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.