Re: ARIN WHOIS for leads

[Joel M Snyder <Joel.Snyder () Opus1 COM>]

>What about the 2am phone calls from the guy, who did a
>nslookup on a website, and then whois on the ip,
>who is calling to say his porn site
>is partially not working and he's pissed.

No amount of changing contacts is going to solve this type of problem.

We routinely get support calls, sometimes even in the emergency support 
line, from people who are pissed off at an ISP 2,000 miles away called 
"Opus" something-or-another-but-not-Opus-One.  Apparently their dialup 
service is not so hot anymore and when it doesn't work, the 
one-step-down-from-AOL customer base they attract types "opus" into 
their browser and then calls whatever phone number comes to the top of 
whatever search engine their browser vendor chose for them.

Changing the nature of WHOIS isn't going to keep the stupid from doing 
stupid things.  However, it might make life harder for the not-stupid 
trying to solve real problems.

Honestly, this seems to me like a non-problem.  I liken it to the 
hypersensitivity of some people to spam, where if they get 1 message 
through their filters it's somehow a major crisis.  Maybe our ACD, which 
requires the clue-challenged to be able to spell the first or last name 
of the person their calling, or perhaps read the extension number from a 
directory listing, screens the worst of the worst out from us...

I also don't see the problem of cold calling when it's obviously for a 
service or product that I am interested in, just as I don't see the 
problem of cold snail-mailing for the same services.  I'm in business, 
and I expect other businesses to try and market to me.  I don't want to 
hear from window, insurance, and other crap sellers, but if a Cisco 
reseller or bandwidth seller wants to make contact and say "how can I 
help you?" that doesn't seem out of line to me.

Only in the world of email do we (justifiably) get all weirded out by 
the prospect of unsolicited sales pitches.  It seems to me that if you 
don't want people to call you, don't give out your phone number (or give 
out a phone number that makes it hard for anyone but a real person who 
really wants to talk to you to get to you).   How did our little 
capitalist industry suddenly become a "you must have permission to 
contact me by any means no matter what" industry?


jms


--
Joel M Snyder, 1404 East Lind Road, Tucson, AZ, 85719
Senior Partner, Opus One       Phone: +1 520 324 0494
jms () Opus1 COM                http://www.opus1.com/jms