Re: NSI Bulletin 098-010 | Update on Whois

[Derek Balling]

At 11:59 AM 9/2/98 -0500, Andy Walden wrote:
>
>> Was this company "an abuser" because they wanted to do lookups of a useful
>> nature? (And yes, they put in caching and such so they wouldn't be querying
>
>Yes. Thats not the intent of the whois database in my opinion. Marketing
>and general greed causes the most problems on the Internet and generates
>the most instances of someone trying to exploit something for the almighty
>dollar.  

I guess I would tend to disagree. The whois database is there so that the
Internet users - be they marketing types or technical types - can obtain
information about a domain name. I might not be interested in that aspect
of it MYSELF (for me, it is generally the technical contact I am looking
for, or rarely the admin contact), but for others it is the company name.
What makes their use "WRONG" and mine "RIGHT"?

D