> Assuming they aren't illegally mining the WHOIS (which is doubtful for
> operations of that size), the answer is most likely that these two
> companies purchased the information from OpenSRS under the ICANN-mandated
> bulk WHOIS sharing program. (I'd be interested to hear if OpenSRS would
> confirm that, although I assume they aren't able to disclose customer
> information for privacy reasons. But if OpenSRS has never dealt with
> these companies, it seems possible to say so without overstepping privacy
> bounds... hint hint...)
One point of clarification. It is *not* a violation of terms and
conditions on the usage of public whois data to use *postal mail* for
solicitations. The ICANN policy only prohibits e-mail, telephone, and
fax bulk solicitations. (see section 3.3.5 of the Registrar Accreditation
Agreement at http://www.icann.org/registrars/ra-agreement-17may01.htm)
So they can legally mine the public whois and send postal mail
solicitations. But they cannot send out deceptive mailings, i.e. those
that violate postal regulations.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Tue Oct 19 2004 - 23:37:09 EDT