Yes, that's the reasoning behind the proposal: The AoC urges ICANN to
provide such an unrestricted access. Unfortunly many registries does rate
limit the access or does not provide all the required data.
Hi Lutz,
Yes, the registrars and registries rate limit because they feel
required to. It is part of the Whois Marketing Restriction Policy of
2004 -- one of the few bright spots of the type of consensus from
the GNSO we have been looking for -- that bars registries and
registrars from allowing data mining of the Whois databases for
spam, other forms of unwanted advertising, profiling, etc. (Quote
from our draft report, chapter 3, is below.) Rate limiting is a
tried and true way of preventing data mining, as you know.
So here's a followup question: Are we saying, somehow, that the
language of the AOC trumps and takes precedence over this
Consensus Policy? If so, I think we really need to spell it out
for the community and the GNSO.
But somehow, I don't think we meant to overturn this marketing
restriction policy. As I have mentioned, I think we should be very
carefully of recommended specific technical fixes -- but lay out the
problem, and the need for a solution, and allow the Community to
find it.
Chapter 3 Excerpt:
"WHOIS Marketing Restriction Policy: This policy, a combination of
two distinct GNSO policy recommendations, creates two policy changes
to the Registrar Accreditation Agreement:
a. Registrars must require third parties “to agree not to use the
[Whois] data to allow, enable, or otherwise support any marketing
activities.”
b. Registrars must “agree not to sell or redistribute the [Whois]
data” (with some exceptions).
http://www.icann.org/en/registrars/wmrp.htm"