registration details for a thing(s) and the requirement of a DUNS number hit me a bit harder than it had previously.

I guess a few related questions:

• Why is this required at all?
• Is this intended as a long term requirement?
• Will Dun and Bradstreet be the only available business register'er?

From an attestation perspective I can see benefits to the user agent knowing that a business/entity is somehow real, has a responsible group/person as a point of contact, some process by which that information is supposed to be updated, etc. I also can see that a publisher would want to do business with a company registered that way for various reasons. That said, my (apparently very slow) knee-jerk reaction is that requiring some registration (with DB or others) to use browser tools in production is a significant change that is distinct from having to provide an attestation in general, and engrains at the API level what should be a decision between businesses.

Practical Issues

From a practical perspective, if we're just talking about reasonably large ad tech companies then some kind of previous registration seems very likely, and from what I remember from a job I had in college D&B is quite engrained. So, for Microsoft, IndexExchange, TTD, etc, the practical impact is likely zero.

That said, other use cases might include:

• Within ad tech, small companies or individuals making either demos, POCs, new businesses,or trying to provide instruction to the industry.
• Developers who start using these APIs for other reasons.
  ** Shared Storage API or Private Aggregation API for non ad tech use cases, which seem to me to be the least Ad Tech centric.
  ** ARA I can see being used for non ad tech cases.
  ** Topics seems usable outside of ad tech.
  ** Protected Audience I'm less clear on.

Why do these folks need to be a registered business to use these APIs, for advertising or other purposes? It seems like that will restrict who can use these in production. If a business wants a DUNS registered business to interact with, they can require it contractually. Why require it at the API usage level?

Broader Issues

A couple of less direct issues come to mind here:

• Providing an attestation that can be programmatically generated and revoked, in order to use tools, is new but seems different in kind to me than saying to use the tools you must be a certain kind of entity as registered in a certain kind of way. The first seems still decentralized and allows for anyone to sign up with a reasonable ToS (arguably this is a good, or at least interesting, new thing); the second (DUNS numbers) seems centralized (even if more than one register'er is allowed) and imposes unnecessary and constraining structure on usage of these tools. I'm not clear why we wouldn't allow an individual to make use of these tools with an attestation that means access is revokable, even if large publishers wouldn't want to rely on 3P tech that isn't from a DUNS like company.
• If DB is going to be the only option that seems a bit entrenching for them (although I doubt they need our help).

Thanks!