Commerce Dept. Orders NSI to Open "Whois" Database

Sawmill writes "The US Commerce Department has ordered NSI to open the "whois" database to companies. This is either really good (free the information!) or really bad (SPAM hell). " Either way, it looks like NSI has been stepping on an awful lot of toes lately. Something's got to change over there.

Comments

Very good news, but not the end of the story

[phred]

I just received my new copy of Internet World with my friend Jim Rutt's face on the cover. The headline reads "The Demise of Dot Com: And the political storm ahead for Network Solutions' James Rutt." It's not online at Internet World yet so I can't give a specific pointer.

Anyway, it's about time the Commerce Department started closing on this issue. NSI's position has a certain amount of appeal from a self-dealing point of view, but is completely contrary to the intent and the blackletter of the 1993 agreement. They are supposed to manage the whois database in public trust, not convert it to private intellectual property for their own convenience and profit.

The analogy with phone numbers is wrong. Like it or not, the phone company does own your number, although there are some gray-area issues there too.

This issue is fundamental to the autonomy of the global Internet from control by NSI or any other entity. ICANN has problems too, but they are separate.

Let me state this very clearly: we don't know what NSI's intentions are, so we have to separate speculation from reality. But the possibility exists that a privatized whois database would be the leading edge to privatizing the Domain Name System as a whole. What would we do in 1999 or 2000 to overcome such a development?

I urged Jim Rutt in private and reiterate in public my plea for NSI to drop this issue and get to the business at hand: improving NSI's service to its customers, which is widely and correctly regarded as being crummy. They have many advantages as a result of being awarded "first mover" position in the market by virtue of their current government contracts. They would do well to defend that advantage through superior service rather than lawsuits, political arm-twisting and worse.

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