Some interesting points have been brought up as to the nature of a domain
name and is it similar to real estate or an automobile registration.
The issue is privacy. And where do the rights of the domain owners to
privacy end and the rights of the public to know who owns a domain name
begin.
IMHO a domain name is most similar to a phone number. Each one is unique
and some phone numbers can be more desirable to certian businesses than
others. You can request specific phone numbers from the phone company for
your home or business.
Also similar to phone numbers you only have the right to a domain name as
long as you continue to maintain a relationship with a phone company -
whichever phone company you wish to have a relationship with and you can
move from one company to another.
In most circumstances your phone number is published in a directory which
lists your name and physical address. But for a nominal fee you can
request that your phone number not be published to protect your privacy.
I believe that this might be the proper way to go for whois information.
For a nominal fee domain owners can have the whois server return:
information unpublished for the names of the administrative contact of a
domain. But the information would be available to those with a legitimate
need to know. (yes who has a legitimate need to know is another issue)
The registrar who services the domain name would have that information
on file so that they could service the customer and provide the
information to those who did have a need to know. And the registrant
would have to provide complete and accurate information to the registry or
face the consequences of not providing that complete and accurate
information whatever those may be.
So for the whois we add a flag private Y/N and return info based upon
that flag. The company running the whois server would be able to recoup
the cost of the technology upgrade via the nominal fee charged for those
who wish their info to not be published, and the cost for this extra
privacy could be passed on to those who wish to avail themselves of this
service.
Just my $0.02
Michael Brody
TLD Systems Inc
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
