DENIC, the central registry for all domains under the Top Level Domain .de, recently changed the format of its WHOIS response. The copyright section has been updated and the copyright year is now correctly set to 2009.
Here's a whois response before the changes.
% Copyright (c)2008 by DENIC
% Version: 1.10.0
%
% Restricted rights.
%
%
% Terms and Conditions of Use
%
% All the domain data that is visible in the whois search is protected
% by law. It is not permitted to use it for any purpose other than
% technical or administrative requirements associated with the
% operation of the Internet or in order to contact the domain holder
% over legal problems. You are not permitted to save it electronically
% or in any other way without DENIC's express written permission. It
% is prohibited, in particular, to use it for advertising or any similar
% purpose.
%
% By maintaining the connection you assure that you have a legitimate
% interest in the data and that you will only use it for the stated
% purposes. You are aware that DENIC maintains the right to initiate
% legal proceedings against you in the event of any breach of this
% assurance and to bar you from using its whois query.
Domain: google.de
Domain-Ace: google.de
Nserver: ns1.google.com
Nserver: ns4.google.com
Nserver: ns3.google.com
Nserver: ns2.google.com
Status: connect
Changed: 2009-02-28T12:03:09+01:00
[Holder]
Type: ORG
Name: Google Inc.
Address: 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Pcode: 94043
City: Mountain View
Country: US
Changed: 2006-09-05T17:05:45+02:00
[Zone-C]
Type: PERSON
Name: Domain Billing
Organisation: MarkMonitor
Address: PO Box 155 10400 Overland Road
Pcode: 83709
City: Boise
Country: US
Phone: +1-2083895740
Fax: +1-2083895799
Email: ccops@markmonitor.com
Changed: 2008-09-24T08:40:07+02:00
And this is the response for the same domain after the changes.
% Copyright (c) 2009 by DENIC
% Version: 1.11.0
%
% Restricted rights.
%
% Terms and Conditions of Use
%
% The data in this record is provided by DENIC for informational purposes only.
% DENIC does not guarantee its accuracy and cannot, under any circumstances,
% be held liable in case the stored information would prove to be wrong,
% incomplete or not accurate in any sense.
%
% All the domain data that is visible in the whois service is protected by law.
% It is not permitted to use it for any purpose other than technical or
% administrative requirements associated with the operation of the Internet.
% It is explicitly forbidden to extract, copy and/or use or re-utilise in any
% form and by any means (electronically or not) the whole or a quantitatively
% or qualitatively substantial part of the contents of the whois database
% without prior and explicit written permission by DENIC.
% It is prohibited, in particular, to use it for transmission of unsolicited
% and/or commercial and/or advertising by phone, fax, e-mail or for any similar
% purposes.
%
% By maintaining the connection you assure that you have a legitimate interest
% in the data and that you will only use it for the stated purposes. You are
% aware that DENIC maintains the right to initiate legal proceedings against
% you in the event of any breach of this assurance and to bar you from using
% its whois service.
%
% The DENIC whois service on port 43 never discloses any information concerning
% the domain holder/administrative contact. Information concerning the domain
% holder/administrative contact can be obtained through use of our web-based
% whois service available at the DENIC website:
% http://www.denic.de/en/background/whois-service/webwhois.html
Domain: google.de
Domain-Ace: google.de
Nserver: ns1.google.com
Nserver: ns4.google.com
Nserver: ns3.google.com
Nserver: ns2.google.com
Status: connect
Changed: 2009-02-28T12:03:09+01:00
[Tech-C]
Type: PERSON
Name: Google Inc.
Address: Google Inc.
Address: 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Pcode: 94043
City: Mountain View
Country: US
Phone: +1-6503300100
Fax: +1-6506188571
Email: dns-admin@google.com
Changed: 2005-05-19T18:02:06+02:00
[Zone-C]
Type: PERSON
Name: Domain Billing
Organisation: MarkMonitor
Address: PO Box 155 10400 Overland Road
Pcode: 83709
City: Boise
Country: US
Phone: +1-2083895740
Fax: +1-2083895799
Email: ccops@markmonitor.com
Changed: 2008-09-24T08:40:07+02:00
Unfortunately, this change breaks the current version of the Whois library.
>> a = Whois.query "google.de"
>> a.available?
RuntimeError: Unexpected token: % Copyright (c) 2009 by DENIC
Due to the modularity of the Whois library, this change only affects the answer parser. The answer object itself and the main whois core feature continue to work as expected. As long as you don't need to access single answer elements, this change won't affect you.
The problem has already been fixed and a new Whois version will be available soon.
Thanks David Krentzlin for reporting me the issue along with a working patch.