how inaccurate WHOIS records thwart their investigations. Congressional hearings have been conducted about the importance of WHOIS in 2001, 2002 and 2006. The Fraudulent Online Identity Sanctions Act "make it a violation of trademark and copyright law if a person knowingly provided, or caused to be provided, materially false contact information in making, maintaining, or renewing the registration of a domain name used in connection with the violation," where the latter "violation" refers to a prior violation of trademark or copyright law. The act does not make the submission of false WHOIS data illegal in itself, only if used to shield oneself from prosecution for crimes committed using that domain name. ICANN proposal to abolish WHOIS The Expert Working Group (EWG) of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) recommended on 24 June 2013 that WHOIS should be scrapped. It recommends that WHOIS be replaced with a system that keeps information secret from most Internet users, and only discloses information for "permissible purposes". ICANN's list of permissible purposes includes domain-name research, domain-name sale and purchase, regulatory enforcement, personal data protection, legal actions, and abuse mitigation. Although WHOIS has been a key tool of journalists in determining who was disseminating certain information on the Internet, the use of WHOIS by the free press is not included in ICANN's proposed list of permissible purposes. The EWG collected public input on the initial report until 13 September 2013. Its final report was issued on 6 June 2014, without meaningful changes to the recommendations. , ICANN is in the "process of re-inventing WHOIS," working on "ICANN WHOIS Beta." Standards documents – NICNAME/WHOIS (1982, obsolete) – NICNAME/WHOIS (1985, obsolete) – WHOIS protocol specification (2004, current) See also Domain name registry Regional Internet registry Routing Assets Database Routing Policy Specification Language Shared Whois Project Registration Data Access Protocol References Sources External links IANA WHOIS Service The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority XML Whois Server list ICANN Whois Inaccuracy Complaint Form Whois status codes Internet protocols Internet Standards