I think a lot of people are confusing access to some kind of IP location data with access to high(er) accuracy data. Yes, you could scrape whois data to create

I think a lot of people are confusing access to some kind of IP location data with access to high(er) accuracy data. Yes, you could scrape whois data to create a IP location database but even country level would be in the mid-80s and then dramatically drop off from there. In the early dot-com boom, that was good enough since there was nothing really better.