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Private .US Registrations Disallowed by NTIA

Posted by samzenpus on from the no-.us-for-you dept.

jnetsurfer writes "Apparently, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration ("NTIA") has decided that domains under the TLD .US have no right to privacy. New domain names ending in .US will not be able to be registered as "private" and current owners of .US names will be forced to reveal their contact information starting "no later than January 26, 2006". This means that you can't run an annonymous website with a .US TLD. If you don't like this, feel free to sign the petition."

370 comments

  1. f. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    First .us.

    1. Re:f. by sherms · · Score: 1

      You have to wonder if the petition is a way to con us out of personal info for identity theft....

    2. Re:f. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Does this mean we'll finally find out who the GNAA is? It's probably one 24 year old loser living in his mother's basement in Kansas.

  2. I'd sign the petition... by drafalski · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...but I don't want to give out my name, adress, email, et cetera.

    1. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Forge · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Every right has an attached responsibility.

      I.e. Your right to freedom of expression is cool as long as you don't express yourself by shutting up other people.

      Likewise, an anonymously registered and maintained TLD is useful for only a few things. Most of them wrong. I.e. you can knowingly publish libelous material as long as nobody knows it was put out by you.

      Worse yet, you can register a domain, which suggests you are somebody else and then put out information damaging to that person. I.e. r_kelly.us loaded to the gills with kiddy porn.

      --
      --= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
    2. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Of course, there is a huge problem with putting domain ownership contact information out in the public. Not everyone is a business and not everyone has a PO box.

      There are plenty of ignorant people out there who can only react to differing opinions, beliefs or behavior with threats and violence. I run a very popular niche goth site and, while I'm not exactly goth myself, there are a lot of people out there who react to things like the school shooting this month by making threats to anyone they can find that fits whatever their own perverted (media-given) impression of a "goth" or "punk" is.

      Or, perhaps, a woman running an abortion rights action site who would like to keep her information private. Last thing you want to be is in the crosshairs of some religious nut who believes god is directing him or her to save the fetuses by blowing your brains out.

      There are any number of valid reasons to want to maintain some sort of privacy to keep the freaks and nutcases from tracking you down. The most violent thing I've ever seen a goth kid do is pick his nose. But I tell you, I sure was thinking about going into hiding recently when the school shooting occurred.

    3. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Maestro4k · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Likewise, an anonymously registered and maintained TLD is useful for only a few things. Most of them wrong. I.e. you can knowingly publish libelous material as long as nobody knows it was put out by you.
      • Don't get spammed much do you? I recently registered two domains, both will have a quasi-business site on them, both very valid public sites. I registered them privately on purpose, I don't want any more spam because of domain registrations.

      • Back in the mid 1990s I registered two domains. Spam wasn't the problem it is now at the time, and I used a permanent E-mail address. A few years after that I started getting spammed constantly, mostly trying to push other domains or other domain registars at me, along with the weak phishing-type scams trying to make me think my domain had expired. Since then, even though the domains no longer exist, the amount of spam at that address has risen drastically. It gets hundreds a day now, and most of them can be attributed back to registering two domain names. Personally I think you'd be nuts to register a domain either non-privately or with any real contact info nowadays. Spammers will still mine the whois databases, they don't care about the rules prohibiting it.

        There are other good reasons as well. What about people who have a stalker? Rape victims or other violent crime victims? Identity theft victims, or those wanting to avoid becoming one? Political activists who don't want bricks thrown through their windows by overzealous people of opposite beliefs?

        There are many VERY good reasons to want a private registration, very few of which are "wrong". Private registration also does not mean you're free from the law. My real contact info is in escrow with the proxy service, if they get a subpoena they will release my real info to the police. I'm still bound by the law, I just am no longer bound by the spammers.

    4. Re:I'd sign the petition... by mirko · · Score: 1

      The problem here is not that the site's owner is anonymous (except to the registrar).
      The problem here is that he commits illegal activities.
      That's why I consider this a shame : let people publish whatever they want "a priori" you can easily find and judge them after.
      The big issue, nowadays, is that people are judge not after what they DO, but after what they think or declare and it's not fair. We're living in a society which tends to aseptize any thoughts towards a global political model which will only disturb each and every individual.
      How could they learn tolerance that way ?
      They won't because they'll only see what happens to people who "think different".
      35 years ago, my father got goulag'ed fora fucking poetry book.
      Nowadays, he would have his country invaded and bombed to oblivion, including himself and whatever places he loved by people who'd declare they'd do it for his own sake, even though they do not know him, nor what he ever wrote.

      --
      Trolling using another account since 2005.
    5. Re:I'd sign the petition... by tomhudson · · Score: 0, Flamebait
      So don't get a domain, if you're so afraid of being in the public eye. It's a contradiction. The only people who would benefit would be the spammers, and we've got enough of them.

      Nobody's *required* to have a domain. If you want to speak anonymnously, there are plenty of ways to do so - for example, posting as an anonymous coward, as you just did.

      Owning and running a domain requires a certain level of responsability/accountability.

      There are any number of valid reasons to want to maintain some sort of privacy to keep the freaks and nutcases from tracking you down.

      The ones most likely to be "tracked down" are the spammers who would want to be completely anonymous.

      The most violent thing I've ever seen a goth kid do is pick his nose. But I tell you, I sure was thinking about going into hiding recently when the school shooting occurred.
      Fuck, we DO lead a sheltered, paranoid life, don't we. Take off your tinfoil hat - it's on WAY too tight. If you keep it on that tight, you'll end up like this person.
    6. Re:I'd sign the petition... by grub · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Depending on your registrar, you can have them act as a proxy for contact. ie:
      whois grub.net
      and you'll see all my stuff goes through NetSol. It costs a few dollars (peanuts), my email isn't harvested that way and best of all: no one knows I live in Winnipeg^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
      --
      Trolling is a art,
    7. Re:I'd sign the petition... by DenDave · · Score: 1

      Many tld administrators force this. Almost all european countries tld's are like this. Ok, it's a bummer when you get harvested and spammed but Nobody checks the street address, the neighbours must get a shitload of mail.. ROFL!! And if I want privacy a short visit to the chamber of commerce and Bullshit Limitid is in business and guess what, they operate from the same freaky neighbour!! ROFL!!! just kidding but hey, if it helps stop spam and crapsites then I am all for it.

