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http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/technology/zdnet/story.
html?s=n/inter_ctive_week/technology/19980914/199809142004

Here's the story:

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'Whois' blocks abusers domain database
By Randy Barrett, ZDNet

Network Solutions Inc. is blocking certain companies from using its public 
database of domain name holders. 
NSI's Whois database contains detailed information on 2.3 million Internet 
domain name recipients who have registered through NSI's InterNIC service. The 
listings, which include name, postal address, telephone numbers and e-mail 
addresses, were designed primarily to help network operators communicate with 
domain holders. But Whois has become increasingly popular with companies that 
mine the list for direct mail marketing campaigns and subsequently burden its 
servers. 

"You don't have to tie up all the bandwidth [to mine the list]," said David 
Holtzman, NSI's senior vice president of engineering. 

Hits soaring
NSI allows mining of the Whois database, but in the past two months, the 
number of hits to the site has doubled every 20 days, Holtzman said. In June, 
the site received 12.2 million hits. In July, that number jumped to 21 
million. The August statistic was not available. 

Holtzman found that 32 percent of the Whois traffic - more than generated by 
all of Europe - was initiated by a single company. He won't name names but 
said two companies in particular badly abused the database and are now locked 
out. The culprits initiated parallel sessions via HyperText Transfer Protocol 
with multiple computers and slowed down by 50 percent access to Whois for the 
rest of the Net. 

"I interpret it as a denial-of-service attack," Holtzman said. 

But, in this case, the companies' motives appeared more impatient than 
nefarious. Holtzman at first tried to meet the demand by adding new hardware 
but finally gave up and filtered the two companies instead. Whois access 
speeds are now improving, he said. 
  
   [Here's the bit]

Can identify source
Numerous domain name holders said they regularly receive direct mail marketing 
solicitations from such companies as American Express Co. and Verio Inc. and 
can tell by the addressing that the source is Whois.                       

"Every time I register a domain, I get paper junk mail from Verio telling me 
what a swell idea it would be to use their service. It's quite clear what 
they're doing, since it always comes to the contact listed for the new domain, 
which I always list care of my company," said John Levine, author of the book 
Internet for Dummies. 

   [Did Greg and Dave bother to check these people out?]

NSI even uses the database for its own marketing. Last month, the company sent 
out e-mail messages to domain holders advertising digital identification 
services from VeriSign Inc. 

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   I don't want to move. I have two money orders made out to Verio that I was
just getting ready to drop off at the WWA offices. Shit! The ISP that I 
trusted has been bought by spammers. Any one know a good ISP?

Chris Williams of
   Chris'n'Vickie of Chicago
      chrisw@wwa.com
"How perfectly goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" - C. Crumb