[At-Large] Impressions from the Whois-Review

[Lutz Donnerhacke]

* Derek Smythe wrote:
> In fact this should be old news for Lutz

I do understand the usefulness of whois. I do use it myself.

I even wrote a paragraph about this use case (in the light of LA):
: Whois information is unusable for law enforcement. Current Whois services
: are often used to solve low level internet crime. Ten doller fraud does
: not legitimate preidentification of all users of before accessing internet
: services. Introducing a system like Whois today to fight low level crime
: would be unconstitutional.

And I do not want to remove whois alltogether:
: If the review reveals use cases which are legitimate and worth to
: perserve, Whois services must be restructured as "thin whois": A
: hierarchical distributed database publishing only links to down reseller
: chain. To query information from leafs, where data is originated, correct
: and complete, the final response is covered by the protection of national
: law.

In the light of the RAA (every registrar has to provide whois services
itself), the thin whois approach seems not that unlikely.

OTOH, there might an other outcome
: If the review reveals no legitimate use cases or a majroity of misuse,
: Whois services need to be shut down.