Thank you for expanding and reformulating the recommendation 17. To my honest surprise the currenct form of this recommendation does not match the original intend anymore. So let me rephrase the main issues again: The AOC requires an "unrestriced and unlimited access to complete data for everybody". The current implementations violate this requirement in three ways: a) Most interfaces are rate limited or otherwise restriced b) Many interfaces does not offer the full set of information c) The interfaces are hard to find and often difficult to use So the recommendation 17 is simply saying: "Please build or extend an interface which is: - Web based for "easy access for everybody" (to solve c) - Multilingual for the same reason - Follows the WHOIS server references downtree starting at whois.iana.org to find any WHOIS server (not just a gTLD) and the necessary information (to solve c and overcome the thin/thick WHOIS discussion at all) - By insisting on ICANN as an operator of this service access to the WHOIS servers of the various partes can be made unrestricted (to solve a) as well as complete (to solve b) This is quite different from the current proposal to do some cosmetic changes on the Internic website ... Sorry.