David,

On Jan 13, 2025, at 9:38 AM, David Farmer via SIG-policy 
<[email protected]> wrote:
> However, I strongly object to the complete removal of postal contact 
> information from Bulk Whois. This would significantly degrade the usefulness 
> of this information for Internet Research purposes, one of the explicitly 
> permitted uses of Bulk Whois. Withholding the street name and number could be 
> reasonable for privacy protection; however, most postal contact information 
> should remain in Bulk Whois for statistical correlation, including the city, 
> state, province, county, and postal codes.

Long (long) ago, due to the significant variance of how various countries 
represented postal addresses (including the scripts those addresses were 
written in), APNIC made the decision that the address: tag in the Whois record 
was to be treated as essentially opaque, being intended to be used, e.g., as 
something to be copied verbatim onto a snail mail address label. The only part 
of the address explicitly broken out is the country: tag. As such, I’m not sure 
any statistical analysis of city, state/province, and/or postal code would hold 
much water.  I’m also not sure how much value it would bring to even those who 
do “Internet Research” (whatever that means).

This may have changed in the eons since I left APNIC — a quick search (i.e., a 
single google search :)) didn’t turn up a schema so I can’t confirm.

Regards,
-drc

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