Subject: GA-DIGEST V1 #1397
From: [email-masked] (GA-DIGEST)
To: [email-masked]

GA-DIGEST         Wednesday, August 28 2002         Volume 01 : Number 1397

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 19:06:55 -0700
From: Jeff Williams <[email-masked]>
Subject: [ga] Unofficial poll - Current Whois final Report draft from DNSO Whois TF

All assembly members,

  Danny kindly and thoughtfully sent us all a reminder on the
DNSO's Whois Task force Final Draft report which can be found
at  http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/whoisTF/  in several formats.
Your comments, concerns, and review can be sent to
[email-masked]

  Given the current state of affairs of ICANN in recent months
I am unofficially requesting a poll on these recommendations
from the DNSO's Whois TF Draft Final Report.

  Do you as a stakeholder/user find the report satisfactory?
yes []  no []

  Are the privacy issues in this report sufficient?
Yes []  No []

  Should this policy issue be voted upon by any and all stakeholders
before it is accepted as ICANN policy or applied to any and all
stakeholders/users?
Yes []  No[]

Regards,

- --
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup - (Over 127k members/stakeholders strong!)
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail [email-masked]
Contact Number: 214-244-4827 or 972-244-3801
Address: 5 East Kirkwood Blvd. Grapevine Texas 75208
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Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 21:44:06 -0400
From: Allan Liska <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re[2]: [ga] WHOIS policy primer

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Hello Karl,

[..deleted unnecessary cc's...]
Tuesday, August 27, 2002, 7:46:00 PM, you wrote:

KA> On Tue, 27 Aug 2002, todd glassey wrote:

>> becuase there MUST be some way of registering a data base wherein the owner
>> operators of domains are accessible. If not WHOIS, then what?

KA> That is a fallacy.

KA> There is no operational reason to have publicly visible contact
KA> information for a domain name.

[..snip..]

KA> The contact information for IP addresses does have operational value,
KA> is more likely to be correct, and the lookup key (the IP address) is much
KA> less likely to be forged than a domain name.

KA> If you want to know from whence something is coming or has come, look to
KA> the IP address then go to the IP allocation databases maintained by the
KA> RIRs.

I don't think it is a fallacy at all.  Owning/Renting a domain carries
with it certain responsibilities.  Among those responsibilities is
providing a contact for that domain, just as people are responsible
for having a working postmaster@ address.

You are mistaken when you say that the owner of an IP Address has more
operational value than a domain owner.  There are times when the owner
of an IP Address will be different than the owner of a domain name.
Shared hosting comes instantly to mind: The owner of the IP Address of
a shared hosting account will either be the hosting company, or the
upstream provider of the hosting company, it will not be the owner of
the domain name.  If I needed to get in touch with the owner of a
domain name, then looking at the owner of the IP Address for their
shared hosting account will not provide me the necessary information.

Examples of times when I have needed to get in touch with a domain
owner:

1. Receiving virus infected e-mails from a user of a domain.  Yes, I
can /dev/null the e-mails, but I want the account cleaned up -- the
ISP is not going to do that, the owner of the domain will.

2. DNS mis-configuration issues.  If I run across a problem with a
domain name, I need to have an address I can contact to help correct the
problems.

3. Spam, I always try to contact the owner of a domain before
contacting their ISP.

There are other reasons for getting in touch with a domain owner
directly.  For this reason it is important to have valid contact
information for that domain name.

allan
- - --
Allan Liska
[email-masked]
http://www.allan.org

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Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 21:24:17 -0600
From: Greg Burton <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re[2]: [ga] WHOIS policy primer

Examples of times when I have needed to get in touch with a domain
owner:

1. Receiving virus infected e-mails from a user of a domain.  Yes, I
can /dev/null the e-mails, but I want the account cleaned up -- the
ISP is not going to do that, the owner of the domain will.

More likely that the hosting provider will be able to handle it than the 
domain owner, and MOST likely the enduser who is sending it will. If it's a 
hosted domain and email, the domain owner is going to call the isp/hosting 
provider in a panic - why not cut out the middleman?

