[WHOIS-WG] Fwd: What can be done to reduce "unreachable" Whois registrations by 50% in 1 year?

[Patrick Vande Walle]

FWIW, I submitted the following comment on the WHOIS Policy Review Team
Draft Report today, in a personal capacity. Hence, opinions are mine,
exclusively. 

Patrick 

-------- Original Message -------- 

  		What can
be done to reduce "unreachable" Whois registrations by 50% in 1 year?

 
		Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:09:44 +0100

  		Patrick Vande Walle 

Your initial
question on Twitter was: "What can be done to reduce "unreachable" Whois
registrations by 50% in 1 year?" 

The answer is quite simple: change your
policy and enforce existing ones. 

The WHOIS dates back to an era where
Internet nerds were few and held each other in esteem. 

Nowadays, the
Internet is full of villains. Consequently, even honest people who have
nothing to hide feed inaccurate records in the WHOIS, because they do not
want their private phone number and home address displayed for all to see,
when at the same time they ask their telco for an unlisted phone number in
order to prevent unwanted phone calls. 

By offering some privacy in the
WHOIS to honest people, you will mechanically see the number of correct
records rise. Make the WHOIS a safe place for honest people. Only those who
have some not-so-legal activities will continue to hide behind fake
records. Throughout the centuries, criminals have always hidden behind fake
identities. Why would that be any different today ? 

Once this is done,
enforce existing policies and really take down down domains with invalid
records. 

The TELNIC model (and upcoming .CAT model) for the WHOIS should
be generalized to all gTLDs, regardless of their jurisdiction. It is not a
question of allowing the registry an exception in order to comply with
local law. It is a question of protecting people's privacy from those with
less honest intentions. 

Those who have a legitimate reason to access full
WHOIS records are few. The average user does not have any use of the WHOIS
information. Those who need it should ask for it, show their credentials
and explain why. 

On the technical side, sort out the issues regarding
character set display for non US-ASCII strings, update the list of required
records. Who uses a fax nowadays ? There are proposals on the table. The
ARIN REST model comes to mind, and would allow authentication and access to
full records for legitimate users. Centralize the WHOIS database at ICANN
so you will not have to wait for contract renegotiation with registries and
RAA revisions to start implementing it. It only needs a decision by the
board to actually start the deployment. 

Finally, do not take another ten
years to implement the above-mentioned suggestions. The delay in acting on
WHOIS has been as detrimental to it than the irrealistic policy itself.


Respectfully submitted, 

Patrick Vande Walle 

Former ALAC and SSAC
councillor 

 
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