AFNIC have announced they will discontinue their service of publishing the list of newly registered .fr domain names as of February 19, 2008 as per the news release below.
Since 2000, the AFNIC publishes on its website the list of .fr domain names registered in the last 30 days. This list initially thought to inform has been used in different ways that must be supervised legaly.
For this reason, the list will no longer be published on the AFNIC website starting February 19th, 2008.
The Whois Data Access Qualified Service
On the other hand, the AFNIC offers a new service, the Whois Data Access Qualified Service, to third parties that wish to build services with added value around the list of registered .fr domain names.
This access will be subject to the signature of a specific contract, and subject to AFNIC’s approval of the access application.
All .fr domain names that are published via the Whois directory (www.afnic.fr/outils/whois) will be concerned.
Holders have the possibility of requesting that their domain name(s) be removed from the communicated list, if they can prove that the communication of the existence of said domain name(s) could create a risk for the bodily safety of a person or a dangerous risk to national security.
This request for removal is to be sent as soon as possible to the registrar in charge of the domain name, who will transfer the request to AFNIC’s Legal Department.
With these new modalities, the AFNIC wishes to create an efficient and pragmatic balance around .fr between the protection of people’s personal data and the protection against infringements of third party rights.
The Whois Data Access Qualified Service: www.afnic.fr/outils/acces-donnees.
To see this announcement on the AFNIC website, see www.afnic.fr/actu/nouvelles/general/NN20080201_en for the English version and www.afnic.fr/actu/nouvelles/general/NN20080201 for the French version.
Source DomainNews