Depository's business model appears to be to set themselves up as a toll booth on the information highway.
I totally agree with you on that point.
And yet even accepting that their business model is to make money I do not see why that is deserving of condemnation?
As should be blindingly obvious, the problem isn't that they make money. The RIRs charge, too. The problem is that they want to be a toll booth, a place where everyone has to pay to get through.
However, this does suggest to me that if muddy records is the harm that is feared then if Depository makes a commitment to a reverse IP address lookup system that is at least as good as those offered by any of the RIRs then the argument of public-harm dissipates.
As should be even more blindingly obvious, if Depository competes with the RIRs, we'll end up with a situation where some records are at Depository, some are at RIRs, and there's no way to tell which is more accurate or more current. It's bad enough now trying to track old allocations that have been moved from ARIN to other RIRs, and there the RIRs are trying to stay in sync. What incentive would the RIRs have to track records at Depository? Who's supposed to pay for their costs of doing so? There's a reason each county only has one deed registry, you know. R's, John