On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 10:57:21AM -0700, Antony Van Couvering wrote:
Did the review team look at the relative harm, and likelihood of harm, to consumers from spamming vs. the benefits gained by making things easier for law enforcement?
Yes.
Also, did it consider the difference between correct information and the public display of correct information? One undeniable benefit of not publicly displaying private information (e.g., address, phone number) is that people are far more likely to provide correct information if they're not worried about stalkers and thieves showing up at their house, or salesmen calling them during dinner. If law enforcement has a reason to view private information, then it could be provided to them. I think very few people would object to that.
Yes, and I did (and do) object even to the current collection of WHOIS. I do believe, that WHOIS is illegal at all and should be terminated as soon as possible: http://www.iks-jena.de/eng/Blog/That-s-the-way-it-always-have-been You can imagine how this position survived the report generation process. YOu did read the report ... Compare yourself.
I would hope that the At Large community could help facilitate a solution that answers to the needs of the affected parties, including consumers, rather than provide a blanket endorsement to a plan ...
If AtLarge can't follow me to prohbit WHOIS services, there are several levels of "improvements" over the current system: 1) Insist on an ultra thin WHOIS system, which only shows the contractual relationships down the reseller chain (starting at whois.iana.org). This system would prevent export of private data into different legal systems. So the local laws can be used to regulate the access to WHOIS at any given place. 2) Insist on workable privacy services as decribed in the WHOIS RT report. Proxy services are for companies which try to hide new trademarks before publishing them, so those services are not relevant to the "end user". Sorry, I'm biased.