RE: whois broke again?

["Roeland M.J. Meyer" <rmeyer () mhsc com>]

> Behalf Of Sean Donelan
> Sent: Monday, February 21, 2000 1:22 PM
>
> On Mon, 21 February 2000, bmanning () vacation karoshi com wrote:
> > Yes there are interesting scoping issues.  Yes there are concerns wrt
> > evil people and tolerent applications. But this tactic clearly puts the
> > onus on the people in control of the useage, not some
> centralized repository.
>
> That sounds great, except the time when WHOIS is most important is when
> the contact has totally screwed up their site and can't be reached by any
> in-band network.  The nice thing about WHOIS is it tends to be out-of-band
> with respect to most screw-ups.  The notable exception is when
> NSI screws-up.
>
> The open question is why can RIPE get people to put good data in
> their database,
> and NSI can't manage to keep the little correct data they have
> uncorrupted?

Because RIPE actually cares?

All of the RIPE registries are enjoined to keep the data pure and RIPE
checks it. NSI, OTOH, doesn't find out about bad contact data until the bill
is due for payment. However, it is almost invariably true that the Billing
Contact info is accurate. Ergo, they may not even find out at the next
billing cycle (two-years, for the first cycle and annualy after that).

RIPE actually ENFORCES data integrity.