2. DNS mis-configuration issues.  If I run across a problem with a
domain name, I need to have an address I can contact to help correct the
problems.

Ditto. If you think most domain owners have a CLUE what dns is, you're 
sadly mistaken. Nor do they provide their own DNS in most cases.

3. Spam, I always try to contact the owner of a domain before
contacting their ISP.

At least half the time spam comes in with forged headers. The IP address 
(if available) is the only way to track it back. And if spam is coming from 
an unsecured sendmail instance then (in your case of shared hosting) the 
ONLY way to actually stop it is for the isp/hosting provider to get in and 
fix it - the domain name OWNER is most likely powerless.

Let's deal with a recent case I'm familiar with in the sendmail situation. 
Thousands of pieces of spam were being sent (using unsecured sendmail) with 
forged headers, and with at least 100 DIFFERENT reply addresses at terra.es 
. How long would it take to identify EACH address and write the owner of 
terra.es (a rather large corp, as I recall), and then how long would it 
take to deal with the spam? Much easier to contact the admin at the IP of 
the suspect sendmail, and get him to fix his program. 1 email = over 100 
addresses blocked IMMEDIATELY, thousands (literally) of undeliverable 
messages, and another server cleaned up (until the next go round), so no 
future spam through it in theory.

Regards,
Greg

.....who has to deal with this stuff regularly

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Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 23:41:15 -0400
From: Allan Liska <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re[2]: [ga] WHOIS policy primer

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Hello Jeff,

Wednesday, August 28, 2002, 12:52:20 AM, you wrote:

>>
>> Examples of times when I have needed to get in touch with a domain
>> owner:
>>
>> 1. Receiving virus infected e-mails from a user of a domain.  Yes, I
>> can /dev/null the e-mails, but I want the account cleaned up -- the
>> ISP is not going to do that, the owner of the domain will.

JW>   Some ISP's do clean these sorts of problems up if you can clearly
JW> show what or from where/whom that potential virus came from.
JW> However it is not up to you to act as the Domain Name Police
JW> for viruses...

Some, but not all.  Since ISPs cannot reliably be expected to clean up
viruses, especially from customers that do not use their mail servers
your rebuttal is invalid.  It is my responsibility to protect my
network and users, that means having to contact domains that are
misbehaving.

>>
>> 2. DNS mis-configuration issues.  If I run across a problem with a
>> domain name, I need to have an address I can contact to help correct the
>> problems.

JW>   Yes and the Admin E-Mail address is there in the Whois records for
JW> that purpose.  Hence again needing to contact the personal and private
JW> contact physical address, Private E-Mail address, or Personal and private
JW> Phone # is not necessary and if by doing so, could be considered a
JW> violation of their Privacy Rights under the Privacy act...

That only works if the admin address is part of the organization that
registered the domain.  No ISP should ever make changes to a
customer's DNS record without working with them.

I have no problem with people using a proxy e-mail that forwards to
their ISP or hosting provider -- in fact I think it is a fine idea, as
long as that person reading that box actually responds in a timely
manner.

>>
>>
>> 3. Spam, I always try to contact the owner of a domain before
>> contacting their ISP.

JW>   This also can be handled by contact the Admin E-Mail address or
JW> other Admin contact information listed in the Whois record for that
JW> Domain Name.  Hence again, the need to contact directly the
JW> Registrant's Private  physical address, Private E-Mail address,
JW> or Personal and private Phone # is not necessary and again could be
JW> considered under the privacy act as a form of harassment or stalking
JW> under the Federal statutes against stalking as Karl correctly mentioned
JW> and has been done on many occasions...

Again, as long as that admin address has the authority to act on
behalf of the registrant I do not have a problem with this solution.
But people need to understand what they are giving up.

>>
>>
>> There are other reasons for getting in touch with a domain owner
>> directly.  For this reason it is important to have valid contact
>> information for that domain name.

JW>   Well so far, you have yet to provide one that is valid...  So I
JW> would be glad to see or have you provide these "Other Reasons"
JW> to which you refer.

