On 01/19/2013 11:48 AM, John R. Levine wrote:
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.
So you're saying that nothing short of a death threat merits disclosing WHOIS information?
I think that a lot of people who've lost a lot of money to phishing would treat this opinion with the contempt it deserves.
You are missing the point - which is that if gun ownership should not be public information than domain name ownership even more strongly should not be made public. Thus, if one supports privacy for gun ownership then consistency would suggest that that person should more strongly support privacy for domain names. On the scale of harms I would hope that one can comprehend that a bullet hole in one's body is a greater harm than receipt of a spam email in one's mailbox. --karl--