Derek Smythe ha scritto:
Hi
Re: Open letter to ICANN
http://www.badwhois.info/wp/?p=256
Well worth a read to see what devastating effect registrars who ignore reports of fake whois are having, also the general internet user perception of ICANN.
I think you are making a fundamental mistake here - you want a frauding website taken down by ICANN because it has incorrect Whois information. What you should want is rather that a frauding website is taken down by its country's police because it violates its country's laws. I would be very, very, very concerned if ICANN staff started to take decisions on whether a website is "criminal" or not, possibly just by having a quick look at its home page or because of blanket assumptions like those made in the complaint, such as "Site gathers personal information on insecure form. Legitimate businesses do not gather this type of information without security precautions". I would also be very concerned if ICANN started to disable domain names on the grounds that "the postal code entered is incorrect". However, I concur with the letter that the WDPRS is a useless service that appears to have been deployed more as a token effort than for real. I think it should just be dropped - if people suspect that a website is doing fraud, they should call the police, not ICANN. If there is the need for cross-national cooperation, the various polices should just do their job and get organized to cooperate quickly and effectively. If there are countries that do not cooperate, then this is definitely a matter for national diplomacies to sort out - the US was able to impose its flavour of intellectual property regulation to the whole world through TRIPs and bilateral agreements, don't tell me that it is not strong enough to get cooperation on cybercrime. ICANN, in any case, should care more about Internet fraud and be more cooperative - but possibly by referring these (very valid and important) complaints to the appropriate law enforcement agencies depending on the countries involved. It could act as an information clearinghouse that could be very useful. Finally - about the "general internet user perception of ICANN": The "general internet user perception of ICANN" is non-existing - users don't know that ICANN exists. If you refer to "active users" and user groups, however, the perception is then much different according to the part of the world. For example, in Europe ICANN is usually perceived as an instrument to further the U.S. control over the Internet, for example by removing from the Internet the privacy that is guaranteed to European citizens by their national laws. And please don't be upset about this - it is not advocacy, it is just a fact that derives from cultural differences. Ciao, -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------