[At-Large] Impressions from the Whois-Review

[John R. Levine]

>> There certainly should be a balance.  But when there are a billion
>> Internet users, and thousands of individual vanity domain registrants
>
> Whois is more than "second level domain" information.
> It's also IP address information.

ICANN has nothing to do with IP address WHOIS, which is managed by the 
RIRs.  Surely anyone who's involved in the WHOIS review is familar with 
that basic fact.

> What's the problem with thin whois ... delegating the whois down to the
> registrar or reseller, down to the access ISP? This way the collection,
> deletion and publishing laws can be respected directly.

Ah.  You must never actually tried to get useful information out of the 
.COM and .NET WHOIS.  It's a disaster for many reasons, as is apparent to 
anyone who tries to use it.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly