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Congress Eyes Whois Crackdown

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the that-doesn't-seem-like-a-bad-idea dept.

Decius6i5 writes "The Washington Post is reporting on a Congressional hearing in which it was proposed that putting false or misleading information in your DNS whois record should be a federal crime. Texas Representative Lamar Smith is quoted as saying 'The Government must play a greater role in punishing those who conceal their identities online.' The article claims 'Smith and Berman drafted the bill after receiving complaints from the entertainment and software industries that much of their material is made available for free on Web sites whose owners are impossible to track down because their domain name registrations often contain made-up names.' Its funny, I don't recall the RIAA having any trouble tracking down P2P users whose IP addresses didn't have any DNS names associated with them at all. This isn't the first time the issue has been raised in Congress but apparently Congress hasn't gotten any more clued after several hearings."

15 of 396 comments (clear)

  1. I find this idea disturbing. by The+I+Shing · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, there are criminals with false WHOIS records.

    And, at the same time, the WHOIS database is a feeding trough for spammers and scammers, encouraging otherwise honest people to put false information into their WHOIS records just to keep those spammers and scammers from getting their names, email addresses, snail mail addresses, phone numbers, fax numbers, mothers' maiden names, and whatever else their registrars ask for.

    I could create a brand new, non-obvious email address on one of my domain accounts and put it in as the Admin Contact for a record I own, and use that email address absolutely nowhere else, and I bet that within three months that email address would be getting buckets full of spam.

    There's an old saying you still see on bumper stickers, "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." While that idea might be more accurately stated as "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will accidentally shoot their own kids," the original sentiment holds for WHOIS, that is to say, "When falsified WHOIS data is outlawed, only outlaws will falsify their WHOIS data."

    If the RIAA and MPAA can't find the fake WHOIS record owners, how is the government going to track down the WHOIS record owners and punish them? Why waste time passing a law that, in the end, only punishes honest people who would rather not give their unlisted home phone numbers out when buying a domain name for their kids?

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    1. Re:I find this idea disturbing. by Endive4Ever · · Score: 5, Interesting

      They don't have to spend a whole lot of time tracking down the false WHOIS record holders.

      Just spend a little bit of time trying to track them down. Then cancel their domains. Let them present themselves for identification when they want the domains un-canceled.

      A fully validated WHOIS database would make it trivial to enforce punishment against people who use spammers to promote the websites and scams on said websites registered to them.

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    2. Re:I find this idea disturbing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A realistic solution to it is to allow people to falsify WHOIS records, but require the registries to maintain records of accurate contact information to be provided in the event of a (legitimately issued) subpoena or an investigation by law enforcement, provided they have a warrant for the information. If people choose to put their real contact information in the WHOIS record, it is still their right to do so, and many already choose to do so despite being able to falsify the data.

    3. Re:I find this idea disturbing. by American+AC+in+Paris · · Score: 5, Informative
      If they were talking about criminalizing false WHOIS information, I'd agree with you 100%.

      Trouble is, that's not what they're doing. They're talking about creating harsher penalties for people who commit fraud with a website registered under fake credentials.

      They're not going to go hunting you down for having false information. Rather, if they catch you committing fraud on your website, they'll tack another few years onto your sentence if the site info wasn't accurate.

      You gotta stop believing what they say in the front-page blurbs.

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    4. Re:I find this idea disturbing. by flatt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That may work until someone claims to be from anywhere but the US.

    5. Re:I find this idea disturbing. by Short+Circuit · · Score: 5, Insightful

      WHOIS would be best shut down.

      That's crazy. If someone's DNS server isn't retiring an old entry that puts my domain at an improper address, I want to be able to reach them with as little hassle as possible. Not demand contact information from my friends in Australia who pointed out that they couldn't get to my site.

      (That's happened to me, BTW... www.grnet.com somehow ended up having an old DNS entry with a fubar'd expiration date, but only on a high-level machine in Australia.)

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    6. Re:I find this idea disturbing. by orthogonal · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "The Government must play a greater role in punishing those who conceal their identities online - Lamar Smith"

      Excuse me?

      People who are anonymous must be punished?

      Are all Texans as offensive as their elected representative?

      Hey, terrorist boy, Congressman Smith is right.

      Why did you know that once there where these three guys, three anonymous agitators, and they hid behind a fake name, "Publius", and wrote a bunch of stuff that completely changed the government of their country?

      Anyway, these three guys started out as rebels and terrorists and traitors, and once things got settled down again, first thing they done was to get together all anonymous like, and they decided to change things yet again.

      But they figured that people might not be as convinced of their ideas ifin people know'd it was these rebel traitors behind the ideas, so they made up that fake name "Publius" and published under it.

      And what they wrote completely changed the government of their country. It got rid of the Articles of Confederation and made it impossible that the country would ever again be ruled by King George, who they'd rebelled against, and it set up a Constitution and a central government -- actually it was a Federation and them anonymous papers was called The Federalist Papers -- and as a by-product of the debate over them papers, they added ten Amendments to their new Constitution, the first one of which guaranteed, among other things, Freedom of Speech.

      And years later one of them anonymous rebels became the Secretary of Treasury of the new country they'd created with their anonymous papers, and one of the then rebels became the First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the country they created with their anonymous papers, and the other one, well, he became the fourth President of their new country which they had created with their anonymous papers, a country they called "The United States of America."

