[arin-ppml] Draft Policy 2008-7: Identify Invalid WHOIS POC's

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net 
> [mailto:arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net] On Behalf Of Lee Dilkie
> Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2009 4:52 AM
> To: Owen DeLong
> Cc: arin-ppml at arin.net
> Subject: Re: [arin-ppml] Draft Policy 2008-7: Identify 
> Invalid WHOIS POC's
> 
> 
> 
> Owen DeLong wrote:
> > On Mar 23, 2009, at 5:18 PM, Keith Medcalf wrote:
> >
> >   
> > While these are valid requirements for the email, they are 
> operational 
> > in nature and do not need to be spelled out in the policy.  I am 
> > confident staff will comply with these and other BCP-oriented 
> > practices in this process without codifying each and every 
> one of them 
> > into policy.
> >
> > Note that the policy does not automatically consider a contact that 
> > does not respond abandoned.  It specifically leaves that 
> determination 
> > to staff judgment which would probably include additional 
> attempts to 
> > contact by alternate methods.
> >
> >
> >   
> Since the policy specified "email" and that is only one of 
> many contact methods, perhaps the policy shouldn't be so 
> specific either and simply leave the details of "contacting 
> the record holder" to staff.

We (the policy originators) all felt this was a bad idea for 2
major reasons:

1) With the number of POCs in the whois database, e-mail
is the only practical method of contacting and getting a response
from them on an annual basis.  To do otherwise (perhaps a phone
call) would mean hiring a large number of people to sit there
dialing telephone numbers.  You also have language problems in
doing it this way and the inevitable transcription errors that
would result.  Postage is expensive as well, as is handling by
hand, paper responses.

ARIN will have enough to do attempting to validate by phone
and paper unresponsive POCs.  The goal here should be that ALL e-mail
addresses in WHOIS are responsive, so that it's a minimal cost to
verify the address registrations.

2) WHOIS mandates valid POC info INCLUDING THE E-MAIL ADDRESS.  It
is a contractual violation to supply a bogus or false e-mail
address - you agreed to supplying a correct one when you signed
the agreement to get your addresses.  The legacy holders also
STRONGLY IMPLIED they would supply legitimate e-mail addresses
in their WHOIS entries when they supplied their WHOIS records.

There has never been a time that ANY IMPLICATION EXISTED that
TCP/IP address assignors WOULD NOT BE REACHABLE BY E-MAIL or that
it would be OK to supply a "fake" e-mail address.  Indeed, one of
the primary reasons for getting TCP/IP numbering is e-mail.

Don't you think it's a bit odd that your proposing ON
AN E-MAIL MAILING LIST that we countenence removal of the requirement
for valid E-MAIL addresses in POC entries?  Using your own,
publically reachable, personal e-mail address to do so?  You
obviously have no problem with making your own e-mail address
public - so why would you think that any reasons put forth by
a POC for not having a valid e-mail address published in WHOIS
are anything other than bogus nonsense?

Thus, we (the proposers) simply did not consider a POC that has an
unreachable e-mail address to be a valid WHOIS entry.

Ted