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

[Milton L Mueller]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Levine [mailto:icggov at johnlevine.com] 
> 
> 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 (who are trying to deal
> with evil) that has valid arguments in favor of public WHOIS and
> aren't going away.

Massive groan.....

I'm sorry, but John has followed the Whois debates closely enough to know that privacy advocates DID propose to carve out natural persons as the ONLY category of user whose Whois data would be shielded. And at the time we estimated openly that that applied to only about 20% of the domain holders, although no one knows for sure.

It's documented in this report: gnso.icann.org/drafts/icann-whois-wg-report-final-1-9.pdf   
On page 33: 

AGREED:
􀂃 A distinction between legal and natural persons must be made.
􀂃 This distinction must be made by the Registrant at the moment of
registration.
􀂃 There is no need for validation or a challenge mechanism to this selfdeclaration
at the moment of registration so long as a post-registration
mechanism exists.

AGREED:
The implication of this declaration is that the public display of WHOIS records
must be different in the following way:
Legal person: Full display of all WHOIS records
Natural person: Limited display of WHOIS records

Levine opposed the proposed change anyway. Now he claims that this was never on the table. Draw your own conclusions about the man's veracity. 
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