* Derek Smythe wrote:
In fact this should be old news for Lutz
I do understand the usefulness of whois. I do use it myself. I even wrote a paragraph about this use case (in the light of LA): : Whois information is unusable for law enforcement. Current Whois services : are often used to solve low level internet crime. Ten doller fraud does : not legitimate preidentification of all users of before accessing internet : services. Introducing a system like Whois today to fight low level crime : would be unconstitutional. And I do not want to remove whois alltogether: : If the review reveals use cases which are legitimate and worth to : perserve, Whois services must be restructured as "thin whois": A : hierarchical distributed database publishing only links to down reseller : chain. To query information from leafs, where data is originated, correct : and complete, the final response is covered by the protection of national : law. In the light of the RAA (every registrar has to provide whois services itself), the thin whois approach seems not that unlikely. OTOH, there might an other outcome : If the review reveals no legitimate use cases or a majroity of misuse, : Whois services need to be shut down.