      --
      -if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
    8. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Malor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Personally, I don't like the fact that as a private citizen that wants to host his own email server, I have to reveal my real name, phone number, and ADDRESS to every human being on the globe with access to WHOIS.

      This can be badly misused, and has been already by spammers. I get an enormous amount of spam aimed at my (formerly) published contact emails, and a lot of it comes in complete with the (obsolete) address data from back then. The ONLY way they could have gotten this information is from WHOIS, and I'm not happy about them having it; they have no legitimate reason to be in possession of that data.

      I really like what Namecheap is doing. For an extra five or six bucks a year, they'll hide your real address and give you an anonymized contact address... mail sent to this random address will be forwarded to your real email, invisibly to the sender. So, if there is a problem with your domain, you are still contactable. If there's a legal problem with a domain, then of course the real info is going to be available to any form of law enforcement.

      But it's hidden from the casual spammer/identity thief, and I am very, very happy about this.

      Requiring people to publish information about a domain is sort of a presumption of guilt...."if you're innocent, you have nothing to hide!" Well, I am innocent and I have plenty to hide...like where I live. If I want to host an mail or a web server, my responsibility is to make sure I can be contacted in case of problems. My responsibility is not and never was to tell you exactly who and where I am, no matter what ICANN happens to think.

    9. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Ioldanach · · Score: 1
      Likewise, an anonymously registered and maintained TLD is useful for only a few things. Most of them wrong. I.e. you can knowingly publish libelous material as long as nobody knows it was put out by you.
      The ruling specifically impacts information published publicly. If you are required to provide accurate information for a non-published database, then there's no real issue. Law enforcement and legal proceedings can learn the true identity of the domain's owner and act accordingly.
    10. Re:I'd sign the petition... by PepeGSay · · Score: 1

      I have a web site where I sometimes post pictures of my family. I privately registered the domain because I didn't want some wacko coming across it and then easily being able to get my address. Mind you the address is not publicly published anyway, but it was an easy measure to take for just a bit more protection.

    11. Re:I'd sign the petition... by PepeGSay · · Score: 1

      Why not have the registrar have some method of disclosure obtainable by court order or the like. There are plenty of good reasons not to publish your address. If you can't think of a few, I suspect you're either young and immature or an idiot.

    12. Re:I'd sign the petition... by kir · · Score: 1

      niche goth site

      Repeating yourself I see. ;-)

      --
      3cx.org - A truly bad website.
    13. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Likewise, an anonymously registered and maintained TLD is useful for only a few things. Most of them wrong. I.e. you can knowingly publish libelous material as long as nobody knows it was put out by you.

      Thanks for the lecture on the evils of anonymity, "Forge".

    14. Re:I'd sign the petition... by garcia · · Score: 1

      Likewise, an anonymously registered and maintained TLD is useful for only a few things. Most of them wrong. I.e. you can knowingly publish libelous material as long as nobody knows it was put out by you.

      If you run any sort of mail server that accepts email from webmaster@, hostmaster@, root@, and various others including common usernames you will see an endless amount of spam coming through.

      There's no reason to have address information available to the public other than when requested to the company handling the domain via written request.

    15. Re:I'd sign the petition... by clickster · · Score: 1

      Likewise, an anonymously registered and maintained TLD is useful for only a few things.

      I use a company that masks my domain registration info. It puts their info instead for any WHOIS lookups. Then, when they receive e-mail that is meant for the listed e-mail address for my domain, they filter out all of the spam and forward an relevent mail to the e-mail address that I have on file with them. It ensures that I have a way to get e-mails regarding my domain without having to sift through all of the spam. I consider that a valid use for any personal domain.

      --
      If you mod me down, I shall become less powerful than you could possibly imagine.
    16. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Likewise, an anonymously registered and maintained TLD is useful for only a few things. Most of them wrong.

      But what if one use is RIGHT.

    17. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Forge · · Score: 1

      The Namecheap aproch is a reasonable compromise.

      --
      --= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
    18. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If there's a legal problem with a domain, then of course the real info is going to be available to any form of law enforcement.

      Who is the only people it SHOULD be available to to begin with. What is th epurpose of having domain rgistration info available to the general public? What purpose does it serve??

    19. Re:I'd sign the petition... by budgenator · · Score: 1

      If you are doing something that you know is going to be a lightning-rod for whacko's, depending on an Anonymous domain registration is going to get you killed. the minimum would be a registering under a DBA owned by a corpartion, owned by a DBA, owned by a corpartion formed in another state by a DBA owned by a corparation, using a mail-drop as an address, forwarding to a P.O. box, and phones answered by a staffed answering compnay, forwarding calls to an unlisted number.

      I Know of a guy who was a Dermatologist, and a freaking Boy Scout Troup Leader, his wife was an OB/Gyn who did an occasional abortion, some whacko walked up behind him and put a bullet in his brain, the whacko appearently never dreamed that Dr. Doe might be a woman, so he wasted her husband instead. I guess I'm just trying to convince you that trivial anonymity is no protection, it's a false sense of security. Unfortunatly because your an Anonymous Coward, you'll probably never get the warning.

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
    20. Re:I'd sign the petition... by budgenator · · Score: 1

      It does seem odd that they do this just when a lot of states are considering removing the address from our driver's licenses.

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
    21. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Apparently the difference between "publically available for all to see" and "determinable by law enforcement if necessary" zoomed straight over your head and those of the tough-love moderators. Existing laws already cover your concerns without yet another attack on privacy. But people like you just seem to enjoy enhancing authority.

    22. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What is the date again ?

    23. Re:I'd sign the petition... by OverkillTASF · · Score: 1

      A certain acquaintance of mine has a collection of firearms worth... well... a lot of money. He/she/it prefers to remain anonymous because it wouldn't be the first time such a collection was stolen. However, in order to acquire some of the more rare and forgotten pieces of this collection, he/she/it needs some level of publicity. His/her/its website shows some of the pieces from the collection, a brief history, and an email address someone can use to contact the owner of the collection in case they have any pieces from it that they would like to sell. This is a legitimate, legal use of a website, and one where not having your name, address, and phone number all over it are some fairly major benefits.

