WHOIS redux: Demand privacy in domain name registration
Doc’s post and the impending comments deadline for the next iteration of ICANN’s never-ending WHOIS saga finally pushed me to write up my thoughts on the latest iteration of ICANN debate.
As Doc points out, much of the current debate is very inside baseball, tied up in acronyms atop bureaucratic layers. Small wonder then that ordinary domain name registrants and Internet users haven’t commented much, while the fora are dominated by INTA members turning out responses to an “urgent request” to “let ICANN know that Whois is important to the brand owners I represent”: see the call reproduced in this response.
So what is at stake? Everyone who registers a domain name is required to enter name, address, email, and telephone numbers in a publicly accessible database. When the Internet was a group of computer scientists testing new connection protocols, this might have been a helpful directory, but now, it’s filled with a hodgepodge: corporations, individuals, non-profits, fraudsters who fake their information no matter what the rules, and people who have no idea they’re exposing their personal info to the world (possibly because they think that their own national data protection (privacy) laws will keep them safe).
ICANN has mandated collection and display of this information as a legacy of old practices, not because there has been any agreement that it should be so. There’s no reason one should have to give up privacy in order to get a stable identifier for online speech. There has never been consensus on the status quo.
That’s important because ICANN is supposed to be a consensus-driven organization. Yet intellectual property interests, who see WHOIS as their own data-mine, have managed to stall any movement away from the status quo. As they’re trying to do again now.
The specifics of the current debate, apart from the substanceless comments filling the forums, is a proposal to allow domain registrants to substitute an “Operational Point of Contact,” or OPOC, in the public listing. While all their private information would still be collected, it need not be published. Instead, the OPOC would route messages to the right recipient, for operational, technical, or legal inquiries. Thus OPOC would simultaneously make WHOIS a better technical contact resource and improve domain registrants’ privacy options. Even OPOC doesn’t go so far as I would like — I’d allow anonymous registrations, rather than insisting that data be collected if not displayed — but it’s better than the status quo.
I therefore strongly support the OPOC proposal. But ICANN’s GNSO Council is filled with constituencies, none representing individual Internet users and domain registrants. If the OPOC motion fails, then the best solution would be, as Ross Rader of the Registrar constituency (Tucows) has proposed, for the GNSO to acknowledge its lack of consensus and recommend that ICANN drop the current WHOIS requirements from its registry contracts.
If this sounds tired, it’s because we’ve been here before. Many times, from as early as 2002, 2003, and 2004. Help break the deadlock:
Public comments are invited via email until 00:00 UTC (17:00 PDT) on 30 October
2007 on the GNSO Council’s WHOIS reports and recommendations.Submit comments to: whois-comments-2007@icann.org.
View comments at http://forum.icann.org/lists/whois-comments-2007/.
[...] To read the rest of Wendy’s article, go to her blog here. [...]
Pingback by » WHOIS Redux: Demand Privacy in Domain Name Registration by Wendy Seltzer Domain Name News, The Domain Industry News, ICANN News, Registry News, Domainer News, Domain — October 26, 2007 @ 10:18 am
Even as a person who is frequently opposite the IP-centric side of the debates, I still have a hard time with this argument. It boils down to these two points:
1) I simply do not understand why anybody would need to have a domain name in order to disseminate speech (anonymous or otherwise). One need not own a domain in order to speak (and it’s not as if there are plenty of channels left for one to speak without owning a domain — this comment on somebody else’s blog being just one example). In fact, owning a domain name obviously leads to one running a web site, which is an even less likely way to maintain one’s anonymity. This thought that the inability to anonymously register for a domain leads to less free speech just does not compute for me.
2) Domains are a public resource, and a provably scarce one at that (or we wouldn’t be having fights over them, would we?). There’s plenty of history that suggests that scarce commodity public resources should be subject to public registration. Since the domainers (who, let’s be honest, are really the ones driving this debate, not the free speechers) have frequently brought up the analogy that speculating in domains is no different than speculating in land, it should be easy to see the connection to real property registration systems and the like that require one to actually register one’s claim to the land in order to enforce it.
And, just to knock one other straw man down — If ICANN was demanding that I put my social security number up online in order to register a domain, I’d be a bit more sympathetic to these arguments. But, they are not doing anything of the sort, this is simple contact information. So, any attempt to equate this issue with the much more relevant concerns about public records that do reveal damaging information like SSNs (a concern I certainly share) are not on target.
One makes a rational choice to register a domain, and need not do it if one doesn’t want to pay the costs. The costs are obviously more then the $8 charged by the registrar — They include some degree of uncloaking one’s privacy. In the end, unless somebody can show me why my inability to get a truly anonymously-registered domain seriously undermines my constitutional rights, I don’t see why that isn’t a fair balance.
Comment by Michael — October 27, 2007 @ 5:39 pm
whois really running the show anyway?…
The SMH tech section has picked up on an ongoing debate about the whois service & what it should contain. ICANN was accepting submissions on a new set of proposals on how the whois database should work up until 00:00 UTC 30th Oct 2007 (that w…
Trackback by Development on a Shoestring — October 30, 2007 @ 9:59 pm
[...] what’s the actual issue? Wendy Seltzer has a good run-down on her site: The specifics of the current debate, apart from the substanceless comments filling the forums, is [...]
Pingback by DNS Choice Blog » Blog Archive » whois really running the show anyway? — October 30, 2007 @ 10:04 pm
I’m sick of recieving junk in the mail from the domains I’ve registered. Something seriously needs to be done to provide better privacy on domain registrations.
Comment by Grant — March 21, 2008 @ 7:08 pm
Domain registrations should remain private for everyone to avoid spam snail mail.
Comment by Judy — June 10, 2008 @ 8:29 am