Internic doesn't care about valid contact information

Fri Mar 5 02:52:33 UTC 1999

While we are at the discussion about contact information from the 
Internic...

Internic doesn't care at all what you enter in the address, name, contact 
info etc - as long as you are paying for it.

According to the agreement which you must agree to for requesting a 
domain name (http://www.internic.net/help/agreement.txt, paragraph K), 
you are supposed to give them the correct information. 

But I came accross a whois entry which was completly fake (like phone 
number of 111-111-1111, non-existing address in a non-existing city etc.
The only (probably) correct part was a email address - which is one of 
the web-based anonymous emails.)
I'm not talking about possible wrong (outdated) contact info - this case 
was clear that the person which registered the domain name didn't care
about giving correct information and didn't hide it at all.

When I mailed a copy of this to Internic and asked them how this fits 
their agreement.. I mainly got the following information:
[...]
"Although we are concerned about the validity of information in the
WHOIS database, it is the responsibility of the domain name
registrant to maintain current information. Erroneous or incorrect
information, such as an invalid phone number or a non-functioning
e-mail address is not just cause for cancellation of a domain name.
Domain names are only deleted at the request of the registrant or
via our normal billing cycles."
[...]

Oh well.. it certainly helps the Internet community if you are now 
allowed to register completly anonymous domain names.

- Martin Winter
  (speaking for himself only)