In the EU at least, the distinction between citizens and commercial entities is often blurry, as I'm not sure about other places, but in the EU many countries have this notion of "authorized professional" as a legal commercial entity and many people are taking advantage of it. EU directives are also mostly guidelines (i.e. they specify a desired result, not how that should happen) and yes, disclosure of information about a business should happen, but the channel for that is not specified.
As an example of why your mention of European directives is bullshit, Romania is an EU member, yet the WHOIS information for our .ro TLD is locked behind www.rotld.ro. So in order to find out the WHOIS information about a domain, you have to go to a web interface and then go through a CAPTCHA screen meant to prevent crawlers.
Personally, I have yet to hear about a valid use-case for automated crawling of WHOIS information.
Also, Sitetruth.com is a shady business. I mean, you block ads on search engines you don't own and you do so for commercial purposes. That smells to me like copyright infringement. And seriously, who patents an ad blocker?
"You block ads on search engines you don't own and you do so for commercial purposes. That smells to me like copyright infringement."
Some content providers have the idea that their ad-based business model is somehow protected by copyright, and that users can't block ads. This has no basis in law and has gone nowhere in court.[1]
"And seriously, who patents an ad blocker?"
Google's Eric Schimdt once testified before Congress that it was technically impossible for Google to evaluate the legitimacy of web site operators. We did it. That meets one of the strongest criteria for invention - the big guys tried to do it and failed. Ad Limiter is a demo of that.
We're looking for someone who wants to take a bite out of Google. Yahoo gave up on search and became a Bing reseller, and Bing is just too confused internally. As computing gets cheaper, it becomes cheaper to provide search services, which makes Google vulnerable. As costs went down, ad density should have decreased. But it didn't. This puts Google on the wrong side of Moore's Law. A non ad supported search engine may become feasible, especially in the mobile space where it can go on the phone bill. It's interesting to see what Verizon is starting to do with Bing.
As an example of why your mention of European directives is bullshit, Romania is an EU member, yet the WHOIS information for our .ro TLD is locked behind www.rotld.ro. So in order to find out the WHOIS information about a domain, you have to go to a web interface and then go through a CAPTCHA screen meant to prevent crawlers.
Personally, I have yet to hear about a valid use-case for automated crawling of WHOIS information.
Also, Sitetruth.com is a shady business. I mean, you block ads on search engines you don't own and you do so for commercial purposes. That smells to me like copyright infringement. And seriously, who patents an ad blocker?