Slashdot Mirror
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?'"
This is funny, I got this E-mail in my box seconds before this story was posted.
I visited WWW.GEEK-HOUSE.ORG, and noticed that you're not listed on some search engines! I think we can offer you a service which can help you increase traffic and the number of visitors to your website.
The address I got this E-mail on is NOT shown on the site and is ONLY listed on the whois, I've managed to keep this account spam free for over a year till now.
iRepairIT - iPhone, Mac, & PC Repair
On one side of the fence are law enforcement agencies, intellectual property owners and marketers.
On the opposite side of the fence are privacy advocates and many consumers and businesses that have registered Web addresses.
And on which site are the network administrators, which use this information trying to keep their network free of unwanted junk (spam, scans, attacks etc) and to alert other people with broken systems?
bash$
The administrator of DK-TLD has already implemented some security for the Danish registrants - You can't do a whois on .dk domains any more - You must use their website to get the information... Also you can contact them, and have them hide your email, snail mail address etc so you can actually be sort of anonymous.
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
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.
We can not allow Congress to do this. The Constitution prohibits them from regulating this industry. If we don't want our information available on whois, we must find a private market solution. I just can't believe people would want MORE government in an area where the lack of government has propelled all of our lives to higher standards.
If you dislike the whois database containing your information, let's e-mail, call, and write letters to the organizations telling them we want more privacy. Eventually, we must find a way to find a provider who will offer us the privacy we want.
Or, use the free market solution -- create an e-mail address you don't use, and check it once in a while for important e-mails. Filter out anything but what comes from your ISP or registrar.