On Wed, 29 May 2002, Ross Wm. Rader wrote:
> I think a more interesting question is what is the value of having
> predictable output?
Because if somebody doesn't have a reseller interface to OpenSRS, that's
the only way they can get information about a domain to transfer it, deal
with an abuse situation, etc. Discouraging automation is generally
ill-conceived and rarely results in what people hope for. The RIPE whois
seems to have been built with interoperability from the get-go and it has
made my life easier on several occasions.
> The reason I ask is that one of the anti-harvesting strategy that
> we've contemplated is a randonly generated output (ie - sometimes with
> comma's, sometimes not, sometimes admin up top, sometimes down
> below)...etc...
Can you design something that's going to be discernable only to humans and
not to harvestors? I have yet to see such a design by anyone. A number
of whois servers change colons to dashes and do random minor changes to
'discourage' harvestors, but it's really pretty easy to write an
intelligent harvestor that works around these variations. Look at what
slashdot has done to e-mail addresses and they still get harvested.
They've got a guy focused on changing their e-mail obfuscation algorithm
on a weekly basis and they still get harvested.
> If predictability is highly valued, then I'd like to hear more...
Predictability is highly valued and anti-predictability is a waste of
effort!
--
</chris>
There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make
it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way
is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
- - C.A.R. Hoare
