RE: [ga] whois.txt, ala robots.txt, as a standard ?

["Ross Wm. Rader" <ross@tucows.com>]

These are interesting thoughts George, but I really believe that we need
to completely disengage from the current system and its implications and
start again from scratch. This proposal and those in development
elsewhere seem to place an emphasis on fixing the mistakes of whois
rather than creating a system that works.

Let's start the re-engineering with a very basic question. 

Marketers do not need more rights when it comes to my personal data. The
trademark, copyright and patent lobby do not need further rights when it
comes to the protection of their interests. Individuals need a very
basic mechanism that provides marketers and anyone else who wishes to
use this very personal data with a means to ask the individual for
permission to use the data. Once permission has been granted, then the
individual can provide that information to the marketer. 

Full stop. 

Thefore, the basic question is, how do we do this? We can't even begin
to start fixing the problem until we acknowledge that customers have
lsot control of their data. The first step towards a solution lies in
giving that control back.



                       -rwr




"There's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an
idiot."
- Steven Wright

Get Blog... http://www.byte.org/


 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ga@dnso.org [mailto:owner-ga@dnso.org] On Behalf 
> Of George Kirikos
> Sent: Tuesday, February 04, 2003 1:39 PM
> To: ga@dnso.org
> Subject: [ga] whois.txt, ala robots.txt, as a standard ?
> 
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I was reading through the latest WHOIS task force updates, at:
> 
http://does-not-exist.net/final-report/final-report-feb03-030201v0.html

and a thought came to mind. Just as there is a "robots.txt" standard for
webcrawlers like Google, how about having a whois.txt standard that
folks can optionally use on their websites?

For those who don't want to put in anything beyond the standard WHOIS
output (i.e. for privacy, or to avoid spam), they can leave a blank
whois.txt on their website or omit it entirely. For those who want
"enhanced" contact details, and want to be easily found, they can
supplement what's already in the standard WHOIS.

For instance, they can provide additional contacts, WHOIS in different
languages, contact info for various countries, etc. This can also assist
in the goal of WHOIS accuracy -- in case the registrant is unable to be
reached from their existing WHOIS info, the registrar can try the info
in their (by default) http://www.example.com/whois.txt

Perhaps someone clever can even think of an XML format or something for
this enhanced WHOIS, to allow standard tools (like other WHOIS servers,
such as www.betterwhois.com or www.uwhois.com, etc.) to parse it. Folks
like Alexa, for example, who already supply contact details at:

http://www.alexa.com/data/details?url=icann.org

(type a different URL, to see if that domain's contact info is correct)
can crawl the web to get the contacts automatically, instead of mining
the WHOIS, optionally for those who want to be found easily.

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
http://www.kirikos.com/
--
This message was passed to you via the ga@dnso.org list.
Send mail to majordomo@dnso.org to unsubscribe
("unsubscribe ga" in the body of the message).
Archives at http://www.dnso.org/archives.html


--
This message was passed to you via the ga@dnso.org list.
Send mail to majordomo@dnso.org to unsubscribe
("unsubscribe ga" in the body of the message).
Archives at http://www.dnso.org/archives.html