Ripe change to whois

Hi All,

Please forgive the intrusion, I am new to this discussion.

Hank>Phone call #4 today.  User goes to http://www.checkdomain.com to
determine
Hank>if ubuy.co.il is valid.  www.checkdomain.com says the domain is owned
by me
Hank>(Internet Society of Israel).  Now try it for xxxyyy.co.at or
xxxxyyy.co.ie
Hank>or any domain for that matter located at whois.ripe.net.  This is just
one
Hank>Internet site that has based its site and code on how RIPE works.
There
Hank>very well may be others.

I am the maintainer of checkdomain.com, and to be honest, I was completely
ignorant of these changes to the RIPE DB until Mr. Nussbacher sent an e-mail
to me.

Hank>Just check http://www.checkdomain.com with some nonexistant domain
housed at
Hank>RIPE and tell me if something isn't wrong here.  -Hank

I have since updated checkdomain.com to check the "domain:" field returned
from the DB and return the equivalent of a "no match" if it is not the same
as the user specified.  The new behavior is way too confusing to our users,
who are checking to see if a domain name is still available.

Joao>If people don't want to be subscribed to these lists but the work going
on
Joao>there is relevant to them may be it would be a good idea to, at least,
make it
Joao>a monthly task to overview the archives and look at the presentations
given
Joao>during RIPE meetings. Otherwise, how can we make sure that we reach all
Joao>interested parties without spamming the rest?

Have you considered an announcement list?  I for one do not have time to
constantly monitor the discussions on the DB list, as checkdomain.com is not
a source of income for my company, but a completely free service we provide
to the internet.  However, I would very much like to receive announcements
from RIPE to my direct e-mail address at frank at sane.com.  If you choose to
implement this, please add me to the announcement list.

Joao>I would like to have the input of the community.

While I am sure that the change was needed for some users, I'm sure that you
can agree that it is also causing problems for other users.  I think that it
would be a very good thing if you could offer a method of getting the old
behavior from whois queries, as well as a method of getting the new
behavior.  Now, I don't want to get involved in the debate over which way
should be the default, but I think that both methods should be offered.
Please let me know what I need to do in order to use the old behavior, so I
can remove my quick hack from checkdomain.com and replace it with a
supported method.

BTW: I also want to thank RIPE for the DB service they provide!

Sincerely,
Frank Faubert
checkdomain.com