Re: [ga] whois: issues with uniformity

["J-F C. (Jefsey) Morfin" <jefsey@club-internet.fr>]

On 13:17 26/12/02, Stephane Bortzmeyer said:
>No, I say it again, ICANN is not in charge of defining global "whois" 
>policies.

Vittorio:
 > Which may be even worse, because then you might start to rely on this
 > service, and then you will discover that it's broken in some TLDs that
 > won't support it.

I am afraid there is no such a notion as "global" Whois. Please you are 
European and think of the Internet as you would think about your national 
packetswich network services (Transpac or Italnet ..)

Please get real. The Internet is NOT such a network. It is a bunch of 
interconnects. The only things you need are a TCP/IP socket and the most 
extended root file both TLDSs and related DNs: what you can easily compile 
in using ftp://rs.internic.net and/or servers like ORSC or BoROON. Only a 
minority of people have registered a DN.

This means that the Whois is of no real interest when compared to the web 
which actually is the real life true directory of the Internet. Whois is 
not maintained in real time what the web is. Whois is not QAed by the users 
what the web is. Whois is not controlled by the local laws, what the web 
is. Whois is at SLD level only while the web is at every levels. Whois may 
not be supported by TLDs while the web always is. The flaw of the web 
compared to Whois is about the DNs not being used for a web site: do you 
really think that in such case Whois is necessarily accurate and that you 
have a way to check it?

Let be candid: there are probably 37.000.000 SLDs, probably 250.000.000 web 
sites and billions of e-mail addresses. In most of the cases there is no 
check on Whois entries (except at AFNIC and even there typos may exist ... 
and wait for IDNs and babelnames :-).

Are you sure you are debating the same network as the one we use?

You talk about the Internet as if it was reliable, ruled, democratic, 
unified, sophisticated ....
It is unreliable, disputed, rustic, distributed, ... yet resilient. Even 
surviving your standardization attempts :-)

I agree this does not address all our needs.  This is why a new technology 
is on its way.
With other cons and pros.
Let not confuse.
jfc