Re: .ORG Registrar ID List (was: Stupid .org registry code change)

[ken emery <ken () cnet com>]

On Mon, 22 Dec 2003, Mike Lewinski wrote:

> Bruce Beckwith wrote:
>
> > You should deal with a registrar for this information, since that is one
> > of the services they can provide for you.
> Right, but in a case where my client inherited a domain from their
> predecessor, and has no idea who their registrar is, I seem to be in a
> catch-22.... This was my purpose in issuing a whois query to begin with-
> to learn which registrar they need to contact to make DNS authority changes.

> OTOH, if you are suggesting that I should contact *my* registrar of
> choice to obtain this information... this seems more than a little
> ridiculous (to me at least, and I suspect OpenSRS is not going to
> appreciate getting a new support ticket every time I want to do a whois
> to figure out what other registrar has a domain that my client doesn't
> even intend to transfer to them).

Actually your registrar of choice should be able to easily get this
information.  However if your registrar is just doing things to keep
prices as low as possible then they probably won't appreciate being
asked to do this sort of thing (there is a reason to use the more
expensive registrars).

> Why should I {e-mail|call} to get what used to be available with a
> simple whois query?

Is there a standard for a whois query?  If not you are kind of
screwed.  You have just been relying on things staying the same
and been "lucky" so far that they haven't changed much.

> What have we gained by making this process even more
> complicated? I have no beef with the use of Registrar IDs, I'm sure
> there are benefits to using them. But I do think that they are a poor
> substitute for what used to be human-readable information.

This I agree with.  However for my .org domain and a couple of
others I work with (that are at different registrars) all have the
same outputs if you use "whois -h whois.pir.org domainname.org".
Different registrars at the .com/.net level have different outputs
so I can't see where this would be a difficult problem.

bye,
ken emery