How should Whois query restrictions be assessed? Start by distinguishing rate limits, quotas, and verification requirements
Whois query restrictions should not automatically be treated as obstacles to public information, nor should they be considered justified simply because they are described as anti-spam measures. First establish which service is involved, who is being restricted, and whether the restriction concerns query speed, daily volume, or automated access. The supplied material is a report dated January 28, 2004. It can inform a discussion of the trade-offs between privacy protection and convenient lookups, but it cannot establish the rules of any service today.
Different restrictions affect different ways of using a service
The dispute at the time involved the Network Solutions (NSI) database, Ratite.com, run by Gary Moore, and a Google feature that provided lookups through Ratite.com. It did not concern a single set of limits shared by all Whois services.
- Per-second rate limits: Moore said IP addresses making more than a few queries per second would be blocked to prevent abuse.
- Daily quotas: NSI imposed a daily query limit on third-party websites. The company did not disclose the number; roughly one thousand queries per day was only Moore’s estimate, not an officially confirmed quota.
- CAPTCHA: The report stated that NSI required users to enter a code consisting of letters and numbers, with the aim of blocking automated bots making repeated queries.
An assessment should distinguish between concentrated requests over a short period and queries accumulated throughout the day. Compliance with one type of restriction does not necessarily mean compliance with another.
Protecting contact details also requires examining the impact on lookup services
NSI CEO Champion Mitchell said at the time that Whois was a public service the company was required to provide, but that it was being severely abused by spammers, potentially putting customers’ email addresses and phone numbers into the wrong hands. This was the company’s stated rationale for the restrictions; it does not mean the material established that every requirement was effective or appropriate.
Third-party lookups, meanwhile, can help bring information together. Moore wanted to simplify a lookup process that was then spread across hundreds of registrars, with no central repository. He said Ratite.com exhausted its NSI quota within an hour while the Google feature was live. According to the report, Google removed the feature within days after most queries were blocked. This case shows that assessing quotas requires asking not only whether they can prevent data collection, but also whether they make integrated lookup services difficult to operate.
Commercial interests merit scrutiny, but speculation cannot establish why the feature was removed
Moore believed that spam prevention was partly a pretext for NSI to keep traffic on its own website to market services, and speculated that Google had removed the feature because of NSI. Mitchell acknowledged an advertising relationship between the two companies but denied that it was connected to the feature’s discontinuation. These statements cannot be combined into a definitive conclusion that a commercial relationship caused the service to shut down.
A better-grounded assessment would examine separately who is restricted, whether the limits are disclosed, which uses are blocked, and what evidence supports the anti-abuse rationale. This historical material illustrates the conflict, but it is insufficient to calculate a reasonable quota or determine whose motives were the real cause.
Whois query restrictions: perspectives from across the web
Does providing a public lookup service mean that all data mining should be allowed?
Not necessarily. In 2004, Network Solutions CEO Mitchell said the company had an obligation to provide a public Whois service but also needed to prevent spammers and others from mining the data. This illustrates that public lookups and bulk data collection can be treated differently. His statement alone, however, does not establish that any particular blocking measure was appropriate.
When a third-party lookup website hits a quota, how can the impact on users be assessed?
A website’s aggregate traffic must be distinguished from individual users’ query behavior. In the 2004 case, Moore said Ratite.com exhausted its Network Solutions quota within an hour while the service was live. The report also noted that Google removed its feature after most queries were blocked. The material shows that integrated services may be affected, but it is insufficient to conclude that every user was making excessive queries.
Does a paid privacy feature prove that query restrictions are intended to generate profit?
That conclusion cannot be drawn directly. The 2004 report mentioned that Network Solutions offered an email privacy feature for about $5. Moore also questioned the company’s commercial interest in keeping traffic on its own website. These details merit consideration, but they do not establish the true motive behind the restrictions or prove that the paid feature could adequately replace other anti-abuse measures.
References
- Network Solution’s Whois service blocks Googlewww.searchenginejournal.com · 2004-01-28T15:25:10+00:00 — Discusses: Does providing a public lookup service mean that all data mining should be allowed?; When a third-party lookup website hits a quota, how can the impact on users be assessed?
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