Re: [ga] BULK whois

["John Berryhill Ph.D. J.D." <john@johnberryhill.com>]

> However, the registrar in his ICANN accreditation agreement is required to
> provide "bulk access" to their Whois data (minus those registrants that opt
> out) to any party that request it. In return the registrar is able to
charge
> up to $10,000 annually.


And, as with any registrar obligation, the relevant contract is between ICANN
and the registrar, and not between the registrar and the registrant.  Hence,
the registrar is, as usual, free to ignore any provision of the RAA that
benefits registrants, and the registrant has no way of requiring the
registrar to operate in accordance with the RAA.  ICANN, of course, has no
will or budget to enforce the RAA, even if they were motivated to do so.
ICANN continues to promulgate these stupid all-or-nothing contracts where the
enforcement mechanism for breach of any provision is total de-accreditation.
ICANN is not going to revoke a registrar's accreditation merely because the
registrar does not abide by the RAA.

So we have the regular spectacle of contributors such as Mr. Crispin, who
make the point that ICANN is not a consumer protection agency, but entirely
miss the point that the relevant contracts bearing on registrar procedures
are contracts with ICANN.  Mr. Crispin's point boils down to "if registrars
breach their contract with ICANN, it is not ICANN's job to care.  *You* can't
require ICANN to care if the contracts are not followed".  Ha, ha, the joke
is on you for believing these contracts mean anything.

Whois data is a prime example.  As everyone knows, all of the relevant
contracts and access terms to whois data prevent its resale by third parties,
right?  Yeah, sure... as if anyone is going to care whether whois data,
including archived historic whois data is being sold right here:

http://openaccess.dialog.com/ip/
"Domain Names. Comprehensive information on domain names, containing both
current registration (WhoIs) records and historic ownership (WhoWas) records
for Internet domain names. "

Is your registration data being sold there?  You bet it is.  Does all of this
eyewash about restrictions required to be placed on whois data provide you,
the registrant, with any way to get your personal data out of this commercial
database?  Dream on.  What are you going to do, persuade some registrar to
enforce the whois access agreement?  Why should they?  Because they want to
spend money for you?  Yeah, right.

99% of what goes into these stupid contracts and policies is just pure
eyewash.  That anyone even cares to the point of obsessing over this crap is
more funny than anything else.  These folks are going to do whatever they
want, and domain name registration contracts are so malleable, shot full of
holes, and really devoid of any obligations on the registrar's end that
calling them "contracts" at all makes me chuckle.






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