Congress (Still) Looking at whois

bief writes: "A NY Times [free reg., blah, blah] story examines the whois database debate and provides a fair reading of the current situation about the list that which is being abused by 'marketers who regularly cull the Whois database for e-mail addresses and phone numbers to add to their spam lists.' Responses from registrars to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property were due on February 1st, but Chris J. Katopis, counsel to the subcommittee, said that as of last week many registrars had not replied. 'If they're not going to respond to a government inquiry,' he said, 'what are they going to do to respond to an aggrieved individual when something happens?'"

Comments

Not all domains have a "web site"

[satch89450]

If you want to know something about the person who owns a domain, go to their site and find a way to contact them and ask.

Really? Try to contact me, the administrator for satch-test DOT com, modem-museum DOT org, or even jimgalloway DOT com without resorting to the WHOIS database. Or the Slashdot User Information for this ID. :)

Congratulations. Not every name has a "site" associated with it, contrary to your unwarranted assumption. I hold several domain names to which a web site (1) has not been created because I haven't had the time, (2) will never have a web site because it's used only for electronic mail and other, non-Web, Internet applications, (3) used to have a web site but now is gone, and (4) is intended for secure HTTP traffic with draconian access controls so even if you did figure out how to gain initial access you wuould have to be a cracker to get past the authenticaion that protects the content from the eyes of just anyone.

The information in the contact information portion of the WHOIS record for those domain names is real, and the spam traffic level is low...for now.

Please remember there is more to the Internet than just the World Wide Web and P2P file sharing.