RE: [dow1-2tf] RE: WSJ story re Whois and proxy services

[Paul Stahura <stahura@xxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 30 Sep 2004, at 11:41 [=GMT-0400], Steven J. Metalitz IIPA wrote:

> The WSJ article asserts that these services are becoming increasingly
> popular, and that 5% of "new registrants" are using these services.
> In light of this I suggest that we re-visit the question of whether it
> would be productive to find out more about how these services, which
> apparently are becoming an important part of the Whois landscape,
> actually operate.

More information on the "5% of new registrants" number (though accurate) in
the WSJ piece may show a different picture that what you assume.

Jay at Name Intel asked me for some data on eNom's ID protect.  He said it
was for an article. The "new registration" numbers are skewed because eNom
had a large company customer recently register 100,000 names (a significant
percentage of new name registrations) and put them all on ID protect while
they got ready to launch their product. I assume they did not want their
competitors to know they were doing this certain product.  Now that the
product is launched, they've removed the ID Protect.

This type of use (hiding business ventures before announcement, for example,
exxonmobil.com was registered 5 days before the merger was announced) might
explain why the "new registrants" percentage is larger than the "total"
percentage (if it even is when you remove the, probably, 1-time 100k name
anomaly).  It may not be due to an increasing popularity trend by people up
to no-good as you may have assumed. 


Paul