      And I, honest to god this isn't mere rhetoric on my part, I have tears in my eyes right now when I think of all that those three disreputable anonymous rebels created, and the tears are streaming down my cheeks when I think of the Constitution of the United States of America that Alexander Hamilton and John Jay and James Madison agitated for in their anonymous Federalist Papers, and I get a lump in my throat when I think of the glorious First Amendment to that Constitution, which, among other things according to the US Supreme Court, guarantees a right to anonymity to protect our freedom to engage in political discourse and debate.

      And Lamar Alexander -- Lamar Alexander, elected to the Congress planned and created by the same Constitution -- when he says that "The Government must play a greater role in punishing those who conceal their identities", well, I have to ask, when is the last time Lamar Alexander read that fine Constitution, that Constitution created by those three anonymous men publishing under a fake name?

      And by god! I contend that the those who stand up for that Constitution, and for Free Speech, and for a right to anonymity -- those persons -- and not Big Brother's lackeys with their newspeak "Patriot Act" -- are the real American Patriots.

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  2. Who controls WHOIS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Does Verisign control the WHOIS database? Since they are a US company, is that what gives the US the right to patrol that database? If not Verisign, who? Will the US rules be applied to other countries? This is legislation that will not be enforcable!

  3. Fun with White Aryans and DNS..... by i_want_you_to_throw_ · · Score: 5, Funny

    About 4 years ago. I registered "whitearyanresistance.com", org and net. I put a nice little cgi in place that sent people to random sites sites like blacksonblondes.com, algore2000.com, NAMBLA and so forth.

    Next step was to modify the cgi to regurgitate the IP address where the user got a message that said..

    Your IP Address: xx.xx.xx.xx has been recorded for forwarding to the proper authorities. Have a nice day



    Then I got tired of picking on Tom Metzger and his retarded ilk and just donated the domains to another group (not the W.A.R.).

    You bet your ass I used fake info in my WHOIS then.

    I do wonder though if there are legitimate cases of where people run sites where it's best to not know the identity. Much in the same way that an abused woman could never call home from a shelter because her husband who beats her would know where she is thanks to caller ID.

    Maybe the Chinese Communists would send goons to whack all the Falun Gong website owners or something (I'm sure you have better examples).

  4. Good grief. by Grrr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "The Government must play a greater role in punishing those who conceal their identities online, particularly when they do so in furtherance of a serious federal criminal offense or in violation of a federally protected intellectual property right," Smith said...

    So - that sentence can end at the first comma, and be no less accurate in representing his opinion.

    Smith and Berman drafted the bill after receiving complaints from the entertainment and software industries...

    'Of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations'

    The bill would not affect people who are trying to safeguard their privacy because it
    only makes it a crime to submit false registration data when it is done to help commit a
    crime...

    Now if we could only keep that pesky concept of what constitutes a "crime" from continually
    expanding...

    <grrr>

  5. This story is brought to you by the color "yellow" by American+AC+in+Paris · · Score: 5, Informative
    From the Washington Post article:

    The bill would not affect people who are trying to safeguard their privacy because it only makes it a crime to submit false registration data when it is done to help commit a crime, said Mark Bohannon, senior vice president for public policy at the Software & Information Industry Association, which supports the bill.

    Oh, fer Pete's sake, Taco. Would it really hurt all that much to give a full, accurate blurb on this one?

    This isn't about forcing people to use their real name when registering a domain. This is about increasing the severity of the punishment for committing online fraud. Basically, if you commit fraud using a website with faked credentials, you'll face a stiffer penalty than you would had you committed fraud on a website where you used legitimate credentials to register.

    I'm not saying I've fully researched this, but it sure as hell isn't the rights-trampling orgy the blurb makes it out to be, Taco. Do your homework before posting half-informed diatribes to the front page.

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    Obliteracy: Words with explosions

  6. Re:spam by ryanjensen · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh, of course not. Your senator passed CAN-SPAM for that.

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    The Ezine Directory
  7. what a bunch of bullshit! by JeanBaptiste · · Score: 5, Interesting

    i run a small, non profit politically based website with a chatboard. many people have come on the chatboard and threatened me with physical harm and worse because of my views.

    and now they want me to put my real home phone number and real home address in the DNS records?

    WHAT A BUNCH OF SHIT

  8. that is ridiculous by cyberwave · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What if I want to setup a domain name criticizing my private school? They censor the newspapers so the internet is the only medium in which that would be possible to do anonymously. Just as I could give out fliers while wearing a mask without breaking the law, I should be able to do the same thing on the internet. Additionally, there are alternatives that you can pay for as well (but costs more than putting in fake information). They shouldn't be legislating against the ways in which people conceal themselves; they should be legislating against the things that they DO while concealed! Being anonymous isn't a crime. Punish the crime, not the anonymity. Wow politicians are so stupid. No wonder the good ones turn into teachers instead.

  9. Some Canadian registrars have the idea re. privacy by fatwreckfan · · Score: 5, Informative

    Some Canadian registrars, such as Internic.ca offer a service called Privacy.ca that hides your registration information, so random people can't look up your info.

    If it becomes a federal crime to lie in domain records, something similar could be implemented to protect those who want to remain (somewhat) anonymous.