Re: [alac] [Fwd: [gnso-dow123] Purpose of Whois : Types of problems]

[Vittorio Bertola <vb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Il giorno mer, 17-08-2005 alle 12:01 -0700, Bret Fausett ha scritto:
> What is the purpose of whois? Thoughts welcome.

That's not an easy question.

I think we should be careful in not letting the concept pass that "the
purpose of whois is to allow law / third party rights enforcement".
That's one of the purposes of asking people to identify themselves when
they register themselves, but not of making their data publicly
available. You can solve that by tiered access / due process in access
to reserved registrant information.

So, the only reasonable purpose is contactability, which is the purpose
of any public list since the telephone book. However, one point I would
really like to make, is that contactability is something that *the
person who needs to be contacted* has to accept or reject. You can't
force someone to be contactable - that's against basic practices in
privacy. E.g. you are allowed to remove your telephone number from the
telephone book (and I guess you can do this everywhere including in the
US, right?). So the purpose of contactability must be stated as "to let
people who want to be contacted be contacted", and not as "to let people
be contacted" tout court.
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...