[Ietf-not43] Re: Request to Move RFC 954 to Historic Status

[Stephane Bortzmeyer]

On Thu, Sep 05, 2002 at 02:12:33PM -0400,
 Derek J. Balling <dredd@megacity.org> wrote 
 a message of 79 lines which said:

> the EU perspective seems to be, simply, "no you don't".  (!US,!EU) tend 
> to be either split into thirds between US, EU, and "no whois server at 
> all".

Most African ccTLD have no whois at all for operational reasons (in
one ccTLD, the social database is the comments in the zone file, in
another one, it is an Excel spreadsheet). That's one of the reasons I
do not use rfc-ignorant.org.
 
> I believe that the main problem of RFC954 is that it tries to (well, it 
> DOES) define both a protocol and a policy. In the absence of a document 
> which defines "just the protocol", though, which could obsolete RFC954, 
> the removal of 954 to HISTORIC status is a misnomer. It *is* an active 
> protocol in use by registries around the world.

I agree. I have no problems with the protocol (well, yes, I have a lot
of them, but no legal or political issues with it).

> to obtain that complete info via a standardized protocol. (Too many 
> ccTLD operators point people at web pages, which - unless there is a 
> standard - breaks automated tools quite handily).

But they are a good protection against data harvesting, which is a
common way to avoid purchasing the database. Same thing for the
incredible and painful variety of whois outputs. <provocation>Some
people see it as a good way to limit harvesting.</provocation>
 
> minimum - a new/updated RFC defines the protocol, and preferably until 
> there is both a protocol RFC as well as a policy RFC".
> 
> We can debate what the policy RFC would say at a later date. ;-)

No. It is *not* IETF's business to define a policy for whois. The
protocol RFC is developed by the Crisp WG (or similar efforts such as
IRPI). The policy will be discussed in other forums like CENTR or
ICANN.