[registrars] Question about existing data and whois? Which of us does whoisreform benefit?

[Jim Archer <jarcher@registrationtek.com>]

Which reminds me to put on the list an issue I have been wondering about.

If port 43 whois goes away, will there be an effort made to provide new 
registrars, or registrars who have not begun or completed their data mining 
operations, with all the data that other registrars have already mined? 
For example, we know some registrars were in the habit of sending mail 
notices to the customers of their competitors in an effort to get 
transfers.  So we know some registrars have a big database of our 
customers, their names and their expiration dates.

If we shut off port 43 whois, then this would clearly place registrars who 
don't have this mined (read - stolen) data at a distinct disadvantage.  How 
will this be compensated for?  Should everyone start mining data right 
away?  Of course, most registrars put copyright notices on their data and 
other licensing terms, but it seems that this notice is completely and 
utterly ignored.

Jim



--On Wednesday, June 11, 2003 10:29 AM -0500 Donny Simonton 
<donny@intercosmos.com> wrote:

> So if somebody from Network Solution would be kind enough to explain why
> we have 153 thousand whois queries against us I will be more than happy
> to continue to provide them with port 43 access from that IP address.
> Otherwise, since I consider this to be spam, and I will be shutting down
> access to that IP address.  Because for all I know Network Solutions may
> be the ones selling email addresses to all of the spammers.