Incorrect, I provided three very valid reasons, you simply don't
agree, but if you would like other reasons:

4. When I run into a programming error on a web site, I like to let
the site owner know.  If no contact information is included on the
site, I use the domain information to get ahold of someone who can
help.

5. Similarly, if I run across a potential security hole, I follow the
same process.

6. You seem to be in favor of an ISP-monitored address that people
could use for domain problems.  As overburdened as the help desks of
most ISPs are, I doubt this is a practical or scalable solution.  The
delay in support response from Eathlink, AT&T, MSN and the like often
borders on unacceptable now, asking these same support people to now
deal with my queries about their customer's websites seems impractical
at best.

allan
- - --
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[email-masked]
http://www.allan.org

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Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 23:44:28 -0400
From: "L. Gallegos" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Re[2]: [ga] WHOIS policy primer

On 27 Aug 2002, at 21:44, Allan Liska wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: MD5
> 
> Hello Karl,
> 
> [..deleted unnecessary cc's...]
> Tuesday, August 27, 2002, 7:46:00 PM, you wrote:
> 
> KA> On Tue, 27 Aug 2002, todd glassey wrote:
> 
> >> becuase there MUST be some way of registering a data base wherein the
> >> owner operators of domains are accessible. If not WHOIS, then what?
> 
> KA> That is a fallacy.
> 
> KA> There is no operational reason to have publicly visible contact
> KA> information for a domain name.
> 
> [..snip..]
> 
> KA> The contact information for IP addresses does have operational value,
> KA> is more likely to be correct, and the lookup key (the IP address) is
> much KA> less likely to be forged than a domain name.
> 
> KA> If you want to know from whence something is coming or has come, look
> to KA> the IP address then go to the IP allocation databases maintained by
> the KA> RIRs.
> 
> I don't think it is a fallacy at all.  Owning/Renting a domain carries with
> it certain responsibilities.  Among those responsibilities is providing a
> contact for that domain, just as people are responsible for having a
> working postmaster@ address.
> 
> You are mistaken when you say that the owner of an IP Address has more
> operational value than a domain owner.  There are times when the owner of
> an IP Address will be different than the owner of a domain name. Shared
> hosting comes instantly to mind: The owner of the IP Address of a shared
> hosting account will either be the hosting company, or the upstream
> provider of the hosting company, it will not be the owner of the domain
> name.  If I needed to get in touch with the owner of a domain name, then
> looking at the owner of the IP Address for their shared hosting account
> will not provide me the necessary information.

So look up the SOA for the domain (dig) and use the Postmaster 
address to reach the domain owner if you need to converse with 
him/her.  However, if the domain is being hosted by an ISP, that is 
where you need to make contact, not with the domain owner unless you 
want to purchase the domain.

> 
> Examples of times when I have needed to get in touch with a domain
> owner:
> 
> 1. Receiving virus infected e-mails from a user of a domain.  Yes, I
> can /dev/null the e-mails, but I want the account cleaned up -- the
> ISP is not going to do that, the owner of the domain will.

Not necessarily.  The ISP needs to know about the infected machine.  
The domain name holder may have nothing to do with the virus at all 
unless it is his personal machine that is infected.  The domain name 
has nothing to do with the virus infecting a machine.

> 
> 2. DNS mis-configuration issues.  If I run across a problem with a
> domain name, I need to have an address I can contact to help correct the
> problems.

That also has nothing to do with the domain name holder unless he is 
hosting the DNS himself.  DNS is provided by a *provider*.  I don't 
provide DNS for all my domains.  Hosting companies do that.  If their 
servers are misconfigured, I have to go to them.  I have no control over 
their servers.  Now if I use something like UltraDNS, I have some 
control, but only to the extent that I can change nameservers and 
account information.  I can't configure the servers.

> 
> 3. Spam, I always try to contact the owner of a domain before
> contacting their ISP.

That's fine.  Use the postmaster contact email in the SOA for the 
domain name.  Most of the time, however, the domain you see in the 
email is forged anyway.

