[dow2tf] Existence proof of tiered access

["Milton Mueller" <Mueller@xxxxxxx>]

Hello, colleagues.

During the teleconference Tuesday Steve Metalitz and 
others raised questions about the "mechanics and feasibility"
of tiered access. I asked several people in the technical 
and registrar community about this and was generally
greeted with incredulity. The following response provides
what I think is a fairly objective and reasonable demonstration
of the _routine_ nature of what we call "tiered access." I hope
that, based on this information, we can put this question
under our belt and proceed with the more central task
of deciding not whether it is implementable, but what particular 
implementation and rules best suit the WHOIS situation.

==========

Question: Is tiered access for WHOIS feasible and implementable

Answer:

Tiered access is a common solution amongst the community of online
information providers.

E.g look at newspapers with online interfaces.  They have public
Access (usually to the current day's news), and paid access (usually 
to be able to search the database of news stories).

Paid access can be on an individual basis, or on the basis of a
corporation (ie staff in a corporation get access under a corporate
plan).   The fact that there is free versus paid is not relevant, the
important fact is that there is anonymous and accredited/authenticated
access.

Information provision by tiered access has existed for as long as
computers have existed!   Consider the use of the file transfer 
protocol (ftp). Any "anonymous ftp" service was common before the 
advent of world wide web (WWW) applications.   Under "anonymous ftp" 
the public could gain access to certain files on a computer.  To gain
access 
to other files a person would need to enter a username and password.  
This authenticated the person gaining access, and the access rights
were 
normally determined by some sort of accreditation process.

The specifics of the implementation of tiered access for WHOIS may
vary
- but it  is "implementable" merely from that fact that such solutions
already exist.   

Note that the various private registration services being offered by 
some registrars are another example of tiered access.  Tier 1 consists
of the details of the private registration provider. Tier 2, which
consists 
of the actual registrants details, is typically made available to
lawyers 
and law enforcement on request.   

So again, tiered access already exists!