[ga] WHOIS accuracy, and name deletions

[George Kirikos <gkirikos@yahoo.com>]

Hello,

Folks might not be aware of discussions going on in the WHOIS accuracy
task force of the DNSO/GNSO. See:

http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/nc-whois/Arc00/msg00806.html

for instance. 

Am I the only one who is concerned that a legitimately held name might
be deleted due to a simple failure to respond within 15 days? Given the
amount of spam out there (it's easy to accidentally skip over an email,
thinking it was spam), and lack of guaranteed delivery of email, I
think that this is a very dangerous and poorly thought-out proposal for
legitimate domain holders, especially those with small staffs (or
self-employed). I am all for WHOIS accuracy (it helps to promote
responsible internet usage, and reduce abuse behaviour), but there
needs to be some balance in that proposal. If someone goes on holidays
for 3 weeks, or misses an email, conceivably they could find all their
valuable domains are no longer held by them!

I would hope that OpenSRS and other leading registrars would implement
a "white-list" (where domain WHOIS is permanently marked as "accurate",
or if not permanent than for long intervals of months, not days) of
protected names, or other mechanisms to ensure that legitimate and
correct domains are not hijacked through misuse of this policy, and
that domains are protected. "Rogue" domain holders, with obviously fake
WHOIS should be pursued, but legitimate holders should be protected.

If AT&T, AOL, Google or another elite company moves its offices, and
happens to not update their WHOIS records for a few weeks, should they
lose *all* of their domains? Obviously not...they have the lawyers (and
trademarks) to ensure that they'd get back any domain name that their
registrar deletes, but smaller companies do not! 

Every summer, a lot of people move to new homes or apartments -- should
they all be rushing to change their WHOIS the exact moment they move,
or fear losing all their domain names?

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
http://www.kirikos.com/
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