More Whois Chatter: Privacy for Internet Names Moves Forward
As this article illustrates, there is a lot of interest brewing around ICANN’s proposed Whois privacy policies. I suspect that a lot of this interest is due to the fact that the intellectual property community can see the end of their free ride and they are really turning up their efforts in a last ditch attempt to overturn ICANN’s progress.
For as long as the Whois system has been around, they’ve been able to look up your personal contact data and churn out demand letters and other nasty legal notices on demand. The problem with this behavior is that the system was designed to support this type of activity, nor should this type of activity be continued at the expense of the privacy rights of the majority of internet users. The intellectual property lobby pays *nothing* for the ongoing support or maintenance of this sytem, yet they put incredible demands on it. I have actually asked them who should pay for change to the Whois system necessary to support their demands and they’ve said point blank that the most equitable way would be to tax all domain registrations!
I spoke with Nick Jesdanun of Associated Press yesterday about the whois policy recommendations that were recently put forward, and he’s written a typically great article about the general issues surrounding whois and whois data privacy.
Many owners of Internet addresses face this quandary: Provide your real contact information when you register a domain name and subject yourself to junk or harassment. Or enter fake data and risk losing it outright.
Help may be on the way as a key task force last week endorsed a proposal that would give more privacy options to small businesses, individuals with personal Web sites and other domain name owners.
– Nick Jesdanun, Associated Press
I would have liked to have seen the article include a slight bit mroe detail around some of the reactions coming from outside of North America. Hollywood’s lobby is pretty strong on this side of the pond, but that hasn’t stopped heavyweights like the European Union from weighing in on the issue on the side of privacy [PDF].
The basic issue at stake is whether or not intellectual property lawyers should continue to have unfettered access to your customer data or not. The usual suspects – the RIAA, MPAA and curiously, internet heavyweights like Microsoft and Yahoo! say yes, definitely. Naturally, Tucows came out on the side of the customer and held the line to ensure that basic personal privacy rights are respected as far as domain registration data goes.
