Just wondering if there is any way I could use a scanner (I have a home grown script for this) that would go thru the DNS registries from some public source, scan for keywords in the domain name.

If you just want the list of domain names and not the rest of the whois data, it's not hard to get access to the zone files for most gTLDs. I arranged to get com, org, net, edu, biz, and info. In each case you have to sign and fax back an agreement to the registry in which you promise not to do naughty things with the data. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly.