Barry,

On Oct 27, 2014, at 10:28 AM, Barry Shein <b...@world.std.com> wrote:
> Oh no! The Four Horsement of the Infocalypse!

Being dismissive of concerns related to illegal activities that make use of the 
DNS does not, of course, make those concerns go away. A number of folks make 
use of the registration database in attempting to address illegal activities, 
as such it seems to me that it would be useful if that database was accurate.

> It's the old problem,

Not really.

> crooks don't hand out business cards.

Registration data is used to identify registrants, not crooks. As Mark Andrews 
pointed out, there are uses for identifying non-crook registrants. In rare 
cases, registrants are crooks and while I'd agree the sophisticated crooks will 
find ways around any requirements for accuracy, I believe there is value to 
having accuracy in the general case.

Or are you arguing we should simply remove Whois as a service available to the 
Internet?

> And, again, at what cost, and to whom?

The cost obviously depends on the requirements and implementation.

The whom is and will always be the registrant.  However, for the vast majority 
of registrants with a handful of domains, the costs are likely to be in the 
pennies. Granted, for the domainers with huge portfolios, the costs may be 
significant, however that is a cost of doing that particular business.

>> That is one part of the outcome of ICANN's ongoing effort to try to fix the 
>> multiple decade long nightmare that is Whois, yes.
> It needs a public examination. This is a big change.

Agreed! And, in particular, it would be nice if network operators, who I 
believe make non-trivial use of Whois examine that change and determine whether 
the changes meet their requirements and if not, dare I say, participate in 
ICANN to make sure it does.

Regards,
-drc

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