Re[2]: [ga] WHOIS policy primer

[Allan Liska <allan@allan.org>]

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Hello Karl,

[..deleted unnecessary cc's...]
Tuesday, August 27, 2002, 7:46:00 PM, you wrote:

KA> On Tue, 27 Aug 2002, todd glassey wrote:

>> becuase there MUST be some way of registering a data base wherein the owner
>> operators of domains are accessible. If not WHOIS, then what?

KA> That is a fallacy.

KA> There is no operational reason to have publicly visible contact
KA> information for a domain name.

[..snip..]

KA> The contact information for IP addresses does have operational value,
KA> is more likely to be correct, and the lookup key (the IP address) is much
KA> less likely to be forged than a domain name.

KA> If you want to know from whence something is coming or has come, look to
KA> the IP address then go to the IP allocation databases maintained by the
KA> RIRs.

I don't think it is a fallacy at all.  Owning/Renting a domain carries
with it certain responsibilities.  Among those responsibilities is
providing a contact for that domain, just as people are responsible
for having a working postmaster@ address.

You are mistaken when you say that the owner of an IP Address has more
operational value than a domain owner.  There are times when the owner
of an IP Address will be different than the owner of a domain name.
Shared hosting comes instantly to mind: The owner of the IP Address of
a shared hosting account will either be the hosting company, or the
upstream provider of the hosting company, it will not be the owner of
the domain name.  If I needed to get in touch with the owner of a
domain name, then looking at the owner of the IP Address for their
shared hosting account will not provide me the necessary information.

Examples of times when I have needed to get in touch with a domain
owner:

1. Receiving virus infected e-mails from a user of a domain.  Yes, I
can /dev/null the e-mails, but I want the account cleaned up -- the
ISP is not going to do that, the owner of the domain will.

2. DNS mis-configuration issues.  If I run across a problem with a
domain name, I need to have an address I can contact to help correct the
problems.

3. Spam, I always try to contact the owner of a domain before
contacting their ISP.

There are other reasons for getting in touch with a domain owner
directly.  For this reason it is important to have valid contact
information for that domain name.


allan
- --
Allan Liska
allan@allan.org
http://www.allan.org

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