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[nc-whois] Fwd: [ga] Intentional & Widespread Whois Errors - Some Specific Examples



>From: "Ben Edelman" <edelman@law.harvard.edu>
>To: <ga@dnso.org>
>Subject: [ga] Intentional & Widespread Whois Errors - Some Specific Examples
>Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 11:56:15 -0400
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>
>In the context of this week's Congressional hearings on the accuracy of
>Whois data [1], I thought GA members might be interested in some specific
>examples of the problems at issue here.
>
>With that motivation, I've prepared a listing of 988 domains registered by a
>group calling themselves "NicGod Productions" and "Domains For Sale."
>They're like ordinary domain warehousers in that they seem to seek to sell
>their domains for a profit, and they're like Tina's Webcam [2] in that they
>tend to register domains allowed to lapse by prior registrants.  But they're
>quite different in that they don't register the domains in their own name;
>instead, they use a mixture of names and organizations including, for some
>425 names, "Alan Ginsberg" (a deceased American poet).  They also don't
>register the domains using their own street address; instead, they use a
>variety of addresses from as many as nine different countries, and they seem
>to use voicemail and fax-forwarding services to receive requests to purchase
>domains in their inventory.
>
>I'm certainly not the first to notice NicGod's activities; they've been
>UDRP'ed at least 27 times [3], and the OECD wrote up a jarring report of
>their experience with these folks [4].  But my recent work goes a notch
>further in that I've documented what I believe to be a substantial portion
>of NicGod's inventory -- including, for example, schools
>(armenianschools.com, californiastateuniversity.com), government sites
>(flintpolice.org, winthrop-police.com), and medical information
>(doctorjohn.com).  For each domain, I've extracted data from archive.org,
>Alexa, Google, and Yahoo to speak to the domains' prior contents & uses as
>well as their popularity.
>
>My results are available at:
>   <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/edelman/invalid-whois/?d>
>
>
>
>Regards,
>
>
>Ben Edelman
>Berkman Center for Internet & Society
>Harvard Law School
>http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/edelman
>
>
>
>[1] Thursday, 9:30am, <http://www.house.gov/judiciary/schedule.htm>
>[2] <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/edelman/renewals/>
>[3] <http://www.udrplaw.net/DomainForSaleDecisions.htm>
>[4] <http://www.oecd.org/pdf/M00027000/M00027316.pdf>
>
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  Kristy McKee 612.823.3958
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