RE: [nc-impwhois] Starting point for WHOIS implementation discussions
Title: RE: [nc-impwhois] Starting point for WHOIS implementation discussions I was asked to provide language noting the concern with eliminating Bulk Whois for marketing purposes WITHOUT dealing with abuse of public and Port 43 Whois: While there are many concerns with marketing uses of Bulk Whois, it must be noted that there is an equal - if not worse - problem created by spammers and unscrupulous marketers downloading contact data from the publicly available and Port 43 Whois and using it for unauthorized communications. This is a worse situation than marketing off Bulk Whois because it is done clandestinely. Registrars are not aware that customers' data has been "stolen" until hearing from the customers that they have been harmfully impacted. Abuse of public and Port 43 Whois is much more difficult to protect, it is almost impossible to warn customers, or to stop the abusers. There is a growing number of legal cases stemming from this abuse. Additionally, the abuse of Port 43 causes technical problems. The Whois access can be unavailable for legitimate reasons. The implementation committee, therefore, recommends that this issue be promptly reviewed by the task force, and if possible, in parallel with ICANN's review of bulk whois license agreement changes. The reason for this is that the deletion of bulk requirements in the contract may inadvertently push marketers, etc., to use other methods, such as public and Port 43 Whois. Therefore, we may inadvertently escalate the problem we are trying to solve if we do not use a comprehensive approach. -----Original Message-----
Hello All, Following a discussion with the WHOIS task force today, I attach a summary of the recommendations of the WHOIS task force (extracted from the task force report) for: - bulk access
We should focus our meeting on discussing the implementation details of these specific recommendations. Regards,
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