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

Jeffrey A. Williams jwkckid1 at ix.netcom.com
Wed Aug 20 19:28:47 EDT 2008


John and all,

  I'm assuming that you are including small business, either commercial
or non-commercial in your definition inclusive of the majority of
domain names registered?  If so, try to recognize, which I am sure
is difficult for you, that small businesses cannot be bothered nor
afford financially continuos inquiries by LEA's or members of the
IPC, vis a vi RIAA/MPAA lawyers and their private detectives
of various sorts and limits of legitimacy, into their personnel affairs,
activities, or other business affairs of most types.  Ergo, registrant
privacy is necessary and economically beneficial.

  What's far more important is that Whois data is accurate.

John Levine 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.  Personally, I see it more as vanity domain
> registrants vs. the other 99.9% of Internet users.
>
> It's true, people can find you if your information is in WHOIS.  On
> the other hand, the assumption that registering a domain places no
> obligations on the registrant beyond paying the ten bucks is absurd.
> The vast majority of domains are registered for commercial purposes,
> some for legitimate commercial purposes, a lot for illegitimate
> commercial purposes.  Bad guys use domains for all sorts of egregious
> privacy violations, from so-called co-reg where they get you to
> provide your e-mail address and other personal information and then
> sell it to a thousand sleazy businesses, to phishing, to outright
> fraud, to 419 scams.  WHOIS info, even in its current rather imperfect
> form, is extremely useful when locating, shutting down, and occasionally
> even prosecuting these bad guys.
>
> So although I do not for a minute disagree that natural persons who
> register domains have privacy rights, people who don't have their own
> domains have privacy rights too, and there are a lot more people
> without domains than with.
>
> 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.
>
> R's,
> John
>
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Regards,

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