> 
> There are other reasons for getting in touch with a domain owner
> directly.  For this reason it is important to have valid contact
> information for that domain name.
> 

You have not made your case.  In every instance you named, it is the 
ISP, DNS or hosting provider who would be the person to contact, not 
the domain name holder.  That information would come via the IP 
address contact information.

If you were to receive spam with [email-masked] in the "from" field, I 
can assure you that it would be forged.  I don't send spam.  I have had 
people write to me complaining they received spam from me, but it was 
not me sending the mail. I received the same spam (my address in the 
"from" field).  I was also accused of sending a virus when I was not 
infected.  It was another machine that had my address in their address 
book that sent the mail.  It was the Klez virus.  It, also, was sent to me 
in the same manner, but I caught it on download and deleted it. If you 
had written to me to complain about these things it would be obvious 
that you had not done your homework.  OTOH, if I did get a virus, I 
would expect that my provider would inform me really fast because he 
would be getting all kinds of complaints.  Still, it would have nothing to 
do with my holding a domain name.

In addition, if a domain name holder is deliberately sending spam, do 
you honestly think he'll stop because you ask him to?

You'll have to make a better case for publshing a domain name holder's 
personal information in the WHOIS, IMO.

Leah

> 
> allan
> - --
> Allan Liska
> [email-masked]
> http://www.allan.org
> 
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Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 20:45:40 -0700 (PDT)
From: Karl Auerbach <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re[2]: [ga] WHOIS policy primer

On Tue, 27 Aug 2002, Allan Liska wrote:

> I don't think it is a fallacy at all.  Owning/Renting a domain carries
> with it certain responsibilities.  Among those responsibilities is
> providing a contact for that domain, just as people are responsible
> for having a working postmaster@ address.

Why should one who is on the net be required to have e-mail?

As an analogy - businesses are only required to file a DBA (doing business 
as)/fictitious name statement - they need not have entries in phone books, 
need not even have a telephone or fax.  And corporations are often nearly 
anonymous - even ICANN's data with the California Secretary of State are 
rather unrevealing about who is behind it.

You have not said why one must reveal one's identity and address and phone 
number to the public for unregulated data mining.  What values are 
promoted by such disclosures?

> You are mistaken when you say that the owner of an IP Address has more
> operational value than a domain owner.  There are times when the owner
> of an IP Address will be different than the owner of a domain name.

Right.  But it's rather hard to forge an IP address on a two way (TCP) 
connection.  And if you are being bothered by something coming from an IP 
address, you can query IP whois (not DNS whois) and find out who is 
operating that computer/network.  You can ask that person and perhaps try 
to compell that person to answer through threat of legal processes.

This is very much like what is happening with Verizion and its resistance 
to pressures put onto it by the music/movie community.

> Examples of times when I have needed to get in touch with a domain
> owner:
> 
> 1. Receiving virus infected e-mails from a user of a domain.  Yes, I
> can /dev/null the e-mails, but I want the account cleaned up -- the
> ISP is not going to do that, the owner of the domain will.

Have you ever tried?  I've found that with the degree of forgery that 
source domains are worthless - but a source IP almost always turns of a 
valid, and often a quite cooperative, contact.

Those who have blocks of IP addresses have operational needs - making 
routing work is a cooperative venture - and these operational needs create 
a pressure for improved quality of information.  Those pressures do not 
exist in DNS-land.

> 2. DNS mis-configuration issues.  If I run across a problem with a
> domain name, I need to have an address I can contact to help correct the
> problems.

Again, find the IP address of the DNS server, go to ARIN's IP whois, find 
the netblock operator and find out who really runs that machine.

(And DNS operator who wants to be found, can easily do so:
Give this a try:
	% dig whois.cavebear.com txt

(For fun you might want to try:
	% dig @npax.cavebear.com mc.cavebear.com axfr
)

> There are other reasons for getting in touch with a domain owner
> directly.  For this reason it is important to have valid contact
> information for that domain name.

