On Fri, 24 Nov 2006, Michael Baker wrote:

 > I don't see the need for image verification though on the web based whois
 > either what are they trying to do??? Generate major traffic then start
 > making people pay for WHOIS access

It sounds like you don't understand the reasoning behind attempting to
stop the ongoing wholesale harvesting of whois data by robots operated
by all manner of unscrupulous lowlife: spammers, slammers, scammers,
domainers, expiry bandits and possibly even a rogue registrar one day.

I looked up some domains today.  Apart from mistaken about the case of
several of the displayed letters at first, I had no trouble.  What's
an extra 5 keystrokes and one more click on a busy day? :)

And I doubt ausregistry are getting pay-per-click for the extra traffic.

 > -----Original Message-----
 > From: dns-bounces+michaelbaker=iinet.net.au§dotau.org
 > [mailto:dns-bounces+michaelbaker=iinet.net.au§dotau.org] On Behalf Of Edwin
 > Groothuis
 > Sent: Friday, November 24, 2006 7:24 PM
 > To: .au DNS Discussion List
 > Subject: Re: [DNS] New WHOIS
 > 
 > On Fri, Nov 24, 2006 at 01:10:32PM +0800, michaelbaker§iinet.net.au wrote:
 > > I want make a comment about the NEW who is change for .au.
 > > 
 > > Past few days the Whois has been updated. So when you do a who is you get
 > Aus
 > > Registry LINK and a msg saying visit Aus Registry.
 > 
 > And now it's waiting for the moment they disable the whoisd completely...

Edwin, not sure what you mean here by 'it'?

 > First they took away the registration and expiry dates,

Registrants and their nominated agents have no trouble discovering these
dates, and registrars are obliged to attempt to contact registrants on
pending expiry.  Who else needs to know (apart from the abovementioned
subclasses of lowlife) when somebody else's domain might expire? 

 > then they took away the contact addresses

No, they're still there for us humans - but not robots - to see.  Not
until the robots iterate another round of AI, anyway.

I do think using proprietary Adobe Flash technology rather than a little
.mp3 or even a good old fashioned .au is a tad over the top for the
audio, but appreciated ausregistry's response to recent such concerns. 

 > and what will happen next? The nameservers? And then, the registrar?

Without nameservers there's no DNS at all :)  If it's not a domain that
you are responsible for, either as registrant or registrar, then the
nameservers and maybe the registrar are about all you could need, eh?

 > Edwin

Cheers, Ian