By Wendy Seltzer

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.

Its interesting that this has cropped up again. It seems that European and Canadian privacy laws have begun to have an impact on the cabal of intellectual property interests and assorted supporting elements who aren't thinking hard enough about the issue who together have foisted Whois requirements on the Internet. I have written extensively and perhaps angrily about this issue in the past. I'm less concerned about the issue than I was in the past because the proxy services exist, and the need to handle subpoenas does provide some economic justification for them. However, there are better ways to handle this problem by far, and whats frustrating to me is the sheer amount of technical and situational ignorance that has been exhibited by people participating in this debate. I have never read an argument for the policies that exist that didn't fall to very simple critical thinking, and yet so many people insist on holding on to these deeply authoritarian ideas.

U: Predictably, ICANN upheld the status quo.

WHOIS Redux: Demand Privacy in Domain Name Registration

Russia has better Whois privacy laws than the U.S. or ICANN. Russia. RUSSIA!

Russia calls for an end of Whois in Dot RU � DomainTools Blog

It has taken almost three years—by some counts, more than 6 years—but ICANN’s domain name policy making organization has finally taken a stand on Whois and privacy. And the results were a decisive defeat for the copyright and trademark interests and the US government, and a stunning victory for advocates of the rights of individual domain name registrants.

In Historic Vote on WHOIS Purpose, Reformers Win by 2/3 Majority

] Earlier today on Politech we saw a critique of People for
] Internet Responsibility's take on whois privacy.
] Following are some replies from Politech members.

Some discussion following from my open letter to PFIR...

Replies to critique of PFIR and Whois privacy [Politech]

So, if you have a domain you are required to publish a telephone number in the whois database for everyone in the world to access. I have a number of domains, including this one. I had a working email address and real mailing address in the contact fields for these domains, but the phone number was phoney. (My registrar had my real phone number, but it wasn't published in whois.)

Why? Because I don't want to publish my personal cellphone number so that every idiot who wants to buy one of my domains can call me up at any hour of the day and talk to me about it. There is no real technical or administrative coordination issue that could possibly come up with any of my domains that would require that someone be able to immediately reach my personal cellphone. An email would always suffice. I could go to the trouble of setting up a voice mail box, but I'd never check it, so this would be a waste of time.

ICANN's policy is that if any of your whois contact information appears to be invalid anyone can file a complaint about this. You receive an email and you are required to fix your contact information in 5 days. If you do not do so, you loose the domain. God forbid you are on vacation or in the hospital. God forbid your spam filter eats the email advising you that you have 5 days to comply. You must absolutely drop everything and fix your domain contact information immediately, because it is absolutely necessary that everyone in the world have a telephone number where you can be reached.

Because its so likely that people who are the victims of these invalid whois complaints won't manage to update their contact information in time, this process becomes a pretty effective way to steal their domains. You prepay a registrar to instantly register the domain if it becomes available, file your complaint, and wait a week. Poof - the domain is yours.

Someone did this to Blogworld this morning. Because I'm not interested in publishing my cellular phone number I purchased proxy whois information for all of my domains. This has the following side effects:

1. My domain name registrations now cost twice as much as they used to.
2. My name, real email address, and valid mailing address are no longer published in the whois database and are no longer available to people who have a legitimate technical or administrative reason to contact me.
3. Law enforcement filing a subpoena have exactly the same information that they had before.

In other words, DNS costs more for me, whois has less useful information in it, and a squatter almost got control of one of my domains. What an excellent set of policies!

I'm glad that Vint Cerf took the time to answer these questions and I'm glad that he chose to answer some of mine, but I find myself pretty unsatisfied with some of the answers he offered. This is all defensive of the status quo. The answers don't acknowledge problems and don't provide information about the future. I think an ICANN public relations person would have provided similar answers.

Q15: Does ICANN view the bulk domain monetization business as a legitimate activity that contributes constructively to the Internet as a communications tool?—by Tom Cross

Vint Cerf: As an engineer, I must admit that this particular “business” has been a surprise for me. However, it seems to fit within the present framework allowed by domain name operation. Advertising seems to be the primary driver here and it is argued by interested parties that advertising is an important form of commercial communication and therefore qualifies as a constructive Internet application.

I think this is insane. The exact same thing could be said about spam. This next one is similarly frustrating.

Q10: Why can’t Domain Name Holders automatically request anonymity without having to pay their Registrar, which really does NOT cost those Registrars anything extra?—by Search Engines Web

Vint Cerf: While I cannot speak for any Registrar (not being conversant with all their costs), there is always some cost associated with doing anything special. There is a tension between the desire for open WHOIS information and the desire of some registrants to be anonymous. That tension has yet to be satisfactorily resolved in policy discussions especially in the GNSO. One of the proposals has been to implement tiered access to WHOIS information, possibly by adopting a new technical substructure for implementing the system. Until that happens, registrars that are offering some form of anonymity apparently do so by adding procedures to the normal registration and apparently adding to cost.

No one had to do anything special until ICANN made accurate DNS WHOIS the law. All of the additional procedures that registrars have to follow to allow for identity protection are a direct and obvious product of ICANN policy. If ICANN hadn't stuck its nose in, people wouldn't have to pay more money to protect their identities, and people could still subpoena registrant contact information just like they do now.

Answers from Vint Cerf: The Road Ahead for Top-Level Domains

] At the conclusion of this review, NTIA directed NeuStar
] to phase out the offering of such services by Registrars
] or by any of its partners or resellers and to ensure that
] complete and accurate WHOIS data is provided for any
] existing registrations in .us."

NTIA Nixes Privacy Protection in Whois

] The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has
] announced its proposed policy to provide all dot-ca
] domain name holders with increased privacy safeguards,
] bringing it in line with recently-enacted Canadian
] privacy laws.

I applaud this. This is the right way to do this. Its interesting to note that it is required by federal legislation in Canada. In any event, could the person with the clue here please take a trip to L.A. and give it to ICANN? Please!?

CIRA Proposes New Standard for Domain Name Whois Privacy

] Reuters is reporting that the House of Representatives
] has recently passed the bill that would approve of
] penalties for those using fraudulent WHOIS records.

If privacy is outlawed only outlaws with have privacy. And this horse is gunna be black. Fuckers.

Slashdot | Whois Record Falsification Closer To Illegality

] ICANN should see DNS Whois for what it is, a relic of a
] simpler time, and focus instead on the IP address Whois
] systems, where their efforts might reap meaningful
] results.

After the drama I stirred up last week (see the politech list) Circle ID offered to feature an article from me about the DNS Whois issue. Here it is.

DNS WHOIS: Barking Up the Wrong Tree