Florian, Florian Weimer wrote:
of course, I can't speak for every DNS operator, but DENIC denying the transfer of the .de zone has no other reason than data protection, ie. making the harvesting of contact data of some 9 million plus domain name holders by just piping the zone through the whois impossible.
Your claim is absurd. The real privacy issue comes form forced publication of WHOIS data. As a member of the DENIC executive board, you certainly know that, so please stop spreading such misinformation.
it's interesting that you appear to know what I "certainly" know... What I indeed know is that DENIC's whois policy is well balanced between the interests of the individual domain name holder and the general public: bulk access to whois data is not possible, but only on a per-domain-name basis - ie. you need to have the domain name at hand to get the appropriate whois data. And besides that there is no other means (aka. 'key' - eg. last name, city of residence etc.) to access that data. This policy, BTW, is in full accordance with the relevant data protection bodies. But may I suggest that we have that discussion off this list - as RIPE's address policy and IPv6 WGs are IMHO the wrong fora to discuss DENIC's whois policy - and moved to a place of your choice? Best, Carsten