Avri, With due respect, you are making the same presumptions that you accuse John of. Firstly, the whois information is not to be used for marketing (see the terms). Second, you are talking about using "some word" but, you ignore the other part which there is truly is libel. Third, you ignore the commercial aspect, of you running your little (or big) online store and your customer has a problem. Or you are the one who is sending out the solicitation for the whois information, and I want to make sure you stop. You also ignore that when you register a domain name, you voluntarily agree to 3.7.7.1, 3.7.7.2 of the ICANN contract which requires TRUTHFUL information. Intentional provision of false information is fraud. There is a simple solution change the contract that permits a proxy service, but the proxy service will be liable for the use of the domain. That way, if web site operating using their domain name there is someone responsibility. Free speech has a cost, it is called responsibility.
Dear John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Why do you continue to call then vanity domains?
I find that as offensive as some would probably find me referring to nosy commercial users who wanted to know my phone number and email so they could try to sell me stuff or try to get me to transfer my domain. Or if I referred to viscous lawyer users who want to scare me because I used some word in my blog that they find offensive to their client.
With all due respect,
a.
On 2 Feb 2011, at 15:11, John R. Levine wrote:
I cannot accept that there cannot be a balance between the right to privacy and the right to know for those harmed by an act traceable to a domain.
There certainly should be a balance. But when there are a billion Internet users, and thousands of individual vanity domain registrants, it is silly to argue that the two interests are of the same weight and also to argue, as many have over the past decade, that vanity registrants must not be put to any extra or effort at all if they don't want to be treated the same as the businesses and organizations that register the vast majority of domains.
I also have to say that it is not helpful when people make claims, as we've seen recently, that WHOIS is useless for tracking miscreants, which is false, or that it's only used to research trivial misbehavior, which is equally false. It is also unhelpful when people refuse to recognize the scale of the modern Internet, in which web hosts routinely turn down thousands of domains every day for anti-social behavior. The real surprise is that they don't make more mistakes than they do.
All of my own domains have accurate WHOIS info. I use a post office box to receive my mail, so they don't show my home address, which I don't think is an unreasonable burden.
Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
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