Alex Bligh wrote:
The irony of all this is that spammers already have all this information -- yet registrars have gone out of their way to make it as difficult as possible for everyone else to get it (rate-limiting queries and so on).
They clearly don't "already have" this information, or they wouldn't be a) offering to pay people for it b) continue to be trying to obtain it by data mining.
There are lots of small-time spammers. Rest assured that the big fish already have access to most major zonefiles.
Your argument is roughly equivalent to "The irony of this is that drug dealers already have drugs -- yet governments have gone out of their way to make it as difficult as possible for everyone else to get them". Or "Credit card fraudsters already have credit card numbers - yet credit card companies have gone out of their way to make it is difficult as possible for everyone else to get them".
Drugs are bad. Domains aren't. For a certain value of aren't. Credit card numbers are all you need to commit fraud. Domains aren't. For a certain value of aren't.
IE sure, there's a lot of leaked information out there (often including personal data), that doesn't mean responsible registries should add to it.
Such as... selling access to the data to anyone who pays? No, responsible registries should of course not do this. - Kandra