    24. Re:I'd sign the petition... by krautcanman · · Score: 2, Informative

      There are services that you can pay for where the company acts as the domain contact for your domain - to maintain your privacy. I still get emails from my registrar (GoDaddy), I have no problems managing my domains, and I don't have to worry about anyone finding out where I live, nor can my registered contact email address be harvested by various spambots that go through the whois database..

      If somebody needed to contact you, they can send it to webmaster@domain.ext or similar - whatever you have posted on your site.

    25. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Malor · · Score: 1

      So in other words, to work around the phone number problem, I'm supposed to pay for another phone line every month, and then just not answer it? Why do you need my phone number to begin with? My ISP has it. If you have a problem with one of my servers, they can contact me in minutes. You don't need to.

      And then you're suggesting that I supply inaccurate information, which is essentially the same thing in another guise. You're saying that me withholding the information is stupid... so why isn't lying about that information also stupid? Those same telemarketers can surely figure it out, no?

      Or maybe, just maybe.... a lot of domain searches might be AUTOMATED, done by inflexible programs. So perhaps your idea of falsifying the domain information WOULD work. But if that's the case, then everything else you're claiming (about my privacy being gone) doesn't really apply, does it?

      Privacy happens one query at a time. Just because some big company in Arizona has my name and address doesn't mean that YOU do. And it's pretty damn unlikely that the company in Arizona is going to want to either break into my house or throw a rock through my window "for giving Terri Shiavo[sic] a run for the money". You, however, might. And you can't easily find my address without law enforcement being involved. I find that comforting.

      BTW, that's Schiavo. It's wise to check your spelling carefully when calling someone a mental vegetable.

    26. Re:I'd sign the petition... by terrymr · · Score: 2, Informative

      So system admins can contact each other to deal with problems.

    27. Re:I'd sign the petition... by ebresie · · Score: 1

      Ummm....would spammers getting one of these anonymous addresses also be considered a bad use? Then when someone starts sending me spam and I try getting him to stop, besides spam blockers (that blocks the spam but does not stop it) there is no other way to do so. If the spammer feels they have a right to do so, I think I have a right to know who it is so that I can tell him to stop.

      If you are fearful of anyone having your contact information...hire someone else to maintain your web site.

      I agree, though, that having this information available can be malicious use, so some checks are needed as well.

      --

      Eric B
      ebresie@gmail.com
    28. Re:I'd sign the petition... by penix1 · · Score: 1

      "The ones most likely to be "tracked down" are the spammers who would want to be completely anonymous."

      Or anyone opposing the government. Or anyone opposing the Patriot Act. Or anyone opposing ANY US secret policy....The list goes on and on.

      I am kind of mixed on this one since the US TLD is usually used BY government agancies. What says you have to have a .us TLD?

      B.

      --
      This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
    29. Re:I'd sign the petition... by tomhudson · · Score: 1
      If you're running a web server as a business, you certainly shouldn't have a problem having phone contact info out there - you WANT people to call you.

      If you're running it privately, or you don't want your info public, then go through a registrar that will substitute THEIR contact info for yours, and keep yours on file for problems. No big deal. What is so hard to understand that there are various options, each with its' own trade-off, and that it's up to *you* to decide which one to use, and which trade-offs are acceptable.

      There's no privacy issue here. You have the option of being fully public, or anonymous. You may have to pay a bit extra for the anonymity, but that's the way it works in a service economy - you buy a service (in this case, anonymity) in return for money.

      As for the "inaccurate informaton in the address" - all I said was add a suite #, so you can detect what snail mail is coming from spamming your domain name entry. It's the same as when you sign up for a magazine subscription - add a fake middle initial, so you can tell when they've sold it to someone else.

      And you can't easily find my address without law enforcement being involved. I find that comforting.
      As I pointed out, your name, address, etc., are on a lot of public documents, unless you're either living in a cardboard box, or in your mom's basement. You just have to know where to look. With enough background information, you can get anything. I'm sure that you can think up at least 3 ways to do it in 5 minutes or less.
    30. Re:I'd sign the petition... by tomhudson · · Score: 1
      Government agencies use the .gov tld.

      People would want a .us tld to identify themselves as being based in the US, same as .ca for Canada, etc.

      Or anyone opposing the government. Or anyone opposing the Patriot Act. Or anyone opposing ANY US secret policy....The list goes on and on.
      ... and having an anonymous registration isn't going to help you with ANY of the ones you named ... what WOULD help you is having a server outside the .us tld.

      The whole thing is a controversy without a clue.

    31. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I did sign the petition. This action is a violation of the 4th amendment to the Constitution.

      "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

      The kiddy porn argument does not hold water as there would still be records that could be searched with a warrant and probable cause.

    32. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Fulcrum+of+Evil · · Score: 1

      There are any number of valid reasons to want to maintain some sort of privacy to keep the freaks and nutcases from tracking you down.

      The way I read this, you can still register a domain by proxy - set the contact info to point to a third party that forwards all official stuff to you, but refuses to release your particulars without a court order. This should solve a lot of the problems with loonies while satisfying NTIA.

      --
      "We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
    33. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Maestro4k · · Score: 1
      Ummm....would spammers getting one of these anonymous addresses also be considered a bad use? Then when someone starts sending me spam and I try getting him to stop, besides spam blockers (that blocks the spam but does not stop it) there is no other way to do so. If the spammer feels they have a right to do so, I think I have a right to know who it is so that I can tell him to stop.
      • Do you think a spammer would actually provide valid details to register a domain with even to the proxy service? Spam and Phishing are increasingly being linked to organized crime, the odds are they'll register using a stolen credit card number and whatever info they do provide will be either an innocent person's or totally bogus. Besides even if it's private you can still sue, even in a civil case if the court finds your suit has merit they can make the proxy service hand over the real contact info.

      • This service also costs extra, it's not something a spammer will bother with.

