RE: [alac] ALERT: What is WHOIS really fpr

["Bret Fausett" <bfausett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I can tell you from personal experience that WHOIS 
> info, even in its current rather imperfect form, is very 
> useful when tracking them down.

You're right that whois has some practical uses in law enforcement, etc. At
the same time, the required public disclosure of identity information also
has some privacy implications. At the end of the day, we're still going to
have to make a judgment call about whether the benefits of public whois data
outweigh the privacy consequences. 

The proposal I like is the "tiered access" model. The concept is that
personal data is unavailable to the general public via simple whois queries
but available to law enforcement, ISPs, lawyers, etc. who sign up for
special access. Another idea I like is a system that would allow the
registrant to review his/her own whois data to see who has accessed the 
'second-tiered' information. This seems like a decent compromise, or at
least as close to a middle ground as we're likely to see.

      Bret