On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 11:50:30AM -1000, Seth M Reiss wrote:

If we cannot get a consensus for applying the smart portal ideas for all registries, then how about stating that it should be implemented for at least the .com and .net registry with the view of extending it to other existing and future registries as appropriate.

There is no problem with COM/NET. There is a problem with accessing ANY WHOIS database.