      If you are fearful of anyone having your contact information...hire someone else to maintain your web site.
      • Are you familiar with how domain registration works at all? If I list another person as the contacts for the domain, especially the administrative contact, they can transfer ownership of that domain easily. Yes using a proxy service introduces some risk as well, but it's far less risky than having a fallout with one individual who decides to take away your domain. You _might_ eventually get it back but it may be too late by then to matter.

      • The arguments against private domain registration don't hold much weight. As I pointed out above, spammers don't play by the rules, they're not going to provide valid info anyway so that's not a good reason to prevent them. Criminal activity is also not, all it takes is a subpoena and the police will get your real contact info from the proxy service.

    34. Re:I'd sign the petition... by ultranova · · Score: 1

      There's no privacy issue here. You have the option of being fully public, or anonymous. You may have to pay a bit extra for the anonymity, but that's the way it works in a service economy - you buy a service (in this case, anonymity) in return for money.

      The problem with this argument is that the need for such a service is completely artificially created. You don't have anynymity because an organization made a rule that forbids it. However, you can have it back by paying them (or some other organization) money.

      This reminds me of the protection services offered by Mafia: pay them a little, and your store won't go up in flames.

      There is a difference between offering services and extortion. This falls to the dark side.

      As I pointed out, your name, address, etc., are on a lot of public documents, unless you're either living in a cardboard box, or in your mom's basement. You just have to know where to look. With enough background information, you can get anything. I'm sure that you can think up at least 3 ways to do it in 5 minutes or less.

      1. How many people know where to look ?
      2. How are they going to get the background info to get started, if they have no simple way of getting the name of the owner of a given domain ?
      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    35. Re:I'd sign the petition... by tomhudson · · Score: 1
      Well, if you're running a domain with zero content and zero activity, then I guess there's not much to work with. But then again, there's no point to running a domain that doesn't even have some sort of server connected to it doing *something*, even if it's only mail.

      So, you have a server connected to the net. You're running it yourself, so it's not at a co-lo or anything else - it's in your home. So now I have a geographical location (and that's if the server is running zero services, and has no content on it).

      From this, I also know your connectivity provider. This may or may not help narrow it down further.

      Now, if you have some content (say a web server), there's some more info leakage, maybe in the comments on web pages, copyright notices, etc.

      Same with spam if you're running a mail server.

      There's always information leakage. Someone in the same neighbourhood as you should be able to find out who you are with a bit of work and these leads.

    36. Re:I'd sign the petition... by myov · · Score: 1

      My personal domain (ie: about 4 people actually know about it) is routinely nailed by spammers. All three addresses (Registrar, Admin, Tech) receive spam for "Broadcast your website to 2 million addresses!"

      SpamAssassin gets it all now, but it got to the point where I was changing all three addresses monthly.

      Given that my domain is so small, either spammers grab whois in bulk, or use an alphanumeric attack to find new domains.

      --
      I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
    37. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Frank+T.+Lofaro+Jr. · · Score: 1

      Make it so your spam filter drops any message that refers to an anonymous domain anywhere in the headers.

      You won't get anonymous mail which may be bad (if someone needed to reach you) or good (spam being blocked).

      Don't outlaw anonymous mail, just make it easy for people to refuse it. Just like anonymous call reject on telephone lines.

      Any legitimate ISP that is non-anonymous could choose to accept mail from anonymous or "suspect" domains, but add a header to the mail, which could be used by anti-spam programs.

      --
      Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
    38. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Fulcrum+of+Evil · · Score: 1

      There's nothing stopping you from getting a business line. That takes care of the phone number bit. As for the address, add a "Suite # 101" to it.

      So, in the case where I'd actually care (unbalanced lunatics), I should direct them to 123 main st, ste. 101 (around back), and that'll be fine? They may be crazy, but they're not stupid. I'm not paranoid, I just don't want to make some random cyberstalker's job easier.

      --
      "We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
    39. Re:I'd sign the petition... by ocelotbob · · Score: 1

      Y'know, a situation like that, they make these things called PO Boxes. Place across the street from me sells them for $8/month. Surely it would be in your friend's best interest to purchase one anyway, to give oneself a public face totally separate from their private address.

      --

      Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses

    40. Re:I'd sign the petition... by spacecowboy420 · · Score: 1

      The fact is that the information IS available to law inforcement, but not to any joe doing a whois. Another thing you're missing is that it is NOT anonymous, but private - there's a huge difference. This means the information exists, but is available to only those that need to know. It's all in the article.

      --
      ymmv
    41. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Go after the IP address of the website. Domain names aren't websites.

    42. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Malor · · Score: 1

      Sure, there's information leakage, and a smart person may be able to figure it out. But they also might not. And in any case, it will take active, focused, coordinated EFFORT to find it out. The answers will take real work to find, instead of just being handed to anyone who can type 'whois domain.com'.

      Just because privacy invasion is possible by other means doesn't mean we should make it easy by this one.

    43. Re:I'd sign the petition... by tomhudson · · Score: 1
      I just don't want to make some random cyberstalker's job easier.
      Any real cyberstalker worth his/her shit will still be able to get into your confidence via social engineering, and then be able to do much more damage.

      The easiest thing, as I pointed out before, is, if you're that worried, use your registrant's services. What's the big deal?

    44. Re:I'd sign the petition... by hesiod · · Score: 1

      > There are any number of valid reasons to want to maintain some sort of privacy to keep the freaks and nutcases from tracking you down.

      I agree, but as long as this doesn't apply to all TLDs, it's still possible. Once (as I'm sure it will happen eventually) it is required for all/most TLDs, then it's a real issue.

    45. Re:I'd sign the petition... by tomhudson · · Score: 1
      Time for a reality/sanity check - when was the last time you heard about anyone being stalked as a result of a whois lookup?

      You're more likely to run into problems by just walking down the street. So, you gonna stop walking down streets now, since that's a much higher risk situation?

    46. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Malor · · Score: 1

      I did branch into 'rock through the window' arguments, but that wasn't my original objection.

      The fundamental problems are spam and identity theft. I don't think you can plausibly argue that these these are small problems. Yes, you can probably find out quite a lot about me if you do a very determined, conscious, human search. But that isn't what spammers and identity thieves do. They're looking for the easy score, the easy mark. Why give them a tool that any sixth-grader could automate?

