Hi Michele I was referring to the Whois data because that is the data that must be publicly available - and raises legitimate privacy concerns. There are other issues that may be raised by the registration data that may be collected, but not displayed - and you're right, they need to be discussed separately. The point I was making about the Whois data is that WEIRDS will help address the privacy issues by providing a mechanism by which the correct Whois data can be provided, and then access to that data restricted (for accepted privacy reasons) while still providing access for legitimate law enforcement requirements (as is generally accepted under privacy laws) Holly. On 16/01/2013, at 8:42 AM, Michele Neylon :: Blacknight wrote:

Holly, Carlton et al

Reading over some of the comments from Holly and Carlton I think there's a small bit of potential confusion.

Whois data and registrant/ registration data seem to be used as if they were interchangeable - they're not.

Whois => gets displayed (at the moment) Registrant / registration data => what's collected which may (or may not) be displayed

These two concepts or labels should be differentiated.

There are currently two gTLDs that respect EU privacy law.

One, .cat, relaunched their whois with the new policy last week, as was previously mentioned. The other, .tel, has been running their whois with full respect for EU privacy law since they launched AND they've always had a policy to allow LEA gain access when required.

Regards

Michele -- Mr Michele Neylon Blacknight Solutions Hosting & Colocation, Brand Protection http://www.blacknight.com/ http://blog.blacknight.com/ http://mneylon.tel/ Intl. +353 (0) 59 9183072 Locall: 1850 929 929 Direct Dial: +353 (0)59 9183090 Fax. +353 (0) 1 4811 763 Twitter: http://twitter.com/mneylon ------------------------------- Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd, Unit 12A,Barrowside Business Park,Sleaty Road,Graiguecullen,Carlow,Ireland Company No.: 370845