Message

On 10/19/07, Ross Rader <ross@tucows.com> wrote:

John L wrote:

> Were it to pass, the people who use WHOIS data would just sue to
> maintain the status quo.  The position of the US DOC (the position which
> matters the most) is quite clear from the requirements they put in the
> .US rebid so ICANN's track record of caving to legal threats would
> remain unbroken.

Let them sue. I'm sure my government would love this.

> it's not abuse that the info itself is public.

No, of course not. But its the accessibility and anonymity that fosters
the abuse. Anyways, not really point. The example my link pointed to was
of a service that consists of illegitimately scraped Whois data going
back many, many years that now serves to provide contact information for
natural persons completely outside of the scope and purpose for which it
was originally collected.

> A good place for negotiations to start would be for the anti-data crowd
> to admit that there are indeed legitimate reasons to use WHOIS info, and
> there is not a basic right to register a domain.  (If there were such a
> right, we wouldn't be charging for them.)  That's been sorely lacking so
> far.

I don't think anyone has ever denied a) nor claimed b). The issue comes
down to whether or not those legitimate uses can or should be
accommodated through the public Whois system. I don't see any reason why
this is the cause. The ISP and Hosting industries have proven that it is
possible to accommodate legitimate uses of customer data without making
it publicly accessible on an anonymous basis. Its no wonder progress has
been so difficult on this issue - the starting point for the
anti-privacy crowd is simply so outrageous that it can't be reasonably
addressed.

-r

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