Dot Com Directory - Some Comments. NSI Please Read!

[rb1000@ix.netcom.com (Ron Bennett)]

Network Solutions (so-called Internic) is set to open the Dot Com Directory 
soon. It's basically a directory derived from their so-called customers.

Personally I think such a directory will at first have some value and make life 
easier in regards to finding people and companies, but here are my concerns:

1. It's being created from information that was intended for administrative and 
technical purposes to maintain domain names. It was never intended for 
marketing. In fact NSI makes it quite difficult for others to use that some 
information and thus their copyright warnings (which hold water about as good 
as a sieve). And yet NSI think it's ok for them to use it for marketing.

2. Many people expect such information to remain private or at least somewhat 
difficult to get in masse.

3. People were never warned that such information would be sold or marketed. 
Furthermore a fair amount of the information contained in NSI's database was 
derived before NSI existed. The 1974 Privacy Act among others could come into 
play for persons who registered domains before aprox 1992 and possibly later.

4. Of concern to NSI should be the database's value will most likely drop like 
a rock as people realize what's up and change/erase their information. Already 
I've noticed many contact records recently modified with phone numbers removed 
and addresses changed. People already are taking action to protect their 
privacy. This hurts the value of the database and there's little NSI can do to 
stop it. All the fake information in the database doesn't help matters either.

5. Who will use it? Since the database contains primarily administrative and 
technical information, how will the average person be able to use it? I mean 
calling amazon.com's technical contact isn't going to help a customer resolve a 
problem or buy a book...right?  So even if the information is accurate, it's 
not really the information people seek. When doing business, I want to speak to 
the president, owner, etc not their technical guy nor their billing department.

I'd appreciate comments...

Ron Bennett

p.s. NSI would do much better to bundle or somehow market webhosting 
services, etc that will help business...big market, high margins, and much less 
controversal than this. NSI's bizcard, email services, etc are a good move and 
this is where money can really be made...not selling their database which will 
take in very little money relatively speaking and hurt NSI's image in the 
longrun.