<
< At 3:43 PM -0500 12/28/00, Ross Wm. Rader wrote:
<
< >The information that I think that you are referring to is already being
< >shared with the world via whois, zone files etc.
<
< Question:
<
< Will they find out that information before or after it becomes
< committed to
< the public sources of information (e.g., the whois db).
Whois is updated by Tucows almost instantaneously, zone files are published
once every 24 hrs.
<
< How about how many domain names Derek's Customer Inc. has purchased?
Easier to determine under the current system than one might think.
<
< And again, do they get this information in a manner that is on equal
< footing with others and at the same time as others (e.g., at the
< same time
< as the registry whois db is updated, etc.)
<
< >The privacy issues already exist. It basically boils down to the reality
< >that if you don't want people to know anything about your registration
< >activities, then don't register a domain name.
<
< No, it boils down to "I don't want people to know about my domain name
< registration activities until after my activities are
< completed." After I
< register a domain name, when it is listed in the public information
< sources, then you have a "right" (loosely defined) to know that I have
< registered a domain. When my domain ceases to be listed in the whois
< servers, that's when you have a "right" to know it is gone. The
< same as any
< other schmoe on the net, and with the same chances of success for
< registering it.
<
< Further, if they are getting notified about non-zonefile changes (e.g.,
< changes to contacts, organization names, etc.) that makes what was once
< very public but very hard to abuse data (e.g., its hard to scan every
< domain's whois record daily looking for contact changes) into basically
< "whois diff's", which is easily abused with very little gain to the
< domain-holder.
But it still comes down to a temporal distinction. All they purport to have
done is made this discovery process more efficient. I make no claims as to
the worth of this effort, just simply that they have improved on the
existing discovery mechanisms.
< There are two issues:
<
< 1.) Timeliness of data: SnapNames has no right to receive the data about
< changes/additions/deletions before anyone else does.
Agreed.
<
< 2.) Obscurity of whois data: Previously the data in WHOIS was
< difficult to
< parse daily for changes across the entire namespace. If
< SnapNames is given
< daily update information about organization/contact changes, that's a
< radical change in the level of annoyance from what we've grown
< to accept in
< WHOIS abuse. Near as I can tell, nothing grants them under the ICANN
< agreements any rights to request what amount to diff's on the WHOIS
< database.
That "change" is in practice today. ICANN mandates that registrars provide a
copy of the entire whois database to whomever asks. Period.