      When dealing with individual domain owners, there's very little benefit to be gained in having names and addresses publicly available, and the potential downside is quite large.

      Even if I grant your argument that the threats are small, they are still not zero. (in actual fact, the chance of spam is very, very close to 1.0). The data is just as easy to hide as to show. Given that, why not hide the data for people who want it hidden?

    47. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Not+The+Real+Me · · Score: 1

      Why bother with Namecheap? Get a Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail account and use that for your domain registration contact.

      As far as your real physical address is concerned, having that info public means virtually nothing. I get very little to zero snail mail that can be traced to someone doing a WHOIS lookup. Most of my snail mail spam comes from my membership to the local Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber of Commerce provides mailing labels of its membership for a nominal fee.

    48. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Maestro4k · · Score: 1
      Given that my domain is so small, either spammers grab whois in bulk, or use an alphanumeric attack to find new domains.
      • I think they've found ways to mostly automating ripping addresses out of whois, even with the (mostly meager) blocks put into place to supposedly stop this. Given the vast zombie nets nowadays it's probably easy to just have each machine whois a domain or two and report back. Actually that would be a way to combine both, use alphanumeric attacks to find new domains and have the zombies do that and the whois'ing.

      • I do appreciate the support, I don't have recent stats to back me up (until last month the last domain I had registered expired around 1998) but I was certain the problem has only gotten worse. (Certain enough to pay extra for the privacy option actually, money well spent to cut down the spam.) Hell, I still get snail mail from sleazy domain registars about domains inactive for over 5 years!

    49. Re:I'd sign the petition... by tomhudson · · Score: 1
      Point taken. However, consider the following:

      The chance of spam doesn't change if you're anon - they still have the domain name, and they'll try thousands of username@yurdomain.us, just like any other domain.

      As I said, anyone who wants it hidden just has to use a registrar that will substitute their own data for yours. With the market being as competitive as it is today, there shouldn't be any cost premium.

      As for identity theft, having your name, address and telephone number are not the key ingredients. The best, and easiest, is to just grab your utility bills out of your mailbox, get the necessary info, and put the bills back in your box after resealing the envelope. From that, I've got your name, address, phone number and phone account number, bank account number and balance, credit card numbers, balance, charge history, and expiration date, electric and gas utility account numbers and balances, store charge account numbers, payment histories, and balances.

      Most of these also encourage online billing. So, if you haven't started online billing, there'll usually be an insert or an extra page encouraging you to "set up your account now!" So I set up an account using your info, and a password of MY choice.

      You don't even know the online billing is there now. So, I can now see your purchases and payments for the last year or two, and plan my theft accordingly. I can change your billing info, put in an order changing your address, get a replacement card/statement at the new address, etc. You won't even know for a couple of months. Heck, with all that info, I can also get a library card in your name, check out a dozen books, sell them on ebay, and you'll be the one on the hook to replace them.

      Or if I want to go big time, finance a car in your name (now that I have enough info to make a credit application at the local car dealership), sell it for parts, and you're on the hook.

      If I were you, I'd be more worried about my mailbox than a whois entry.

      Heck, short of fingerprints, dna analysis, or a chip implant, can you easily prove you are you? What if you piss off your significant other and yuor family, and they all get together and decide that someone else is you? You show up at your home, and there's someone else who claims to be you. You call the cops. They come. Everyone there insists you're some nutcase they never saw before. They even have pictures of the "new guy" in family settings. You've got your id - but so does he, and you look enough alike (remember - nobody looks like their drivers' license photos).. . You're arrested, charged with identity theft. Now, while in jail, or afterwards, under a court order not to go within 500' of your family, their employer, etc., how are you going to prove you're you?

      You can't even go to work to try to straighten it out. He's faxed in an "I quit, for safety reasons - here's my new employer's address - oh, btw there's a guy pretending to be me, who looks like me, and he's under a court order not to go anywhere near your office. If he show up, please call the cops".

      You're fucked (maybe I should write it up as a short story). My point is simple. We live in what's known as a "common consensual reality". If everyone else decides you are NOT you, well, guess what - you cease being you for all effective intents and purposes.

      Admit it - it makes a better plot line than trying to steal someone's identity from a whois entry :-)

      BTW: I want to test out the slashdot friend/freak system - for this I need at least 10,000 freaks or 10,000 friends - so feel free to foe me if you DON'T find this interesting :-) (though, as a general principle, I won't foe anyone myself).

    50. Re:I'd sign the petition... by penix1 · · Score: 1

      "Government agencies use the .gov tld."

      Sorry. I should have clarified it a little. I meant State Governments.

      "People would want a .us tld to identify themselves as being based in the US, same as .ca for Canada, etc."

      But again, why would you want to do this? This is a silly issue to me. Use of a .net, .com, .org, etc.. is more common anyway. I just don't get why anyone would feel a driving need for a .US TLD anyway.

      B.

      --
      This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
    51. Re:I'd sign the petition... by tomhudson · · Score: 1
      I just don't get why anyone would feel a driving need for a .US TLD anyway.
      Well, if you're a terrorist, it makes a clever disguise.

      Seriously, they'd probably settle for a .us because the .net, .com, and .org are taken.

