R: R: R: R: URIWhois-0.02

> -----Messaggio originale-----
> Da: Daryl C. W. O'Shea [mailto:spamassassin@dostech.ca]
> Inviato: giovedì 27 settembre 2007 19.22
>
> Giampaolo Tomassoni wrote:
>
> > Well, I have to manually turn my MX server on and off, sometimes. So,
> is it
> > SA an automated process? And then, if SA issues a whois request, is
> it
> > automated?
>
> This is plain silliness, which leads me to believe that you very well
> know that you're doing automated queries against whois servers against
> the wishes of the operators of those whois servers.

:)

>
>
> > It seems to me that the wording we see in whois replies is too loose
> to have
> > any meaning...
>
> The wording is clear as to how they intend the service to be used, and
> more importantly (and more clearly) how it is NOT to be used.
>
> Just because the wording is too vague to form a legal contract of any
> sort doesn't mean that you should ignore the wishes of the providers
> that it not be queried by an automated process.

I'm quite sure their intent is to avoid gathering data in bunches, which is not what I do.

> > The problem, in fact, is that there is actually no other (easy) way
> than
> > whois to obtain the data you get by a whois query.
>
> The easiest way to obtain the amount of cash that I am interested in
> obtaining is to rob a bank. Perhaps I should do that, it is after all,
> the easy way. Who cares if it's right or wrong or against the wishes
> of
> the bank and its customers.

Now you are stating plain silliness: the two things are not comparable, not even by law.

How can you damage a registrar by issuing whois queries? If you start querying too much for what they regard as being too much, you'll get banned and that's all...

> > The problem is that most
> > registrars do provide a whois interface not because they are tied by
> an
> > agreement to do so,
>
> Actually, that would be the number one reason they do so.

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I don't think the terms of this agreement are too tight, then, since some gTLD do avoid exposing any whois service (apart http forms)...

> > but rather because they know it is a useful tool which
> > effectively helps in daily registrar-to-registrar communication.
>
> As has been mentioned before, public whois services aren't used by
> registrars for domain management/etc.

Oh, come on: during the transfer process of domain X from registrar A to registrar B, if B find some technical problem in the originating record, I guess the first thing B does it to have a look at the whois record in the A's server, in order to see if data matches.

This is what whois is basically meant to: an inter-registrar tool. Then, it has the value of "deregulation", which was a key-word in 70's, and "transparency", which was a key-word in late 80's. The latter 'till end 90's, when "privacy" took place.

> > At the end, the problem is in the terms by which ICANN delegates TLDs
> to
> > registrars, I believe.
>
> Regardless of any problems you see, the terms are as as they are.
> Intentionally abusing a service is not the way to go about getting the
> terms of use changed.

I don't see any abuse in randomly querying whois for some domains, provided I'm not doing it to cause a DoS or using the replies to spam people. The wording is meant to keep away DoS and bulk fetch of e-mail. You have to put words in an historical context to get their meaning.

> >>> What is the source, by the way? Which TLD?
> >> Aside from the specific wording, that's pretty standard boilerplate
> for
> >> any registrar's WHOIS service that I've ever seen.
>
> Yeah, that one was from PIR, but they're all pretty much the same.
> Many
> are copied verbatim.

whois.nic.it, in example, doesn't even mention any term of usage.

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Giampaolo

>
>
> Daryl
Received on Thu Sep 27 14:03:49 2007