Hello, --- "wxWeb.com" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Friday, May 17, 2002, 8:03:10 PM, Derek J. Balling wrote: > > > > What if you (random individual, not you at the registrar) > > needed/wanted to serve legal documents to someone who'd thrown the > > street address of Wrigley Field on their whois data? > > The whois doesn't exist to serve as a database for where to serve > process to.
I disagree with William here, in that serving process to (or more generally, finding the person responsible for the activities of a domain, say for law enforcement) is a very legitimate use of the WHOIS data. We had a long debate on this topic on the DNSO GA mailing list, in the context of how much privacy one should have for the WHOIS data. See a summary here (section iv): http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/ga/Arc10/msg00458.html and my own essay here: http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/ga/Arc10/msg00399.html I believe Tucows/OpenSRS initially took the position that they sought greater privacy. I hope that they'll re-evaluate that in light of the debate on this list, in that there's a great public interest in having that data kept accurate and public (at least to the minimal degree of having 1 responsible party for a domain be visible; can be a lawyer or other legal representative, and conceivably one can remove the technical and billing contacts as those aren't essential). >From a pragmatic point of view, if OpenSRS worries about the costs of keeping up with challenges to WHOIS data accuracy, imagine the costs of keeping up with all requests for WHOIS data if the WHOIS information was completely private, and legitimate people needed access to it (i.e. law enforcement, lawyers, disgruntled consumers, etc.). From a policy perspective, I've argued that having that data be accurate and public helps to encourage responsible use of the 'net, as abusers are more likely to try to hide behind anonymity, in order to make it harder to hold them accountable (as illustrated powerfully in that OECD case in my little essay). If folks worry about illegitimate use of the WHOIS data (e.g. spamming), they should work on making sure that there are strong penalties for those illegitimate uses, but not eliminate the public resource entirely or make it more costly for those with legitimate uses. Oh, as for the "costs" associated with keeping the WHOIS data accurate (i.e. challenges), how about charging them $10, with the proviso that: 1) if it's inaccurate they get their money back if the registrant fixes it (and the registrant/reseller is then charged the $10) 2) if it's inaccurate, and the true contact can't be found, the challenger gets to take ownership of the domain 3) if it's accurate, Tucows keeps the $10 as an admin fee. That kind of system would need to be agreed upon industry-wide, though, in conjunction with other registrars, though. Sincerely, George Kirikos http://www.kirikos.com/ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com
