Is WHOIS going to go away?

Sat Apr 21 00:56:59 UTC 2018

On Fri, Apr 20, 2018 at 7:38 PM, Mark Andrews <marka at isc.org> wrote:

> Whois contact details need to work so you can contact the zone owner when
> the DNS is broken for the zone.
>
> Publishing Whois data in the zone does not work for this purpose.
>
> This is not to discount other reasons for having a independent
> communications channel.
>

Note that the current draft gTLD WHOIS mechanism to abide by GDPR includes
a communications channel that one can use to contact a domain owner,  a web
form. So this is ability is not being taken away for specific domains. But
if someone finds out a vulnerability and needs a mass-scale delivery system
to notify affected parties, then this wouldn't work.

Also of notice is that if DNS resolution is working, a website or mail
services points to an IP address somewhere. And that still provides
reachability. So except for the broken DNS zone use case, a good number of
cases have other means to achieve the same goals.

Rubens