Re: Anti Capitalism?

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

Perry E. Metzger allegedly said:
> 
[...]
> 
> I'll be a bit more informal here than ususal -- this is really just
> off the cuff from me.
> 
> Who said whois needs to be "run"? 

I understand it to be an implicit requirement.  The reasoning goes 
like this:  

When DNS screws up it is necessary sometimes to get in 
touch with a technical contact person for a particular zone.  
Therefore, the address for such a contact person for each zone must 
be made easily available.  Therefore there must be a standard 
interface for getting that information, and that interface must be 
supported by each registry.  However, standards in this area are a 
tad bit fuzzy, and sometimes not followed.  But the closest thing to 
a standard is whois.  Therefore, it is a requirement that the new 
registries to support a whois interface for at least contact data.  
Therefore, someone must run a whois daemon.

> "Whois" is very nearly a text search
> service on a bunch of contact data -- a comparatively small database,
> too. Off the cuff, I'd say, generate the database nightly and put the
> database up for FTP along with daily diffs, and let whomever wants to
> put up a server. If CORE feels like funding a server or two of their
> own, thats fine, too. I suspect the data is useful enough that lots of
> people would replicate it. 

As a privacy advocate, I would rather not make the data available at
all.  However, I was subjected to the above argument about the
necessity of a technical contact, from several sources.  Personally, I
would rather the data not be given out. 

> Of course, long run, whois qua whois is
> probably dead, given rwhois and such.

Indeed.  I was using "whois data" to refer to the data, not the 
mechanism. 

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com,kc@llnl.gov		the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   5A 16 DA 04 31 33 40 1E  87 DA 29 02 97 A3 46 2F