You may find it convenient, but in the social balance that is "privacy" 
what is convenient to one is not necessarily a justification to force 
others to disclose what is information about themselves that they may not 
wish to make available to any and all.

There's a balancing act here, and I don't find DNS whois to have 
sufficient worth - much less sufficient data integrity and quality - to 
counterbalance the damage that is caused by the coerced disclosure of 
people's names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses.

		--karl--

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Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 00:01:00 -0400
From: "L. Gallegos" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [ga] WHOIS policy primer

On 28 Aug 2002, at 7:08, Sandy Harris wrote:

<snip>
. 
> 
> The contact might be an administrator at the ISP, not the domain
> owner, and the information might be made available through some
> mechanism other than whois. For example, we might add a DNS record
> type to hold this info, or just require that addresses like abuse@,
> webmaster@ and postmaster@ be valid. However, neither adding
> things to DNS protocols nor enforcing address validity is easy,
> so at least in the short term, I think we need it in whois.

A dig for an SOA will give you the postmaster address and nameserver 
IPs.  A dig on those will give you contact information on the IPs.  It does 
not need to be "published" in the whois.  I completely agree that correct 
information for tech contact should be available to administrators.  If one 
doesn't know how to do a dig, they shouldn't be administering, should 
they?  But that has nothing to do with the domain name holder's 
information either.

> 
> One way or another, the technical contact info must be available. 
> 
> Whether the owners must be accessible -- e.g. for libel suits,
> copyright complaints, law enforcement, etc. -- is a completely
> separate question. My take on that is that getting such
> information should require a warrant or supoena.

That's where we also agree.  I feel no obligation to provide the persons 
trying to sue me with the information to do so.  If that is to be the case, 
then as Karl said, the WLS regsitrant information should also be made 
public.  However, I don't think any of it should be made public, but do 
think that the WLS information should be automatically provided to the 
current domain name holder.

Leah

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Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 00:11:20 -0400
From: "L. Gallegos" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Re[2]: [ga] WHOIS policy primer

On 27 Aug 2002, at 23:41, Allan Liska wrote:

> 6. You seem to be in favor of an ISP-monitored address that people
> could use for domain problems.  As overburdened as the help desks of
> most ISPs are, I doubt this is a practical or scalable solution.  The
> delay in support response from Eathlink, AT&T, MSN and the like often
> borders on unacceptable now, asking these same support people to now
> deal with my queries about their customer's websites seems impractical at
> best.

so    dig <domain.tld> soa 
and email the postmaster for the domain.  That's the resonsible person.  
The domain name holder most likely is not the site designer for one 
thing.  The hosting provider would also want to know about any security 
holes as well.  In the case of a corporate site where security involves 
taking credit cards or personal information, it would also obviously also 
have a contact listed (webmaster@<somedomain.sometld>.  If not, I 
would be very reluctant to use that site and would contact the hosting 
provider regarding security breaches.

You still have not made a case for publishing personal identifying 
information in the DNS WHOIS.

Leah

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Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 00:14:46 -0400
From: Allan Liska <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re[2]: [ga] WHOIS policy primer

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Hello Karl,

Tuesday, August 27, 2002, 11:45:40 PM, you wrote:

KA> On Tue, 27 Aug 2002, Allan Liska wrote:

>> I don't think it is a fallacy at all.  Owning/Renting a domain carries
>> with it certain responsibilities.  Among those responsibilities is
>> providing a contact for that domain, just as people are responsible
>> for having a working postmaster@ address.

KA> Why should one who is on the net be required to have e-mail?

One who is on the Internet is not required to have e-mail.  One who
has a domain name has  certain responsibilities, and must have an
e-mail.  In fact, at a minimum, all domain owners are required to have
a postmaster@ address.

KA> You have not said why one must reveal one's identity and address and phone
KA> number to the public for unregulated data mining.  What values are
KA> promoted by such disclosures?

I didn't say they should reveal the address for public data mining.
In fact many registrars are taking steps to prevent data mining of
whois databases, I applaud those steps.  That does not mean that there
should not be a valid contact information for all domains, one who can
speak authoritatively for the organization.

