Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

NSI and the whois database

Author:phred@teleport.com
Posted:5/2/1999; 6:51:38 PM
Topic:NSI and the whois database
Msg #:5537
Prev/Next:5536 / 5538

One of the issues that NSI's recent mismanagement of the userland.com registration raises is the ownership of the registry database itself (what you look at with a whois lookup).

NSI recently has taken the position that they own the whois database. This was rather shocking to those who were under the impression that NSI manages the registry under a contract with the US government, and that transfer of intellectual property rights over that data to NSI's proprietary holdings was not ever contemplated.

But that's what NSI is saying, as this article indicates:

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/DailyNews/netsol990326.html

"The registry information is our proprietary information,” says NSI spokesman Chris Clough. "We’ve been providing it free to the community, but under the contract, all of the intellectual property gathered through the InterNIC process is our proprietary information."

ICANN is certainly aware of this, and both ICANN president Michael Roberts and the Commerce Department opposed NSI on this issue when quoted in the article.

This is a critical issue as ICANN continues developing its policies and regulations for managing the DNS. From my point of view, and acknowledging IANAL (I am not a lawyer), this amounts to claim-jumping by NSI. DNS registry data is a public trust, in my view, and I hope ICANN will assert that position and defeat NSI's self-serving position.

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