DENIC registry, which manages German country-code domain .DE, changed the rules of accessing Whois service on its official website. From now on, when users do a query about a name they are interested in, they don’t get the information they require straight away. First, they have to tell why they want to get access to this data. There are several possible answers to this question, for example, “because you think that the use of the domain raises a legal problem” or “because you want to collect information about the domain holder for business purposes”. There is also an option called “because of any other reasons”, where the user is asked to write them down.
As Domain Incite points out, there is no “wrong” answer, whatever you choose you will get access to Whois. However, the visitor is notified that they can only use Whois data for “legitimate purposes” and violating this rule will entail legal consequences. DENIC representatives explained that the new rule had been introduced in order to collect statistical information about the usage of Whois service by different groups of users. We remind that General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will be introduced in EU in May. Its provisions require changes in the way Whois service works. Therefore, information collected by DENIC might assist in finding a compromise solution.
