Re: RBL quandry - opinions hereby solicited
Rodney, ISPs are businesses and have a right to protect their customer database. I don't think JC Penneys would want Sears to be able to grab their customer base and slam them with enticements to switch their alliance. While the sharks are swimming in these waters the ideal world you and I would like to see just simply won't exist. We must choose to either do whatever is necessary to protect our investment or take our chances. As most hosting providers leave the Organization information alone, anyone with a VALID reason to contact the owner of the domain could use snail mail or ask the information operator for the phone number. If the owner of the domain has his/her number unlisted .... guess they want to be left alone. NSI does use snail mail to send out invoices. It's not as if these precautionary steps being taken are resulting in any serious problems that will bring the world to an untimely demise. If the domain owner wants to move his domain, he can FAX an authorization to NSI on the Organization's letterhead. That is a very common practice as domain owners are not in the habit of updating their contact records which results in a failure to approve modifications based on 'Mail From'. Business is business. -=Mike Reno=- Hostmaster, EarthLink Network
No. I think this is an extremely *bad* idea. I don't argue that the issue of spam needs to be dealt with. But the registration of data like email addresses and phone numbers is critical from an operational point of view. These are needed when conatct has to be made because of an operational failure. The purpose of whois data has become corrupt and corrupted over the last couple of years, but we can't lose sight of it.
If you can solve the problem of accurate contact data for operational failures, fine. Until then, the data has to be accurate, and useful. Not bogus.
/rlj
CenterGate Research LLC
Mike Reno wrote: <snip>
As most hosting providers leave the Organization information alone, anyone with a VALID reason to contact the owner of the domain could use snail mail or ask the information operator for the phone number. If the owner of the domain has his/her number unlisted .... guess they want to be left > alone. NSI does use snail mail to send out invoices. It's not as if these precautionary steps being taken are resulting in any serious problems that will bring the world to an untimely demise. If the domain owner wants to move his domain, he can FAX an authorization to NSI on the Organization's letterhead. That is a very common practice as domain owners are not in the habit of updating their contact records which results in a failure to approve modifications based on 'Mail From'.
Business is business.
Mike; I think there is a basic misunderstanding here about the basis of whois. This is *not* netsol's database. Yet. It is a database of contact information. I don't give a rat's ass who the billing or admin contact for a domain or network is. I care about the technical contact. If 'they' (or the collective we, actually) use valid dns data, I'd even live with that. I have no problem using 'dig'. But we all need a way to reach a 'responsible party' in the case of a real problem. We've been in the middle of a project that has been looking at whois data, and dns data, to identify valid contacts for networks and domains. Guess what? If it was even close to accurate you'd never see people posting urgent requests to nanog asking if anyone has a good number for xyz because there is an attack/failure/bogus announcement screwing up others, and the listed contacts don't work. Go call Telco information, and ask for a listing for the network operations center for any of the networks, large or small, and I'll bet that you can't find a single instance of a number that lets you reach a warm body who knows what the hell you mean when you ask a network question. Maybe someday Netsol will own the intellectual property in the .com .net .org etc. databases. But for now they don't. And if they allow people to register bogus data, they aught to be tarred and feathered. Not becauase it is bad business practice, but it;s bad Internet practice. If the problem is spammers, solve that problem. Don't get rid of the data we all need. Or at least find an alternative (maybe I should work on that... hmmmm?). Sheesh, am I the only one who thinks valid contacts are important? I'm sure that Sprint and MCI and GTE have good numbers for each other... but wouldn't it be nice to be able to get to someone clueful at Exodus today while these dns hackers are in the middle of whatever they're doing, and track them down then and there? Whack-a-mole is fine for carnivals, but on the net today, you have to whack-em-once. It's too expensive to just chase them. /rlj CenterGate Research LLC
I would agree with Rodney, the data needs to be current and acurate. In fact I thought I read somewhere that it was required..... Back to reading stuff again to verify. At 10:00 PM 11/16/98 -0700, you wrote:
Mike Reno wrote:
<snip>
As most hosting providers leave the Organization information alone, anyone with a VALID reason to contact the owner of the domain could use snail mail or ask the information operator for the phone number. If the owner of the domain has his/her number unlisted .... guess they want to be left > alone. NSI does use snail mail to send out invoices. It's not as if these precautionary steps being taken are resulting in any serious problems that will bring the world to an untimely demise. If the domain owner wants to move his domain, he can FAX an authorization to NSI on the Organization's letterhead. That is a very common practice as domain owners are not in the habit of updating their contact records which results in a failure to approve modifications based on 'Mail From'.
Business is business.
Mike;
I think there is a basic misunderstanding here about the basis of whois. This is *not* netsol's database. Yet.
It is a database of contact information. I don't give a rat's ass who the billing or admin contact for a domain or network is. I care about the technical contact. If 'they' (or the collective we, actually) use valid dns data, I'd even live with that. I have no problem using 'dig'. But we all need a way to reach a 'responsible party' in the case of a real problem.
We've been in the middle of a project that has been looking at whois data, and dns data, to identify valid contacts for networks and domains. Guess what? If it was even close to accurate you'd never see people posting urgent requests to nanog asking if anyone has a good number for xyz because there is an attack/failure/bogus announcement screwing up others, and the listed contacts don't work. Go call Telco information, and ask for a listing for the network operations center for any of the networks, large or small, and I'll bet that you can't find a single instance of a number that lets you reach a warm body who knows what the hell you mean when you ask a network question.
Maybe someday Netsol will own the intellectual property in the .com .net .org etc. databases. But for now they don't. And if they allow people to register bogus data, they aught to be tarred and feathered. Not becauase it is bad business practice, but it;s bad Internet practice. If the problem is spammers, solve that problem. Don't get rid of the data we all need. Or at least find an alternative (maybe I should work on that... hmmmm?).
Sheesh, am I the only one who thinks valid contacts are important? I'm sure that Sprint and MCI and GTE have good numbers for each other... but wouldn't it be nice to be able to get to someone clueful at Exodus today while these dns hackers are in the middle of whatever they're doing, and track them down then and there? Whack-a-mole is fine for carnivals, but on the net today, you have to whack-em-once. It's too expensive to just chase them.
/rlj CenterGate Research LLC
participants (3)
-
John M. Brown -
Mike Reno -
Rodney Joffe