John L ha scritto:
Does the AtLarge community have any input to provide on this application? Yes - strongly in favour :-)
Like most of the other WHOIS anonymization, it's a huge tilt against the interests of the vast majority of at-large users who use domains but don't register them, in favor of cheats and crooks who register domains for various anti-social purporses.
In this case, since .TEL is dealing with national law in the country where they operate, there's not much wiggle room, but I'll have a more detailed comment once I have a chance to read it all the way through.
Ok - let me detail. As you know I really tend for more privacy, but not because I disagree with law enforcement needs in the broad sense, including antispam/antiphishing etc. However, I can tell you that the EU law does work, in the sense that even if your data aren't published, police can get to know who you are with a phone call (or with dedicated accounts set up at the registry). There clearly is a networking problem, in that you have to build a global network of law enforcement agencies that trust each other, and in turn they have to provide access to private supporting parties when necessary, but keeping all data public is not the solution to that, both because even if you get to know who the registrant is, then you still need prompt international cooperation to intervene; and because data are actually more likely to be accurate once they're not exposed to the average spambot. This said, I think that eventually allowing a registry to comply with their own national law is an unavoidable step towards not making ICANN look like a bunch of Americans willing to "export online law enforcement", which is becoming increasingly difficult to justify at the international level. -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------