[arin-ppml] Whois Archival Policy?

[Jimmy Hess]

The policy doesn't currently say "bulk copies of all current whois data" 
It says "Bulk copies of WHOIS output"

If ARIN _does_  maintain  an archive of historical  WHOIS data;  I would 
expect all the
non-private data from that archive to be available under this policy, 
even the entire archive
(detailing every single WHOIS record to ever exist, and 
change-by-change, every revision ever made to
every record, and the date every change was made on)


But nothing about this policy says that ARIN will preserve  past 
versions of WHOIS records
or historical information in the first place.

I think ARIN should perhaps have a policy that every record will be 
versioned and every version
of every record to ever exist be retained in a historical archive.


It may very well be the case that ARIN doesn't have the historical 
information.
ARIN may not have the resources to commit to archiving old WHOIS 
information,
without a policy saying it should be done.

Or possibly the historical data is known, but not in a WHOIS-friendly 
format.





Also, sorting through historical data for records pertaining to a 
specific org or specific range is not
something you can get with "Bulk request"  as the policy is right now, 
"Bulk request" means all
records; if you want to filter out records that meet certain criteria, 
you do that yourself, after
downloading the _entire_  file from ARIN's website.



I believe that answering any request for bulk data may have a 
substantial cost --  use of ARIN
server resources and bandwidth to provide the bulk data to the 
requestor, or  DVD-Rs to record the data on,
in addition to the staff time involved.

There is also the portion of the cost of preserving the bulk data,  
divided by the total number of
requests  (the requestor's share of the long-term infrastructure costs 
involved in ARIN being able to
actually service their request).


Preserving the information may be a useful service to the public.

I believe it should be done.


But when an organization makes a request for bulk data, that 
organization should be required
to pay in advance, the cost of handling the specific request,  AND  a 
share of  the storage costs
for the historical data they retrieve.

Possibly with an appropriate discount if the requestor of bulk data is 
an ARIN member in good standing.


Not a high price -- but something sufficient to avoid frivolous requests 
for terabytes of
WHOIS data.

--
-J

Scott Leibrand wrote:
> I don't see anything in there about historical data: AFAICT that's just 
> talking about a bulk copy of all current whois data...
>
> -Scott
>
> heather skanks wrote:
>> Such a policy already exists.  NRPM 3.1
>>
>> http://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html#three1
>>
>>
>>       3.1. Bulk Copies of ARIN's WHOIS
>>
>> ARIN will provide a bulk copy of WHOIS output, including point of 
>> contact information, on the ARIN site for download by any organization 
>> that wishes to obtain the data providing they agree to ARIN's acceptable 
>> use policy. This point of contact information will not include data 
>> marked as private.
>>
>> [The Request Form for ARIN Bulk WHOIS Data, which contains the 
>> Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) for Bulk Copies of ARIN WHOIS Data, can be 
>> found at:
>>
>> http://www.arin.net/registration/agreements/bulkwhois.pdf]
>>