[ga] Whois database

[Sandy Harris <sandy@storm.ca>]

News story on NSI selling the whois database information:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/531732.asp?0nm=-1AP&cp1=1

Best read, I think, in conjunction with Auerbach's rant on
the whois database, ponit three under "What I would say to
the House Commerce Committee were I invited to testify" on
the menu page at:

http://www.cavebear.com/cavebear/growl/index.htm

I'd say one of the more useful things ICANN could do to
improve the net would be to make it clear to the contractors
that treating the data they manage for the net as proprietary
(let alone selling it!) is completely unnacceptable.

While they're at it, ask them to fix whois which has, in my
view, been broken since shortly after NSI started running it.

Even if a single central whois covering the whole net is no
longer practical, we want one broken down by TLD so things
can be found easily, not by registry. That is certainly
administratively convenient for the contractors, but not
remarkably useful to users.

To my mind, questions of getting the existing system to do
things right (fixing whois, getting rid of board squatters,
censuring stupid decisions like bodacioustats.com, getting
ready for DNSsec deployment) are as interesting as questions
of fixing the system itself (adding constituencies, etc) and
far more likely to produce useful results soon.

I'm emphatically not saying we should give up trying to change
the system, but it may be more productive to focus on specific
problems like this NSI action or the absurd tatas decision.
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