>> You are mistaken when you say that the owner of an IP Address has more
>> operational value than a domain owner.  There are times when the owner
>> of an IP Address will be different than the owner of a domain name.

KA> Right.  But it's rather hard to forge an IP address on a two way (TCP)
KA> connection.  And if you are being bothered by something coming from an IP
KA> address, you can query IP whois (not DNS whois) and find out who is
KA> operating that computer/network.  You can ask that person and perhaps try
KA> to compell that person to answer through threat of legal processes.

That is a misnomer, it is very easy to forge an IP Address, in fact,
it is done all the time.  The problem with the TCP handshake, is that
the receiving end always believes the sender is who he says he is.

>> Examples of times when I have needed to get in touch with a domain
>> owner:
>>
>> 1. Receiving virus infected e-mails from a user of a domain.  Yes, I
>> can /dev/null the e-mails, but I want the account cleaned up -- the
>> ISP is not going to do that, the owner of the domain will.

KA> Have you ever tried?  I've found that with the degree of forgery that
KA> source domains are worthless - but a source IP almost always turns of a
KA> valid, and often a quite cooperative, contact.

KA> Those who have blocks of IP addresses have operational needs - making
KA> routing work is a cooperative venture - and these operational needs create
KA> a pressure for improved quality of information.  Those pressures do not
KA> exist in DNS-land.

I guess I work with a better class of people on the Internet.  I have
had to use whois information on many occasions, and I am usually
successful.  If registrars  are compelled to enforce valid contact
information, then your odds should improve as well.  DNS is all about
being cooperative.  If you want to send e-mail, have your DNS
propagate, etc you have to be cooperative.  It is no different than
routing.

Why would I e-mail a NOC because an end user of an end user has a
virus on one of their workstations?  That's ludicrous, and any good
NOC engineer will laugh at you for that type of request.

>> 2. DNS mis-configuration issues.  If I run across a problem with a
>> domain name, I need to have an address I can contact to help correct the
>> problems.

KA> Again, find the IP address of the DNS server, go to ARIN's IP whois, find
KA> the netblock operator and find out who really runs that machine.

The DNS server most likely does not belong to the domain owner.  I
would expect that the domain owner outsources their DNS management.
But a domain owner should always be responsible for making requests,
so I am not going to bypass the owner of the domain, I will let the
owner of the domain forward the request to their DNS management
company.

>> There are other reasons for getting in touch with a domain owner
>> directly.  For this reason it is important to have valid contact
>> information for that domain name.

KA> You may find it convenient, but in the social balance that is "privacy"
KA> what is convenient to one is not necessarily a justification to force
KA> others to disclose what is information about themselves that they may not
KA> wish to make available to any and all.

Well, it is sort of like writing a check.  I may not want every
cashier at Target to have my address, but if I want to write checks, I
don't have any choice -- if I want privacy, I can pay cash.  If you
want to maintain privacy on the Internet, don't register a domain
name.

Also, as I have stated in the past, I have no objection to using proxy
information as DNS contacts, as long as the person on the other side
of the e-mail is responsive to queries.

allan
- - --
Allan Liska
[email-masked]
http://www.allan.org

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Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 00:22:17 -0400
From: "L. Gallegos" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [ga] WHOIS policy primer

On 27 Aug 2002, at 19:37, David Farrar wrote:

> There is a slight difference here.  Your phone number is always held by a
> company which has an office in the country where the phone number is for. 
> ie in New Zealand the telco Telecom or Telstra and both are required by law
> to co- operate with law enforcement agencies.
> 
> But with domain names and a thin registry you may register your name
> through a registrar based in say Iraq which is probably highly unlikely to
> co-operate with a request from the FBI.  You could put in the registrar
> contracts that they have to co-operate with the FBI but then why only force
> them to co-operate with law enforcement in one country.  So then you'd have
> to have registrars co- operate with all law enforcement agencies in the
> world ....

