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What is WHOIS?WHOIS – not an acronym – is both a protocol and a service. In internet terms, WHOIS is fairly old having been developed in the mid-1980s. The use of WHOIS today is at a scale and for purposes which were never envisioned by the people who developed it. When the internet was an academic, technical and military experiment, and the domain name system was in its infancy, WHOIS provided a way for members of that small community - many of whom knew one another personally - to publish and access details about who was responsible for a particular domain name. The envisioned use was primarily to enable technical operators to make rapid contact with one another to resolve technical issues. In the gTLD environment (and the majority of ccTLDs), each and every registered domain name is required to have an accompanying WHOIS record which publishes contact details for the registered name holder (also known as registrant), and other technical data related to the domain. There are two types of WHOIS record: thick and thin. Thick WHOIS is mandated for all new gTLDs and for .org and most other legacy gTLDs. In a thick WHOIS record, all the data is held by the TLD registry. Thin WHOIS applies to .com and .net, which together comprise approximately half of all gTLD registrations. In a thin WHOIS environment, the registry only holds details of the domain name, the registrar, nameservers and certain technical information; the registrar holds the contact information for the registrant, administrative, technical and billing contacts. For more information about how WHOIS developed: https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/final-report-11may12-en.pdf (p4 ff) The anatomy of a WHOIS recordHere is a thick WHOIS record, annotated to show the different elements: Here is an example of a thin WHOIS record. To obtain contact details for the registrant and other contacts, it is necessary to perform an initial WHOIS search to identify the registrar, followed by a second WHOIS search with that registrar. Who uses WHOIS, and for what purpose?
This is a non-exhaustive list. For a more detailed analysis see Expert Working Group report, chapter III Policy issues arising from WHOISWHOIS has been a contentious issue ever since ICANN was established in 1998. It has proved highly challenging to achieve consensus on WHOIS issues within the ICANN community. This is because there are competing, legitimate interests on several sides. Discussions relating to WHOIS focus around the following issues:
The legitimate positions of different stakeholdersICANN community members who have experience in engaging in policy discussions relating to WHOIS will confirm that it can be a frustrating process. In part, this is because there are legitimate but competing interests from different sections of the community, and the stakes are high. This section summarises the positions taken by different stakeholders and gives a little detail on why those positions are taken:
The future of WHOIS – registration directory servicesWhile it is difficult to obtain consensus on many of the details relating to WHOIS, there does seem to be a prevailing view that WHOIS as a service is no longer fit for purpose and should be replaced. Here are some links to ongoing work. - RDAP - Reviews, studies and proposals However, starting again from scratch is going to be a challenge. WHOIS records affect more than 150 million gTLD domain names, and WHOIS lookups are programmed into numerous workflows (such as domain name registration). Whatever the outcome of a replacement service, there will remain a substantial legacy problem to resolve. Any system which performs the same function – ie publishing authoritative data relating to domain name registraitons – is likely to raise similar policy issues as are covered in this note.
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