      Also, think of the possibilities:

      1. stupid_lawsuits_r.us (sco)
      2. fuck.us (alternative sco site)
      3. screw.us (ditto)
      4. litigio.us (still another sco fud site)
      5. love.us (hookers, oorn)
      6. leave.us (the INS rat line)
      7. enter.us (immigration)
      8. delicio.us (pizza)
      9. corpus.dilect.us (must be a dead server :-)
      10. b.us (bus company)
      11. c.us (optometrist)
      12. doof.us (mensa candidates)
      13. do.us (hookers)
      14. r.us (servers would include toys.r.us, etc)
      15. buy.us (patriotic merchants)
      16. fist.us (apple gay bois)
      17. scot.us (supreme Court Of The US)
      18. ignoram.us (publisher of the Dummies series)
      19. p.us (sick stuff)
      20. anxio.us (psychologists)
      21. cantankero.us (grumpy old men)
      22. billio.us (I can't believe I ate the whole thing - urp!)
      23. scrumptio.us (food, food and more food / porn, porn and more porn)
      24. frig.us (high school drop-outs)
      25. antab.us (alcoholics anonymous)
      26. cretaceo.us (dinosaur nuts)
      27. crisp.us (Richard Pryor's face after freebasing cocaine, also known a "snap crackle pop")
      28. sick.jokes.r.us (for me, duh!)
      I'm sure you can add a few more.
    52. Re:I'd sign the petition... by mcrbids · · Score: 1

      Back in the mid 1990s I registered two domains. Spam wasn't the problem it is now at the time, and I used a permanent E-mail address. A few years after that I started getting spammed constantly, mostly trying to push other domains or other domain registars at me, along with the weak phishing-type scams trying to make me think my domain had expired. Since then, even though the domains no longer exist, the amount of spam at that address has risen drastically. It gets hundreds a day now, and most of them can be attributed back to registering two domain names.

      Bzzzzzt! I call bullshit.

      I have about 50 domains that I control. My first and oldest, is "benjamindsmith.com". (Gee, what's my name?)

      I've used the same registration address on it for years. Go ahead. Check the whois. See that email address? Hasn't been changed in f-ing years. I get maybe 1 spam/week on that address, protected only by greylisting and a few RBLs, no SPAM filters in place.

      Also, how do you know that your address receiving the spam was obtained by the black hats via your domain registration? Perhaps it was one of those porn sites you visited while the wife was out of town?

      --
      I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
    53. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Malor · · Score: 1

      Sure, and the proxy service provided by Namecheap is near-immediate. No, you don't get the ability to pick up the phone and call me directly if there's a problem with my servers. This is a loss, I agree with that. But both Namecheap and my ISP can get ahold of me very quickly, usually within minutes. (I doubt Namecheap responds that quickly. I'd be shocked if they DID in fact.... but I know my ISP will.)

      The Net isn't like it used to be. I know that the percentage of bad guys, relatively speaking, is probably pretty small, but there's just so many people online now that the absolute number of kooks and spammers is quite high.

      With no way to know ahead of time that anyone who can see my personal info has my best interests in mind, I'd rather have the insulating layer of a professional company between us.

    54. Re:I'd sign the petition... by penix1 · · Score: 1

      Now that was funny! Hope someone mods it up +5 funny....

      B.

      --
      This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
    55. Re:I'd sign the petition... by Malor · · Score: 1

      I agree with you that the mailbox is more dangerous on a per-attempt basis. However, my mailbox is not physically accessible to 6 billion people. My WHOIS data is. And there are undoubtedly very, very smart people who can destroy lives remotely if they choose.

      Admittedly, they're not likely to single me out.... but 'very unlikely' times six billion could easily be higher than 'moderately likely' times a couple thousand potential local identity thieves. Whatever the relative chances are, they are both nonzero.

      There is no apparent benefit to me in listing my information publicly, and a number of possible benefits to hiding it, so I hide it. I'm still reachable in case of problems, so your ability to run your servers is unimpaired. You don't need to know who I am, you just need to be able to reach either me or my ISP, should there be a problem with a server under my control.

      BTW, that does sound like it could make a good short story.

    56. Re:I'd sign the petition... by alw53 · · Score: 1

      There's all kinds of political speech that would have been impossible without anonymous publication. The Federalist Papers, for example, were published largely anonymously.

  3. Who cares, it's a stupid domain anyway by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Get a .COM

    1. Re:Who cares, it's a stupid domain anyway by Freexe · · Score: 2, Funny

      but then i coundn't have this http://www.amassivegayorgyandcollectedsomuchjizzhe hastocarryitinajizzb.us/ url!

      --
      "In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
    2. Re:Who cares, it's a stupid domain anyway by takeya · · Score: 2, Insightful

      or anything but .us

      I think .cx allows private registrations ... hence the reason nobody knows who made goatse...

    3. Re:Who cares, it's a stupid domain anyway by jb.hl.com · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Why is it automatically assumed that the US should have .com? Why is that considered fair?

      --
      By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
    4. Re:Who cares, it's a stupid domain anyway by Erwos · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Life isn't fair. And when some other country makes their own new Internet, they can take the base TLDs, too.

      This is a rather mean-spirited way of saying "the US originally funded development of the Internet, ergo TLDs are US-centric". Get over it.

      -Erwos

      --
      Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
    5. Re:Who cares, it's a stupid domain anyway by TheSHAD0W · · Score: 1

      You certainly have a point. It's useful to have a TLD where you can be assured of the owner's identity, and it's not really censorship if people who'd rather not disclose that have reasonable alternatives.

    6. Re:Who cares, it's a stupid domain anyway by budgenator · · Score: 1

      because we do, the asumption is .US not the .COM and that assumption causes problems now. It's not as easy to add new domains now as it should be. Example.com is the american version of the british Example.co.uk, We are doing it wrong mainly because when we developed the internet we never foreseen how big it would grow, and what problems our little short-cut might cause.

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
    7. Re:Who cares, it's a stupid domain anyway by 1HandClapping · · Score: 1
      I think the parent poster was saying if you don't like the conditions of a dot us get a dot com.

      BTW it's not assumed that the US has dot com. The US has dot gov.

    8. Re:Who cares, it's a stupid domain anyway by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, it is known who created Goatse. Back before it got taken down, its DNS pointed to the same IP address as the one hosting http://www.hick.org . Hence http://www.hick.org/goat/ was not a mirror, but a different location for the same copy. Looking up hick.org with whois, we get one Matt Miller of Kansas:

      Matt Miller
      12221 Carter St.
      Overland Park, KS 66213-4107

    9. Re:Who cares, it's a stupid domain anyway by cpghost · · Score: 1

      Life isn't fair.

      Here, life *is* fair: .com was created by the US first, so they own it. They are very generous to share it as a gTLD with the rest of the world. That's all.

      This is just another case of first come, first served. We don't collectively complain that some great domain names have been taken. Why should we complain that some TLDs have been there from the start and belong to the US?

