Verisign privacy? Re: Internet privacy

Thu Oct 2 21:21:14 UTC 2003

On Wed, 1 Oct 2003, Allen McRay wrote:
> Apologies if this is off-topic.  No chance of it ever happening, correct?
> =;]

What's interesting about Verisign's proposal is they are lobbying to
eliminate "free" or compulsary distribution of the WHOIS data; they are
NOT lobbying to keep the data private.

Eliminating public WHOIS access increases the value of Verisign's database
when they sell the (now private) database to list generators. Currently,
Verisign is competiting in the listmarket with other vendors which mine
the same WHOIS data or get it through a compulsary bulk data agreement.

Why pay Verisign when you can get the information for "free?"