Fresh Zealand’s .NZ administrator sues DomainTools

Country code administrator states that DomainTools is violating its Whois Terms of Use.

Domain Name Commission Limited (DNCL), the group that oversees Fresh Zealand’s .nz country code domain namespace, has sued (sizable pdf) DomainTools over its collection of .nz Whois records.

The firm claims that DomainTools’ bulk collection of .nz Whois records violates its terms of use. Its Whois terms were updated in 2016 to explicitly prohibit publishing historical versions of Whois data. The terms also prohibit sending “high volume WHOIS queries with the effect of downloading part of or all of the .nz Register or collecting register data or records”.

It’s the publication of historical data that seems to have drawn the ire of DNCL. It recently added an Individual Registrant Privacy Option (“IRPO”) to allow some .nz registrants to keep their information private. But their historical information is available at DomainTools even once they add privacy.

DNCL reached out to DomainTools last year in an effort to resolve the issue, but it wasn’t happy with the progress it was making. It filed the lawsuit last month and is requesting a preliminary injunction against DomainTools.

The lawsuit comes at a bad time for DomainTools. It is right now coping with the fallout of GDPR, which has restricted the firm’s access to Whois records across most top level domain names overseen by ICANN.

A representative of DomainTools declined to comment due to the ongoing litigation.