hypotheses: o the whois and zone data are needed for administrative and operational purposes o slime are abusing those data for spamming etc., which denizens of this list seem to hate almost as much as they hate nsi o slime are watching zone/whois changes to send immediate spam to new registrants 'use our wonderful services' o slime are doing massive domain squatting hoping to then extort high prices from more legitimate applicants o ... if the above were true, and i believe that they are, what would the oh so brilliant and deeply experienced in large scale production systems readers of this list do to responsibly yet strongly inhibit such slimeful activity? think about it seriously. i suspect there are no easy answers. randy