Giampaolo Tomassoni wrote:
Well, I have to manually turn my MX server on and off, sometimes. So, is it
SA an automated process? And then, if SA issues a whois request, is it
automated?
This is plain silliness, which leads me to believe that you very well
know that you're doing automated queries against whois servers against
the wishes of the operators of those whois servers.
It seems to me that the wording we see in whois replies is too loose to have
any meaning...
The wording is clear as to how they intend the service to be used, and
more importantly (and more clearly) how it is NOT to be used.
Just because the wording is too vague to form a legal contract of any
sort doesn't mean that you should ignore the wishes of the providers
that it not be queried by an automated process.
The problem, in fact, is that there is actually no other (easy) way than
whois to obtain the data you get by a whois query.
The easiest way to obtain the amount of cash that I am interested in
obtaining is to rob a bank. Perhaps I should do that, it is after all,
the easy way. Who cares if it's right or wrong or against the wishes of
the bank and its customers.
The problem is that most
registrars do provide a whois interface not because they are tied by an
agreement to do so,
Actually, that would be the number one reason they do so.
but rather because they know it is a useful tool which
effectively helps in daily registrar-to-registrar communication.
As has been mentioned before, public whois services aren't used by
registrars for domain management/etc.
At the end, the problem is in the terms by which ICANN delegates TLDs to
registrars, I believe.
Regardless of any problems you see, the terms are as as they are.
Intentionally abusing a service is not the way to go about getting the
terms of use changed.
What is the source, by the way? Which TLD?
Aside from the specific wording, that's pretty standard boilerplate for
any registrar's WHOIS service that I've ever seen.
Yeah, that one was from PIR, but they're all pretty much the same. Many
are copied verbatim.
Daryl
