John, I appreciate this message, and the last one with the points about WHOIS. In joining ICANN in April and becoming part of the ALAC in June, my intent and my organization's intent is to, with humility backed up by empirical data, speak for consumers -- many, probably most of whom have never registered a domain and never will, but use them every day, as you put it. I've been struck by the number of people in the discussion and working groups who seem to equate "consumers" or "end-users" with registrants. Part of our reason for being at Consumer Reports is to measure consumer attitudes and behaviors, then advocate for consumers appropriately (which includes testing products and giving advice about which ones to buy). It seems surprising to people in the ICANN community that consumers care less about the privacy rights of registrants than they care about solutions to fraud, being ripped off, etc. Making this statement, I was immediately confronted with the usual "what about the children" arguments, and astonishment that what I was saying placed consumers in the camp of intellectual property attorneys. (Note that I DIDN'T say, "consumers want law enforcement to have complete and unfettered access to WHOIS data without due process," or an absurdity of the like. Note also that I DIDN'T say consumers would not support technological solutions that might actually create a business opportunity for somebody). I hope within the ICANN community discussions about important issues such are not unnecessarily circumscribed and mischaracterized for the sake of rhetoric. Personally, I am hoping to find common ground among the groups, as you describe, and advocate accordingly. Beau Brendler Director, Consumer Reports WebWatch http://www.consumerwebwatch.org -----Original Message----- From: alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:alac-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of John L Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2007 10:38 AM To: RJGlass | America@Large Cc: At-Large writ small Subject: [At-Large] Who is At-Large, anyway? I have always found a major lack of agreement about who the at-large is supposed to be. One group believes it is the domain registrants who are not part of other constituencies, which more or less means individuals (like me) who register personal vanity domains. The other group believes that it's all the Internet users who are not parts of other consitutencies, all the people who have never registered a domain and never will, but use domains every day when they use the Internet. In a lot of areas, the interests of these two groups are the same, e.g., we all would prefer that our registrars were competent and honest. But in a lot of other areas, they aren't, with WHOIS being the most obvious place. Am I the only one who thinks that non-registrants count, or is ALAC a club for vanity registrants? Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, ex-Mayor "More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly. _______________________________________________ ALAC mailing list ALAC@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac_atlarge-lists.icann .org At-Large Official Site: http://www.alac.icann.org ALAC Independent: http://www.icannalac.org *** Scanned