Everyone refers back to bad-faith and fraud as the reason everything in the world should be public. This is a false pretense. We would have much more luck in preventing spam and fraud if we were to work from the IP level, which actually works most times.
Having been involved with anti-spam advocacy for a decade, I can assure you that IP filtering is pretty much tapped out and all of the new work is related to domains, with relevant buzzwords including SPF, DK, DKIM, Sender-ID, and VBR. We really do need and use domain info, particularly WHOIS info, every day to deal with spam, phishing, and other abuse. Taking out info about the vast majority of domains that are registered by businesses and organizations that are not individuals and do not fall under anyone's privacy laws would be a major step backwards. But see my next message for a more basic question. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, ex-Mayor "More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.