[anti-abuse-wg] Analysis of the Legal Framework and Procedures Proposed by the Data Protection Task Force

There are companies now that download the various whois databases and 
repackage and resell the data.  One company DomainTools.com has their 
parent company in the EU in Luxembourg.  How is it that they download 
all this data and resell it apparently without a problem.   If it was 
illegal why they don't get prosecuted?  This "legal framework" doesn't 
address any of that.

DomainTool.com has filed a lawsuit in the US federal courts asking them 
to rule that downloading and selling whois data is illegal.  the lawsuit 
in question involves data from Tucows in Canada so it is unclear how a 
US court can rule on that.  In any case none of this stuff in discussed 
in the legal framework paper.  Are there plans to take legal action 
against DomainTools.com for selling this data?   If not, why not?  Why 
are there restrictions on others if some companies are downloading and 
selling this data anyway?  Just like you can't force people to answer 
their abuse mailboxes I don't see how you can force people to use (or 
not to use) data in a certain way after it is made public.

http://domainnamewire.com/2012/04/06/domain-tools-files-preemptive-lawsuit/