      --
      cpghost at Cordula's Web.
    10. Re:Who cares, it's a stupid domain anyway by operagost · · Score: 1

      Would anyone want to?

      --

      Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
    11. Re:Who cares, it's a stupid domain anyway by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let's think about this, everyone wants a domain name so they can spill their guts or whatnot to the public. I think with only a few small exceptions, forcing people to make their domain registration information public is a good idea.

      As for the more legitimate reasons for privacy, someone mentioned "A woman running an abortion clinic", if she wants a lower profile, then use a different TLD or get a PO Box. As to someone running a goth site, no offense, but I think most goths are as messed up as they typically are because their usually a little over-paranoid. Get .com,.net,.org,.nu,.as,.tv,etc... there are plenty of them. If this is a problem, then don't do the site. The fact is that if there are actually that many people that you think hate you, then stop making yourself a target, try getting a hair cut, removing the metal from your face, wear something that isn't black, neon, or flourescent. If you're a guy and you're not Scottish or Irish, stop wearing a frigging kilt. I can promise you that noone is actually going to track you down through your web site when finding you on a crowded street is far easier. Your agrument is just ridiculous.

      Some people make the argument "Privacy is for people with something to hide". If you need to hide it that bad, take a class on computer security and figure out how "This Internet Thingy" works and hide yourself. It is not exactly rocket science.

      For people that feel that it's discrimination of some sort or another to say "If you don't want to hand over the information, then use a different TLD" or you feel that "They can't do that, it's not fair to actually set rules on a public thing". Well, tough. Being an Amerian that lives in another country were freedom is not advertised, but simply practiced, I've learned that as an American in American, freedom is a marketing buzz word. The fact is that Americans have to be reminded constantly of their freedom and forced to celebrate it all the time. In civilized countries, freedom has bee established and people try to work together for a common good. Security has relaxed a bit in the air ports and often times people can enter the country without even showing a passport. We do things like relax at the corner coffee shop laughing at American naivity.

      Personally, I feel that if people want to excercise their so called right to anoniminity, they should find someplace like slashdot to do it, if you want a .us domain, come out of your closet or pay the $15 for a PO box

  4. don't forget the ICANN 2$ tax by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful


    ICANN imposes $2 internet tax

    ethics is so overrated (see us gov for examples) you would think people would have a bit more integrity
    can you imagine what a mess the Internet is gonna be in 10 years, you think spam and commercialism is bad now, shame because it could of been so much more

    1. Re:don't forget the ICANN 2$ tax by Angafirith · · Score: 1, Funny

      They're doing it just because THEYCANN. ...

      --
      "It is better to risk sparing a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one." - Voltaire
  5. Godaddy by TheFlu · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's the email I received from Godaddy.com regarding this issue:

    "Today I have the unfortunate responsibility of informing you that there has been a decision made by bureaucrats of a Federal agency that takes away your right to privacy as guaranteed by the United States Constitution.

    This decision was unilaterally made by the National Telecommunications and Information Association ("NTIA") www.ntia.doc.gov without hearings that would determine the impact on those affected, and delivered without notice -- in short, the NTIA decision was made without due process of any kind. This is exactly how our government is not supposed to work.

    The effect of this decision is to disallow new private domain name registrations on .US domain names. In addition, if you already own a private .US domain name registration, you will be forced to forfeit your privacy no later than January 26, 2006. By that time, you will need to choose between either making your personal information available to anyone who wants to see it, or giving up your right to that domain name.

    I personally find it ironic that our right to .US privacy was stripped away, without due process, by a federal government agency -- an agency that should be looking out for our individual rights. For the NTIA to choose the .US extension is the ultimate slap in your face. .US is the only domain name that is specifically intended for Americans (and also those who have a physical presence in our great country). So think about this for a moment. These bureaucrats stripped away the privacy that you're entitled to as an American, on the only domain name that says that you are an American. I am outraged by this -- you should be also.

    If, like me, you are outraged at the NTIA's decision to strip away our constitutional right to privacy, www.TheDangerOfNoPrivacy.com will provide you with a petition to sign. (Only your name will be published, your address and email information will be kept private.) This Web site also provides a very easy way for you to send either a fax or an email, expressing your outrage, to your Congressperson and Senators. This is all provided at no cost to you. All that is required is for you to take the time to visit www.TheDangerOfNoPrivacy.com sign the petition, and send the fax or email to your legislators.

    On my personal Blog, www.BobParsons.com there are a number of articles where you can learn more about the NTIA's unfortunate decision and what you can do to help get it reversed.

    I also will be talking about our right to privacy on Radio Go Daddy, our weekly radio show that debuts today, March 30, at 7 PM PST. To find out how to listen in, please visit the Web site dedicated to the show, www.RadioGoDaddy.com.

    You can be sure that I, and everyone at GoDaddy.com, will do everything in our power to get the NTIA decision reversed. However, we need your help. Please visit www.TheDangerOfNoPrivacy.com to sign the petition and express your feelings to your Congressperson and Senators.

    Sincerely,

    Bob Parsons
    President and Founder
    GoDaddy.com"

    --

    --It's Pimptastic!--

    1. Re:Godaddy by warkda+rrior · · Score: 3, Informative

      Bob says:
      These bureaucrats stripped away the privacy that you're entitled to as an American

      There is no such entitlement (compared to EU, for example).

      --
      You need to install an RTFM interface.
    2. Re:Godaddy by Ron+Bennett · · Score: 2, Interesting

      GoDaddy's founder makes some good points, but the primary reason for GoDaddy bulk mailing that is they stand to lose money because they will no longer be able to offer "private" (proxy) .US registrations.

      GoDaddy's practices leave something to be desired - anyone running anything even remotely controversal, especially if adult/porn related, does best to avoid GoDaddy when registering the hosting domain(s).

      Ron Bennett

    3. Re:Godaddy by McDutchie · · Score: 1
      "Today I have the unfortunate responsibility of informing you that there has been a decision made by bureaucrats of a Federal agency that takes away your right to privacy as guaranteed by the United States Constitution.

