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. Regards, Derek
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/ <--------
On 7-Apr-09, at 8:45 AM, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
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.
I would argue that they didn't, and in terms of cybercrime, the U.S. has one of the weakest anti-spam laws, written by marketers, on the books. There is plenty of work being done for x-border cooperation, in venues such as MAAWG.org and londonactionplan.org but in certain situations such as eastern Europe there is strong evidence of cooperative ventures between cyber criminals and government; I've seen credible reports linking the cyber-attack on Georgia, concurrent with the first bombs dropping, which were attributed to two Botnet herders. So were they in cahoots with the Russian military? Maybe. If so, getting them taken down when they have friends with nuclear weapons might be a tad difficult. The dismissive attitude of the Chinese government to last week's cyber- spying reports is another case in point. Your argument is a strawman, I too do not advocate ICANN's indiscriminate involvement in take-downs because a site collects data in an insecure manner, or due to an erroneous postal code, and I don't know anyone who advocates for such things. There is a role to be played in some particularly egregious situations, and in fact, all roads lead to Rome. There are, in some cases, no-where else to turn BUT ICANN. What we have seen in the one case of a shut-down last year was particularly unsatisfying, when the assets of Registrar owned by a criminal were sold to his business associate. I'm sure ICANN can do better, and certainly from those whom i met in Mexico, I got the impression that there is political will to do so. -- Neil Schwartzman Executive Director CAUCE: The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email Canada: +1 (514) 300 1916 US: +1 (303) 800 6345 Skype: spamfighter666 Fax: +1 (419) 793 0430 [Web]: http://cauce.org See http://stopspamhere.ca for ways to prevent spam from hitting your inbox.
Neil Schwartzman wrote, On 7/4/09 15:15:
Your argument is a strawman, I too do not advocate ICANN's indiscriminate involvement in take-downs because a site collects data in an insecure manner, or due to an erroneous postal code, and I don't know anyone who advocates for such things.
There is a role to be played in some particularly egregious situations, and in fact, all roads lead to Rome. There are, in some cases, no-where else to turn BUT ICANN.
What we have seen in the one case of a shut-down last year was particularly unsatisfying, when the assets of Registrar owned by a criminal were sold to his business associate.
I'm sure ICANN can do better, and certainly from those whom i met in Mexico, I got the impression that there is political will to do so.
The main issue I see is that many of the terms in ICANN contracts, and in this case the RAA terms which refer to whois data, would not stand a court case. I have some difficulty thinking that a court would rule that a domain name should be taken down because of invalid whois data, especially if it was paid for in a legimimate way. The remedy (take down) seems disproportionate to the sheer value of the registration (less than USD 10 in most cases). After all, you are not being asked for your address details when ordering at McDonalds, which is in the same price range as a gTLD domain name. There is the added issue that the RAA is between the registrar and ICANN. The customer is a third party. Depending on the local legal context, the customer could validly argue that he is not bound by the terms of the RAA. This is yet another example of ICANN drafting rules out of the blue and not testing their validity in the real world. Some would call it arrogance, but I would rather like to think this is idealism in its most naive form. Patrick Vande Walle Check my blog: http://patrick.vande-walle.eu
participants (4)
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Derek Smythe -
Neil Schwartzman -
Patrick Vande Walle -
Vittorio Bertola