DomainTools Blog

ICANN has a stupid policy that allows gTLD registries to opt-out of showing thick whois information. DotTel tried to use this policy because UK privacy law doesn’t allow whois. Or that is at least what DotTel is telling us. The US Government denied the proposal and I have to say I agree with them. I love the US Veto power in this case! I think whois should be open and transparent.  Call me biased, but I have seen more good things come out of the open whois than bad things.  By turning off whois, it would allow criminals to operate more freely in the dark. My mother is in property management and it is scientifically proven that if you keep lights on all night long in a dark parking lot it wards off crime. If whois records and domain ownership goes into the dark, more bad will happen than we are already seeing. While I generally don’t like the US Government using the Veto power, I think it was a good call in this case.

My view is actually counter to my strongest belief, I would prefer that registries don’t publish thick whois records at all. I want Registries to publish thin whois like Verisign does. Then let the registrars control the whois of who owns a domain. The registrars are the official source according to ICANN so registries should get out of the business of publishing thick whois.

ICANN also needs to enforce the rules against registrars that don’t publish whois records for DotOrg and other thick registries. Registrars are required to publish records even if the Registry is doing it as well. When DotName stopped publishing whois records we figured out the registrar for the domain and then queried them directly to get the record.  Some Registrars publish records, but some do not. We have the only whois service that allows people to get easy access to whois records in DotName (at least for registrars that follow the rules).

I am glad the US Government stepped in but let’s get the thick whois out of the registries and into the registrars. I would also require registries to publish the IANA id of the registrar along with the URL of the Registrar’s whois server.