[governance] Rights of the other 99.9% - privacy, ICANN, whois

[McTim]

On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 5:06 PM, John Levine <icggov at johnlevine.com> wrote:
>>> Put crudely, money and power led to IP rights trumping privacy
>>> rights.
>
> I doubt I'll change anyone's mind here, but I do think it's worth
> pointing out that the WHOIS issue is far more complex than the evil
> trademark lawyers vs. innocent users that it is often portrayed in
> forums like these.

Full ACK.

> It's true, people can find you if your information is in WHOIS.
<snip>
> If the WHOIS privacy crowd admitted that they were trying to carve
> out an exception for the sliver of domains registered by individuals,
> they might make some progress.  As it is, there's an alliance of
> convenience between the trademark lawyers (who are indeed evil) and
> various formal and informal law enforcement

including network engineers who use IP addressing WHOIS databases
extensively for troubleshooting, etc.

(who are trying to deal
> with evil) that has valid arguments in favor of public WHOIS and
> aren't going away.


Not to mention that registries often obscure ones email address and
other data from being shown to every spammer in the world who uses
WHOIS.


-- 
Cheers,

McTim
mctim.blogspot.com
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