Mike, You missed the point about businesses nad individuals. Businesses do not have the right to the same level of privacy individuals do. I don't see a need for bulk access to the database, but accessing records for a single domain name is useful. Its useful to identify who the owner of a domain name is, because without this it would be too easy for businesses to undertake all kinds of practices by hiding behind a domain name. Lack of such identification would be a significant disadvantage to consumers in addressing unfair or illegal business practices on a website. Its certainly useful on a day to day basis for the Internet industry that deals with registrants, names and contacts daily. Larry > -----Original Message----- > From: Mike [mailto:mjr§hydrocorp.com] > Sent: Wednesday, 6 April 2005 11:54 > To: dns§dotau.org > Subject: Re: [DNS] Whois & Privacy > > > Hi Larry, > > I can see a reason to know if a name is available or if it is > not. I can't see a reason why anyone else apart from > Governmental Agency > under specific conditions should be able to access the database. > > Are you on the Electoral Roll Larry? > Under your home address? > > Mike. > http://whois.com.au/forums/ > > Larry Bloch wrote: > > >I tend to agree with Kim. > > > >There is a valid reason for a publicly available whois > service. There > >are legitimate reasons why the owner of a name should be easily > >identifiable. > > > >By and large names are for the use of businesses, and privacy for > >businesses is an entirely different thing to individuals. I > would think > >that hiding email addresses for individuals has merit, but a > business > >is another matter. > > > > > >To some degree, visibility and the resulting spam is a cost > of being a > >business with a publicly visible domain name. After all, if > you don't > >want to be contacted, what is the point of having the name > in the first > >place? (yes, I know - there are many other reasons). The > point is, if > >you have a domain name for your company and you have a website, most > >likely you publish contact details. Spam is a scourge, we all agree, > >but it's a 'cost' of having an email address. If you don't want spam > >that badly, don't use email. > > > >.AU deliberately removed telephone numbers and address > details as these > >were deemed unnecessary, but email details remained in whois as the > >least compromising contact details to provide. I am not aware of > >widespread abuse of the email addresses published in .au whois. > > > >Larry > > > > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------- > ------------- > List policy, unsubscribing and archives => http://dotau.org/ > Please do not retransmit articles on this list without > permission of the > author, further information at the above URL. > >Received on Fri Oct 03 2003 - 00:00:00 UTC
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