I'm guessing many of you have seen this, but if not... http://www.domainnamenews.com/featured/domain-registrar-network-solution s-front-running-on-whois-searches/1359 The blog the story references is here: http://www.domainstate.com/showthread.php3?s=&threadid=85864 Perhaps specifically of interest: "Front running domain names is a bold move by any registrar as it breaks a certain level of trust that the general public places in using a whois search. ICANN SSAC has conducted a "study" on front running recently in which they wrote "ICANN's Registrar Accreditation Agreement and Registry Agreements do not expressly prohibit registrars and registries from monitoring and collecting WHOIS query of domain name availability query data and either selling this information or using it directly," Warehousing domains in order to sell them to "potentially interested parties" isn't specifically forbidden in the registrar contract with ICANN but is addressed in points 3.7.9 and 4.2.5 of the contract in which they leave room for new rules or revisions to the contract." -----Original Message----- From: Maxim Weinstein [mailto:mweinstein@cyber.law.harvard.edu] Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2008 8:57 AM To: Brendler, Beau Subject: Domain name front-running by Network Solutions Hey, Beau. If you haven't already seen this: http://www.domainnamenews.com/featured/domain-registrar-network-solution s-front-running-on-whois-searches/1359 you should take a look. This is (or should be) big news. =Max= *** Scanned