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

["Michael D. Palage" <michael@palage.com>]

Richard

As someone that has accurate whois information in connection with my domain
name. I share your concerns. I was in Berlin earlier this week primarily to
observer a number of panelists on the issue of data privacy. On Monday I was
provided the following link regarding the EC viewpoints on the Whois Task
Force Report. http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/ec-comments-whois-22jan03.pdf

I am actually working on a paper on a potential solution to the Whois
quagmire. I think you might even approve of some points :-)

If you really value privacy GoDaddy's Domain By Proxy offers an excellent
solution for around $9 dollars, http://www.domainsbyproxy.com/.

Cheers

Mike





> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ga@dnso.org [mailto:owner-ga@dnso.org]On Behalf Of Richard
> Henderson
> Sent: Thursday, February 06, 2003 6:12 PM
> To: ross@tucows.com; 'George Kirikos'; ga@dnso.org
> Subject: Re: [ga] whois.txt, ala robots.txt, as a standard ?
>
>
> 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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