There's rather a big difference between access to bulk whois data of any sort for security or other "internet community" related, NON COMMERCIAL purposes, versus bulk whois data to run a commercial service. <div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 5:40 PM, <a href="mailto:russ@consumer.net">russ@consumer.net</a> <<a href="mailto:russ@consumer.net">russ@consumer.net</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> The proposal about the 5 C's sounds good except you also have to include whois access policies. If you can't get to the data easily and be able to use it it is of no good. Right now there is a complicated patchwork of whois access policies. Most of them were made up by a small group of people who really don't consider all the issues.</blockquote> </div> -- Suresh Ramasubramanian (<a href="mailto:ops.lists@gmail.com">ops.lists@gmail.com</a>)