[At-Large] Impressions from the Whois-Review

Avri Doria avri at acm.org
Mon Jan 31 19:01:42 UTC 2011


On 31 Jan 2011, at 13:34, Patrick Vande Walle wrote:

> ot only because it does not support anything else than US-ASCII gracefully,

I would note that there is a SSAC/GNSO group working on the problem of the ASCII only nature of the WHOIS service.  This group will be doing outreach fairly soon on the requirements for non ascii information for the WHOIS service.

> This being said, I would tend to agree with Neil that the WHOIS might contain clues that eventually lead to the criminal. It is certainly useful to an extend to LEAs. 
> But that does not mean that the WHOIS should be open to all.  To take an example that has already been mentioned : the car registration plate databases are open to LEAs, possibly insurance companies, emergency services, etc. But these parties are clearly identified. This is not the case with the WHOIS. It is open to all, including the bad guys. The "good guys" that could justify a genuine interest to the WHOIS can certainly be identified and be granted unlimited WHOIS access.


I was with you until you said unlimited access.
I would thank that rarely would anyone merit unlimited access. I would think most access would need to be subject to due process.

But certainly the idea that there are access rights that can be granted and withdrawn for specific purposes within the bounds of applicable law is reasonable.

a.





More information about the At-Large mailing list