At 4/11/04 7:33 AM, Ben Kennedy wrote: >Sure, if you and the receiving party both happen to live in the United >States. (USA != world)
Right, but the same drawbacks currently apply to WHOIS. While my example was indeed US-centric, there are laws you can use in most (all?) developed countries to handle intellectual property complaints through ISPs if you can't contact the owner. In other words, if you have an intellectual property beef with someone in, say, Libya, or if the WHOIS owner is listed as "Mickey Mouse", you aren't going to have much luck under the current public WHOIS system, either, so IP lawyers already need/have fallback options other than WHOIS. The solutions to "what do you do if you can't use WHOIS" already exist. -- Robert L Mathews, Tiger Technologies http://www.tigertech.net/ "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." -- Darwin
