[dow1tf] Survey of registries and registrars draft

["Milton Mueller" <mueller@xxxxxxx>]

I will not be able to attend the conference call tomorrow. Here is
a rough and not very carefully drafted list of questions that might be 
used in a survey of registrars and registries. 

============================
Survey questions for registrars and registries:

<use introductory boilerplate from other survey>


1) Have your Whois servers been affected by the use of automated processes
that "mine" large quantities of Whois data? 

a. Yes
b. No

2) Please estimate the number of Port 43 queries you receive
weekly. 
2a) _____________
Use this estimate to provide a ratio of the number of port 43 
queries to the number of domain names you have registered.
2b) _____________

3) What portion of the load on your servers do you attribute to the
automated data mining processes mentioned above? 

a. ten percent or less
b. ten to twenty-five percent
c. twenty-five to fifty percent
d. fifty percent to 75 percent
e. More than 75 percent

4) Have you implemented measures to counter or block these automated
processes?
a. Yes. 
(If yes, please briefly describe method; e.g., IP Address blocking, check for human input, etc.) 
____________________________________
____________________________________
b. No

5) If you answered Yes to 4), how significant are the costs associated with
your response?

a. Very costly
b. Costly
c. Somewhat costly
d. Insignificant costs

6) How many bulk access sales of your Whois data do you make
(annually? quarterly?) 

7) What portion of the bulk access sales are attributable to the following
buyers? (please put an estimated percentage next to the category of bulk
access buyer)

___ Governmental law enforcement agencies
___ Intellectual property owners
___ Commercial information services that may service IP owners or LEAs
___ Researchers and noncommercial information services
___ Other (please provide a list of any major category we overlooked)


8) Do you believe that ICANN's fixed price for bulk access fairly
compensates you for the value of the data? 

9) Do you believe that other registrars are gaining access to your 
customer data via Whois in order to compete with you for domain name 
renewals? 
a. Yes
b. No

10) If port-43 were completely eliminated tomorrow, so that the only access to
the registrar or registry whois information would be via a website (port-80)
or via a bulk-access agreement, how much cost would you save or incur?

11) Please estimate the cost per query on port-43 whois service
hardware and development costs to allow for automated port-43 
whois queries.

12) Please estimate the cost per query to your company to compensate for the
negative future effects, for example in the form of spam sent to that
registrant, of that port-43 query.

13, 14) Please estimate the same things for web-based queries.

15) Please estimate the ratio of lookups for intellectual property and law
enforcement purposes to all other lookups performed on your port-43 whois
access point.  
a) 10:1
b) 1:1
c) 1:10
d) 1:100
e) 1:1,000
f) 1:10,000
g) more than 1:10,000

16) Do the same estimation for port-80 (web based access)
a) 10:1
b) 1:1
c) 1:10
d) 1:100
e) 1:1,000
f) 1:10,000
g) more than 1:10,000