> No, there may be a real *ADMINISTRATIVE* need for those. There is *NO*
> RFC (that I am aware of) *REQUIRING* a WHOIS data base. If they do
> that, they are very helpful, but it is of course their intellectual
> property and thus they should be entitled to just compensation at the
> very least.
NSI was hired to perform registrations and, per amendment #4 to charge a
fee.
The contract requires, at the end of the contract, for NSI to turn over
*all* materials needed for a sucessor to pick up the job.
In order for that to happen, the sucessor needs the list of who registered
which domain and when.
So you can call it the property of NSI, but the fact of the matter is that
the US government can get it, and use it, and hand it over to a sucessor
to NSI (or anyone else it pleases.)
You can say that some operators run small operations in which they may not
keep track of who registered what. But that's not what we are discussing
here -- the issue is whether NSI has to turn over the contact database.
And the Cooperative Agreement is crystal clear on this -- NSI must turn
over all materials necessary to enable a sucessor operation to pick up the
task. And that can only be done if the zone files are accompanied by the
contact database.
NSI has been paid to do this. NSI did not do this out of the goodness of
its heart.
Amendment #4, the US government shifted the payment from a direct fee from
the US to a fee collected from the registrants (in return for some
freebies that NSI gives to the government). So NSI is still being paid a
registration fee via the authority of the US government.
The contact database is no more the property of NSI than the computer you
are typing on.
--karl--
