What Python way would you suggest to check whois database records?

Question

I\'m trying to get a webservice up and running that actually requires to check whois databases. What I\'m doing right now is ugly and I\'d like to avoid it as much as I can:

Answer 1

Parsing another webpage woulnd't be as bad (assuming their html woulnd't be very bad), but it would actually tie me to them - if they're down, I'm down :)

Actually I found some old project on sourceforge: rwhois.py. What scares me a bit is that their last update is from 2003. But, it might seem as a good place to start reimplementation of what I do right now... Well, I felt obligued to post the link to this project anyway, just for further reference.