Hello again all, Thanks very much Lutz for following this recommendation through. I haven't seen any responses to this yet (but perhaps I missed them), and I also wonder if it was discussed at the teleconference this morning? While I'd be interested to hear others' views on the precise wording and the data collection mechanism, I wanted to say that in principle I think this is a very useful addition to our recommendations. Once implemented, I expect that it would go some way to addressing concerns about the public accessibility of WHOIS data, and as such I support it. Cheers, Peter -----Original Message----- From: rt4-whois-bounces@icann.org [mailto:rt4-whois-bounces@icann.org] On Behalf Of Lutz Donnerhacke Sent: Wednesday, 9 November 2011 10:22 PM To: rt4-whois@icann.org Subject: [Rt4-whois] Centralized Whois Query system run by ICANN Proposal: Summary: ICANN should set up and maintain a web interface to access all the WHOIS services in order to ease access to the WHOIS data. Presumption: The AoC requires that "ICANN implement measures to maintain timely, unrestricted and public access to accurate and complete WHOIS information, including registrant, technical, billing, and administrative contact information." Observation: An User Insight Report came up with the following results: + Almost nobody is aware of whois + Almost nobody is able to query a whois server correctly + Whois queries were done on websites which occur first in the search engine results. Usually those pages are overloaded with advertisments. Detailed recommendation: ICANN should set up a dedicated, multilingual website to allow "unrestricted and public access to accurate and complete WHOIS information" even for those people which have problems with the plain WHOIS protocol. The WHOIS information should be collected by following the thin WHOIS approach starting at whois.iana.org. The service should display the contractural relationships which are revealed by the WHOIS referals in a clear and understandable way. The results should be mark clearly the relevant information "including registrant, technical, billing, and administrative contact" data. The server needs to be run by ICANN itself, because the "timely, unrestricted and public access" is usually rate limited, stripped or even blocked by the various WHOIS server administrators for uncontractual third party access. ICANN itself is the only party having the power to overcome those limits using its contratual compliance. _______________________________________________ Rt4-whois mailing list Rt4-whois@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/rt4-whois ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message. This message has been content scanned by the Axway MailGate. MailGate uses policy enforcement to scan for known viruses, spam, undesirable content and malicious code. For more information on Axway products please visit www.axway.com. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------