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

["Richard Henderson" <richardhenderson@ntlworld.com>]

Excellent points made here by Ross

There is no good reason why all whois data should not be *protected* and
only made available in extreme circumstances through a request process, if
need be backed up by normal legal processes.

The WHOIS is yet another "quasi-law" which abuses consumers' privacy rights.

I've known what it's like to be stalked. It's an insane situation. You start
to dread the phone. You start to dread the doorbell. You have to start doing
crazy things like having pre-prepared safe houses.

I have felt intimidated, registering domain names, knowing full well that my
private life, my address, my phone number, my e-mail is a few clicks from
being accessible to people you really want privacy from. Agreed, you can try
yahoo/hotmail e-mail details. But fake your name, and you risk losing your
domain.

I would be happy for my WHOIS details to be *protected* by a registrar or
some kind of WHOIS 'escrow', providing the data was guarded by clearly
defined procedures.

But I believe that the public exposure of personal details is unwarranted,
could be extremely dangerous to a minority of people, and is unnecessary
because other processes could be implemented instead.

Take a person struggling for political freedom and justice in a corrupt
regime. Think of some of the dangers that good people could be exposed to.

As far as I'm concerned, people do *not* have the right to know my personal
details if I buy a domain name. Instead, they need to know that there are
legitimate processes and mechanisms through which they can pursue me, if I
abuse the use of that domain.

Human beings have a right to privacy and a private family life.

Richard Henderson

----- Original Message -----
From: Ross Wm. Rader <ross@tucows.com>
To: 'George Kirikos' <gkirikos@yahoo.com>; <ga@dnso.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 06, 2003 6:47 PM
Subject: RE: [ga] whois.txt, ala robots.txt, as a standard ?


> 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/
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