Proposal for distribution of WHOIS data

Logistical and legal matters are intended to be covered by this
proposal.


A. Stage 1: Distribution to safe place
   -----------------------------------

The registries are encouraged to transfer entire WHOIS records
to one or more places which are recognized as central repositories 
(REP). This could be RIPE/APNIC/ARIN, the new to be formed 
ccTLD organizations (like RIPE CENTR) and for gTLD's their corresponding
organizations (e.g. CORE/InterNIC) or some other agreed upon sites.
Transfer could either be from a registry to the REP's or vice versa,
by means of file transfer, mirroring or other, but the entire process
(storage at registry, transfer and storage at REP) should be reasonably
well protected.


B. Stage 2: Distribution to the public
   -----------------------------------

Contractors to the registries should be allowed to disseminate above
WHOIS data to the public and to extract certain data from them 
according to their needs (e.g. to provide overviews, to watch the
registration of marks etc.). Let's call these contractors DIST.

The DIST should be required to
a) agree on an AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) set up by the registries
   and to include the AUP with any data published by DIST.
b) sign a contract with the REP's where use of data, access to data,
   responsibilities, price, origin of data, periodicity of
   gathering data, non-disclosed data etc. is stated.

Any statistics extracted by DIST's are unofficial unless approved
by the registries. The registries may derive stats by themselves
through REP's which are then official.

Above proposal should ensure distribution of WHOIS data in a well
controlled manner and should protect registrants from misuse of
their (personal) data. Use of WHOIS data for advertising or other
commercial activities and/or for unsolicited mail is considered as 
abuse and should be avoided.

In addition, the proposal may encourage the development of other
technical facilities to present and distribute WHOIS data to the 
public (e.g. LDAP) and may have consequences to current and future 
WHOIS implementations (e.g. referral WHOIS data base, RWHOIS) and
may lead to improved facilities for the public (e.g. fuzzy matches
when only partial information is known like location and
type of business).


Examples:
--------

Existing global WHOIS searches:
http://www.netnames.com
http://www.allwhois.com

Existing AUP's:
http://www.ripe.net/db/dbcopyright.html
http://www.nic.ch/whois_readme.html

Existing contracts:
I'm only aware of 2:
Nominet and SWITCH. The latter's contract is only available on paper.


Marcel



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