Is WHOIS going to go away?

Keith Medcalf kmedcalf at dessus.com
Sat Apr 21 21:47:06 UTC 2018


Actually, a I doubt that there are any "real" people with vanity domains behind this move.  I suspect that it is the scammers and spammers who want to hide their information for very good reason.

And of course, the "powers of the EU" seem to be in cahoots with those scammers and spammers (if they are not the scammers and spammers who themselves are wanting to hide).

---
The fact that there's a Highway to Hell but only a Stairway to Heaven says a lot about anticipated traffic volume.

>-----Original Message-----
>From: bzs at TheWorld.com [mailto:bzs at TheWorld.com]
>Sent: Saturday, 21 April, 2018 14:35
>To: Aaron C. de Bruyn
>Cc: Keith Medcalf; nanog at nanog.org
>Subject: Re: Is WHOIS going to go away?
>
>
>On April 20, 2018 at 20:36 nanog at nanog.org (Aaron C. de Bruyn via
>NANOG) wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 20, 2018 at 12:53 PM Keith Medcalf
><kmedcalf at dessus.com> wrote:
> >
> > > This last statement is entirely untrue.  WHOIS provides
>information as to
> > > the PUBLISHER (such as one would find on the masthead of a
>newspaper).
> > > This is, ought to be, and should remain, public information.
> > >
> >
> > Oh, so I'm a newspaper now?  Or are you telling me there's some
>magical
> > setting in media publishing that prevents someone from hitting
>'print'
> > without attaching an identifying masthead?
>
>To a great extent the current situation has evolved due to the
>evolution of inexpensive always-on internet links and the rise of
>hosting companies.
>
>Prior to this one might pick up a vanity domain but for most
>individuals having an actual, functioning web site was prohibitively
>expensive.
>
>This situation was why we first had the rise of services like
>wordpress and myspace, and for that matter flickr and pinterest etc,
>where one could host their relatively non-commercial activity (or
>very
>tiny commercial activity, their garage band etc) for almost no cost.
>
>Facebook still caters to that -- non-domain siting (pages, groups) ,
>but at this point for other reasons namely their own large
>ecosystem. But by and large it also arose from the same basic
>business
>model.
>
>It wasn't the domain per se so much as the always available
>hosting. Similar can be said for a lot of "the cloud".
>
>But domains pointing at personal web sites or even just email still
>have their appeal, clearly, around 300M have been sold.
>
>This wasn't a problem previously because commercial interests were
>required by law (in most countries) to provide clear contact info
>anyhow, and why wouldn't they unless they were dishonest or very
>unusual.
>
>But now that they have managed to sell many millions of cheap domains
>to non-commercial interests the issue of "privacy" arises almost
>entirely from that trend.
>
>But crippling WHOIS won't achieve privacy. If anyone believes that
>isn't true show me the warranty.
>
>At best it will just raise the barrier of entry to your "privacy" a
>little.
>
>And one breach and it's gone anyhow.
>
>--
>        -Barry Shein
>
>Software Tool & Die    | bzs at TheWorld.com             |
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>Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD       | 800-THE-WRLD
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