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Congress (Still) Looking at whois

Posted by michael on from the let-your-mouse-do-the-walking dept.

bief writes: "A NY Times [free reg., blah, blah] story examines the whois database debate and provides a fair reading of the current situation about the list that which is being abused by 'marketers who regularly cull the Whois database for e-mail addresses and phone numbers to add to their spam lists.' Responses from registrars to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property were due on February 1st, but Chris J. Katopis, counsel to the subcommittee, said that as of last week many registrars had not replied. 'If they're not going to respond to a government inquiry,' he said, 'what are they going to do to respond to an aggrieved individual when something happens?'"

3 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. Good initiative by Daath · · Score: 4, Informative

    The administrator of DK-TLD has already implemented some security for the Danish registrants - You can't do a whois on .dk domains any more - You must use their website to get the information... Also you can contact them, and have them hide your email, snail mail address etc so you can actually be sort of anonymous.

    --
    Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
    1. Re:Good initiative by jjon · · Score: 3, Informative
      The .uk domain is even stricter - only the name of the person who registered the site is publicly available.

      Lookup my .co.uk domain

      In the UK, we have a law called the "Data Protection Act" that protects all "personally identifiable information". This covers my name, e-mail and postal addresses, telephone number, etc - in fact basically anything that's held in a computer and can be retrieved by searching on my name. Companies are not allowed to gather, hold, disclose or use this information without my consent, and if they don't have a good reason to keep it (e.g. if they're just using it for advertising) then I can ask them to delete it.

      This law also stops spammers operating from the UK - they can't legally make a list of e-mail addresses without getting consent from the people involved.

      It's a pity the US doesn't have similar laws.

  2. Congress has no constitutional authority... by dada21 · · Score: 5, Informative

    We can not allow Congress to do this. The Constitution prohibits them from regulating this industry. If we don't want our information available on whois, we must find a private market solution. I just can't believe people would want MORE government in an area where the lack of government has propelled all of our lives to higher standards.

    If you dislike the whois database containing your information, let's e-mail, call, and write letters to the organizations telling them we want more privacy. Eventually, we must find a way to find a provider who will offer us the privacy we want.

    Or, use the free market solution -- create an e-mail address you don't use, and check it once in a while for important e-mails. Filter out anything but what comes from your ISP or registrar.