And the point is?  The fact remains that it is still not necessary to 
publish personal identifying information in the WHOIS.  You would still 
have to have the IP address of any offending source unless you are still 
referring to Intellectual Property issues.  If that is the case, those 
pursuing the domain name holder should still have to use the legal 
system to acquire the information, just as they would with telcos.   I can 
see no reason for publishing an unlisted phone number in the DNS 
WHOIS when the specific reason for having it unlisted is to NOT publish 
it.

Corporations hide all over the world.  Why are individuals forced to open 
themselves to all sorts of abuse from and for the benefit of corporations? 
 In addition, why should individuals be exposed to having their 
information mined for corporate abuses such as spam?

I again refer to Karl's post.  He covered it pretty darned well.

Leah
  
> 
> DPF

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Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 23:38:15 -0500
From: "Jim Fleming" <[email-masked]>
Subject: [ga] http://whois.cavebear.com

http://whois.cavebear.com

...can return A and AAAA records for the 32-bit and 128-bit DNS respectively...

...the DNS TXT records also contain what the user chooses to disclose...

http://www.analogx.com/cgi-bin/cgidig.exe?DNS=205.214.45.10&Query=whois.cavebear.com&Type=255&submit=Lookup

*whois hosting* can be a separate service, or people can provide it themselves...

Jim Fleming
2002:[IPv4]:000X:03DB:...IPv8 is closer than you think...
http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/130dftmail/unir.txt

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Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 23:50:12 -0500
From: Don Brown <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [ga] WHOIS policy primer

This is a complicated, or multi-faceted, issue and I am not sure of
the right answer.

All I know is that, in practice, we consult the WhoIs database
frequently. Whether we are proficient at what we do is an entirely
different issue, but we think we are.

We could probably live without this resource, but why should anyone
want to have to do the same job with less resources?

If the availability of the WhoIs data has caused some harm to anyone,
then it should be a point of concern.  Automobiles have also caused
some harm, but that's a different subject.

Perhaps regulation of the users of the data is better and more
absolute than revoking access to all.  Maybe that idealistic and not
very pragmatic, but here has to be a coming together somewhere.

Thanks,

Tuesday, August 27, 2002, 6:46:00 PM, Karl Auerbach <[email-masked]> wrote:
KA> On Tue, 27 Aug 2002, todd glassey wrote:

>> becuase there MUST be some way of registering a data base wherein the owner
>> operators of domains are accessible. If not WHOIS, then what?

KA> That is a fallacy.

KA> There is no operational reason to have publicly visible contact
KA> information for a domain name.

KA> The only reason that such information has been required has been to
KA> placate the intellectual property interests who demand to know who domain
KA> name owners are (but who want to hide their own identities when they file
KA> WLS subscriptions.)

KA> The contact information for IP addresses does have operational value,  
KA> is more likely to be correct, and the lookup key (the IP address) is much 
KA> less likely to be forged than a domain name.

KA> If you want to know from whence something is coming or has come, look to 
KA> the IP address then go to the IP allocation databases maintained by the 
KA> RIRs.

KA> Of course, with any database containing personally identifiable
KA> information, the rules of access ought to require that you leave your own
KA> identity and proof of that identity so that the data subject can know you
KA> were looking.  But there is no such obligation placed on those who mine 
KA> DNS/whois for commercial gain or worse.

>> because the WHOIS entry pertains to the public name that you are publishing.
>> By that act, the registering of a domain name, there is an inherent
>> agreement to be published in WHOIS.

KA> If that were the case then the identity of those buying WLS subscriptions
KA> would have been made public.

KA> Having known people who have been stalked as a result of DNS/whois 
KA> information, and having myself received mountains of whois derived e-mail, 
KA> fax, and phone spam, I do not believe that there is even a close balance 
KA> of equities on the social contract that you suggest.

KA> DNS/Whois is a holdover from the days of the net when we all knew one
KA> another (and we would all fit into one meeting room in Pacific Grove,
KA> California.)  The DNS/whois of today is a violation of all privacy
KA> principles that have evolved over the last three decades.

KA>                 --karl--

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[email-masked]         http://www.inetconcepts.net
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