On Jul 26, 2013, at 4:34 PM, Jimmy Hess <mysidia@gmail.com> wrote:
If someone studies that and finds there is a correlation to spam based on WHOIS listing alone, then perhaps....
No study has been conducted, but we do receive a small number of complaints each year about email contact information being solicited in cases were the email address is exclusively used on IP address blocks and nowhere else. (Often, the culprits are network equipment vendors or technical recruiters) When we receive such, we send a nasty letter indicating violation of the Whois terms of use. Most companies seem to pay attention to this, but then again, it's generally been a misguided individual at an otherwise legitimate enterprise causing the problem, as opposed to typical bulk email harvesting operation.
In other words: for starters, assume the number of "bad actors" is small, and let the community pressure them and their peers to retaliate, before diminishing the average usefulness of WHOIS to everyone, (which restricting access to a small number of users does).
I believe we can arrange to publicly post our notices of violation; let me look into this option. Thanks! /John John Curran President and CEO ARIN