You problem is solved once you realize that WHOIS is not designed to be
used as a domain availability tool. DO NOT USE WHOIS TO CHECK DOMAIN
AVAILABILITY. Whois is a contact database for existing domains. It was
never designed to be used to check domain availability.
Use the tool designed for this: domain availability lookup via the OpenSRS
API.
> How do we sell this if the clients can not check availability from our site?
> We have to hope they will come back from dot.tv and register with us but oh
> yea the price might go up and we cannot promise anyone what they might have to
> pay for renewals.A single customer will check 10 names an hour before they
> find one several days later. Then they suddenly want $100,000 for your great
> name. Please forward my disgust in the dot.tv registry.
>
> > dotTV does not provide a public whois - if you wish to find out contact
> > information for a previously registered domain, you must go to dotTV's
> > site. They will allow you to login (or create an account) to obtain up to
> > 10 'whois' queries per day.
> >
> > As an aside - whois is not a reliable method for determining domain
> > availability. As WXW suggested, using the OpenSRS API is an excellent
> > method as (for most TLDs we offer) we have a realtime connection with the
> > registry (VeriSign, CIRA, dotTV).
> >
> > OpenSRS provides whois information for .tv domains we've registered at
> > whois.opensrs.net:43 or http://www.opensrs.org/whois/ - mind you, this
> > will not show you availability, just contact info :)
