They *were* planning to release the whois database on CDROM. That is,
until the story got posted on http://slashdot.org and they got hit by the
"Slashdot Effect".
Didn't stop the spam about it though, I got a few of these:-
----- Begin Included Message -----
From sammy@technotrade.com Wed Sep 23 05:17:28 1998
Received: from bbcgate.bbc.co.uk by sunf0.rd.bbc.co.uk; Wed, 23 Sep 98 05:17:27 BST
Received: from goose.prod.itd.earthlink.net (goose.prod.itd.earthlink.net [207.217.120.18]) by bbcgate.bbc.co.uk (8.8.5/8.7.2) with ESMTP id FAA29405 for <brandon@rd.bbc.co.uk>; Wed, 23 Sep 1998 05:17:25 +0100 (BST)
But, of course, (according to the statement on their website) "It has never
been our intention to have this product used as source for Unsolicited
Commercial E-mail."
How Clintonesque a definition: emailing to 100,000 and guerilla marketing
does not equal UCE/spam.
Spammers should be investigated by Ken Starr!
Dean Robb
PC-EASY computer services
(757) 495-EASY [3279]
For some reason, I found it quite humorous last night when we got SPAM
sent directly to abuse @ insync.net.
Joe Shaw - jshaw@insync.net
NetAdmin - Insync Internet Services
You've been hit by the new breed of spammers. Ex *nix admins put out of
business by MS NT. They like to save you a step by sending the spam
complaint and the spam in the same message to the place where it all ends up
anyways.. 
Tim
Heh. I don't buy their explanation either - if you look closely at the
node from UUNet that the spam was sent out on, you'll see it came from San
Diego. The domain name is registered to an address in San Diego.
Coincidence ? Hrm.
Here are some articles on the fate of those behind this fiasco.
http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/article/0,2334,14630,00.html
http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/15221.html
http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/daily/980921b.html
You'll notice in the Wired article that one of the people involved admits
that the list was for marketing.. "demographic research for direct mail
campaigns." Grr. I hope the list didn't go too far.