Question: What are your thoughts on the future of the Whois Database? Would each new top-level-domain have its own separate database or would they be aggregated somehow?

Nominee Replies

Karl Auerbach - posted on 2000-09-30 13:00:23 I tend to prefer that each person/organization that operates a TLD should maintain its own contact/whois database. (Some have put forth the notion of a TLD that maintains no contact information - all registrations would be anonymous and expire after 90 days of no queries for names in a registered SLD - and thus would have no whois. But such TLDs are still merely mental constructs and all currently existing TLDs do have whois/contact databases.) I do believe that there ought to be some good standard data representations. Rick Wesson has put together an XML representation for registration data. I think that it would be a very good thing if all registration data were in such a form. There are already several tools that create a virtual unified whois out of the disparate databases that exist today. Emerson Tiller, J.D., Ph.D. - posted on 2000-09-25 23:18:16 I do not favor one over the other. But an important question will be access and privacy. If ICANN does not maintain/manage an aggregated WHOIS Database, then it should set some baseline rules on access and privacy. I favor having ICANN develop procedures that disclose who is accessing the Whois database. I also favor ICANN setting rules for baseline security of information of domain name registrants. Lawrence Lessig - posted on 2000-09-19 08:59:32 This is a hard question, which I don't believe I can answer without the input of the technical sorts. The system should be architected to minimize the monopoly power of any one actor, while assuring the efficiencies that the system can create. What structure that is is something others will have to advise. Donald Langenberg - posted on 2000-09-19 04:58:22 This is another one with which I am insufficiently familiar to give a reasonable answer.