On 01/19/2013 10:25 AM, John R. Levine wrote:
Yes, it's a copy of a database the contents of which are public by law.
What could this possibly have to do with anything related to ICANN?
Well, here is how it could: 1. Guns are are intentionally designed to cause mayhem and death at a distance. Some guns are designed primarily to commit that mayhem on animals. But many guns are designed primarily to commit that mayhem on humans. Other uses are ancillary to that purpose. But even guns used for those other purposes retain their ability to cause great bodily harm to people. Guns are most definitely dangerous instrumentalities of great bodily harm. 2. Domain names, on the other hand, are far from lethal and one would have to be very imaginative to construct a situation in which a domain name could cause physical harm or death to a human. So it is safe to categorize domain names as instrumentalities highly unlikely to cause bodily harm. 3. It stands to reason that absent other considerations that privacy protections should be less for information concerning the possession and use of instrumentalities of great bodily harm than for things that are not generally capable of that kind of damage. 4. Therefore, absent other considerations, if guns ownership is deserving of privacy protections then there is even more reason to protect the privacy of domain name ownership. --karl--