RE: [registrars] .net thick/thin discussion

[Paul Stahura <stahura@xxxxxxxx>]

I'd like to keep the whois information closer to the registrant, at the
registrar.  The further away from the registrant the more out of their
control their own information becomes.
There is no disincentive to stop the registries from leaking the information
to anyone.  The thick requirement increases their costs (and system
complexity) which they pass on to us.  Also, if they have this
responsibility they will put pressure on use to make expensive proactive
validity checks so that "their" outputted information is pristine. A thick
registry makes services such as whois privacy protection more difficult (as
some of those types of services change, for example, the email address
periodically and therefore would have to communicate all those changes to
the registry).  Database synchronization is a problem with the thick model.
If the registries want to provide a universal whois service or need it for
some other purpose they can ask for the information and be white listed.  We
have too many protocols for moving the whois around, why move it with EPP
too?  Let's standardize on one: IRIS.
Let's require the registrars to output it in a standard format but allow
optional output as well; the reseller information is only one type of
optional information that some of us choose to output.

I agree with Larry Erlich and also with Bruce's proposal, I'm OK with the
per-registrar model (the registrar chooses).  If the complexity increase is
problematic, then just make it thin.

Paul
Has anyone considered another alternative: depositing the whois at a common
third party across all ICANN-contracted TLDs? Not the registries and not the
registrars?




-----Original Message-----
From: owner-registrars@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-registrars@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Marcus Faure
Sent: Monday, July 26, 2004 12:06 AM
To: Larry Erlich
Cc: Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine; Bruce Tonkin;
registrars@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [registrars] .net thick/thin discussion


Hello,

even with a thin model, the first point of contact is the registry, e.g. you
have to go to the Internic whois first before you know which other whois
to query. Therefore the registry must be monitored closely, but IMHO doing
your
own whois does not help here. Sitefinder is a keyword for this discussion.

As long as we do not have standardized whois output, a thin model is more 
difficult to deal with. I also think that the per-registrar thin model that
Bruce proposed will cause this extra work, and honestly I do not believe
that
the average user understands it.

A registration service provider can be handled with an optional maintainer 
field in the whois. We have one on the CORE whois that defaults to the
member
number, but can also contain a URL.

Yours,
Marcus