Re: Request to Move RFC 954 to Historic Status

[Shane Kerr <shane@xxxxxxxx>]

Hugo,

On 2003-04-23 11:00:30 -0400, Hugo Salgado H. wrote:
> 
> This is my first mail to this list. My name is Hugo Salgado,
> and i work on NIC Chile, the .CL cctld administrator.
> Since few weeks ago we've been receiving complaints for the
> mail-blocking list that www.rfc-ignorant.com mantains.
> That list is blocking entire ccTLDs that are not respecting
> the RFC 954 on their whois service.
> As you were discussing before, that RFC lacks of things like
> privacy policies, anti-data-mining for spammers, etc.
> In .CL we don't publish the email addresses for our registrants,
> and that is the cause that rfc-ignorant is blocking the entire
> .cl email addresses.
> 
> Is there an RFC that overrides the very old 954 ?? i know that
> .PL is listed in the blocked countries, for the same privacy
> policies in whois.dns.pl, but that was dicussed before in this
> list ??

I guess you're referring to this:

http://www.rfc-ignorant.org/policy-whois.php
http://www.rfc-ignorant.org/policy-ipwhois.php

The only part of RFC 954 that *we* use is:

PROTOCOL

   To access the NICNAME/WHOIS server:

      Connect to the SRI-NIC service host at TCP service port 43
      (decimal).

      Send a single "command line", ending with <CRLF> (ASCII CR and
      LF).

      Receive information in response to the command line.  The server
      closes its connection as soon as the output is finished.

To be honest, I think the rfc-ignorant people are misreading the RFC.
There are clearly huge parts of it which don't apply any more.  The
entire INTRODUCTION is wrong.  The WHO SHOULD BE IN THE DATABASE has
no meaning today.  The EXISTING USER PROGRAMS is also extremely out of
date.  Nobody implements the COMMAND LINES AND REPLIES as listed.


In the RIPE NCC database group, we've had bad experiences with the
rfc-ignorant people in the past.  They don't like our policies, but
have been unwilling to participate in any of our forums - by which I
mean open mailing lists - to change the policies to meet their needs.


Regarding your proposal, I agree.  Or perhaps a "protocol-only" RFC
could replace it.

-- 
Shane Kerr
RIPE NCC