      What exactly is the article in the U.S. Constitution that guarantees privacy? Maybe I'm an ignorant foreigner (Dutchman), but I was always under the impression that the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee privacy. Am I wrong?

      The referenced website talks about the "First Amendment rights to privacy", but I was always under the impression that the First Amendment concerns freedom of speech, assembly and religion. Smells a bit fishy.

    4. Re:Godaddy by sconeu · · Score: 1

      First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments.

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    5. Re:Godaddy by HopeOS · · Score: 1

      GoDaddy's practices leave something to be desired - anyone running anything even remotely controversal, especially if adult/porn related, does best to avoid GoDaddy when registering the hosting domain(s).

      And why is that? Do they provide bad service to these domains? Do they lose their DNS records? All I ask of my registrar is that the root DNS servers stay updated. What else can go wrong? I'm genuinely curious.

      -Hope

    6. Re:Godaddy by Sneftel · · Score: 1

      The email from GoDaddy.com then leaned forwards over the table, jiggling seductively and breathing deeply.

      --
      The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
    7. Re:Godaddy by sp3d2orbit · · Score: 1

      Bullshit. Here's a very controversial site hosted by GoDaddy:

      www.savetoby.com

      and here's a link to Bob Parson's blog where he talks about why he won't take the site down.

      www.bobparsons.com

  6. Use a third-party to register your domain by bigtallmofo · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are many third parties that will register your domain name with valid contact information that isn't related to you at all.

    Other than that, it should be pointed out that ICANN has had a rule for years that you must have valid contact information in your WHOIS records. Of course, they've also ignored that same rule for years.

    --
    I'm a big tall mofo.
    1. Re:Use a third-party to register your domain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, I wasn't even aware that .us was playing a different game to ICANN. As far as I know pretty much every other TLD follows ICANN rules and procedures here. Why should .us be special?

      This is just an excuse to cry about "Der big bad gubermint", isn't it?

    2. Re:Use a third-party to register your domain by tuxette · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Aw crap, you beat me to saying "use (trusted) third parties to register your domain name." *sigh*

      So while we're on the topic of third parties, some questions:

      - has there been any discussion surrounding banning the use of these third parties?

      - what are the laws/rules/liabilities/etc. regarding the relationship between third parties and the government, and third parties and their customers, in dealing with issues between the government and a customer?

      --
      People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
    3. Re:Use a third-party to register your domain by Seumas · · Score: 1

      Of course, I'm pretty sure they all charge you something like $10 (per month or year) for the right to have the "privacy" service. I'm not going to pay as much to protect my contact info as I did to register the damn domain, so.. meh.

    4. Re:Use a third-party to register your domain by jmcmunn · · Score: 1


      And when the government sends a subpeona to the 'third party' for your name, it takes an extra 5 minutes for them to track you down. I'm sorry, but if you are hosting something bad enough (or spamming millions of messages I guess) for the FBI or whoever to come after you, a third party registrar isn't going to help much.

    5. Re:Use a third-party to register your domain by tuxette · · Score: 1

      They could do that without having to make domain name information public. But I guess using the third party would make it all the more "suspicious" and thus the whole mess all the more warranted ;-)

      --
      People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
    6. Re:Use a third-party to register your domain by Adult+film+producer · · Score: 1

      That's really besides the point, nobody using third party registrars believes they're escaping the eye of the law. What they want is privacy from *freaks*, *stalkers*, *lawyers on a fishing expedition*, *just plain old assholes*... My business phone has been plagued with red-neck housewives over the years, that have somehow, someway, figured out how to do a whois my domainnames.. Seriously, some people are fucked up. r.a.s.1974.

    7. Re:Use a third-party to register your domain by Ron+Bennett · · Score: 1

      At one time, individuals weren't even supposed to be able to register domain names - domains were intended to be registered to organizations.

      Ron

    8. Re:Use a third-party to register your domain by Seumas · · Score: 1

      And when the government sends a subpeona to the 'third party' for your name, it takes an extra 5 minutes for them to track you down. I'm sorry, but if you are hosting something bad enough (or spamming millions of messages I guess) for the FBI or whoever to come after you, a third party registrar isn't going to help much.

      Ah, the sound of the point skipping over heads.

      It may take the government an extra five minutes to track you down by sending a subpeona to whoever posesses your legitimate information - but Joe Public can't. Personally, I am not concerned with Johnny Law getting my information as he can do it whenver he wants with none to little effort. It's the other six billion people on the planet that I would like to make finding my information slightly more difficult for than typing "whois mydomain.com".

    9. Re:Use a third-party to register your domain by c0ldfusi0n · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      For cops, it's simple:

      1) Get a subpoena from a judge asking for the information.
      2) Go to the guy's house, shoot him 20 times in the back ("He was reaching for a gun, honest!")
      3) ???
      4) Coverup!

      5) Profit.

      --
      A computer makes it possible to do, in half an hour, tasks which were completely unnecessary to do before.
    10. Re:Use a third-party to register your domain by Ron+Bennett · · Score: 1

      That's a common, but incorrect assumption.

      ccTLDs (two character country TLDs) have much autonomy with many having very different policies / procedures compared to say .COM.

      Businesses using ccTLDs as their primary domain name, especially if they don't have bonafide operations in the parent country of the ccTLD, should be very wary - ccTLDs can and have changed policies, literally overnight, leaving registrants high and dry ... the .TM ccTLD is among the earliest examples in which numerous folks ran into problems.

      Ron

    11. Re:Use a third-party to register your domain by Florian+Weimer · · Score: 1

      As far as I know pretty much every other TLD follows ICANN rules and procedures here. Why should .us be special?

      Many of the ccTLDs are older than ICANN and thus not subject to ICANN regulations. I couldn't find a contract between .US and ICANN on the ICANN website, which could mean that there is none, and .US is still an independent ccTLD.

    12. Re:Use a third-party to register your domain by Maestro4k · · Score: 1
      There are many third parties that will register your domain name with valid contact information that isn't related to you at all.
      • That's just slightly different than what the NTIA is prohibiting, I'm sure they'll get around to stopping this as well. I have a few domains registered privately through GoDaddy so I can avoid spam. They place my real contact info in escrow with a proxy service and the proxy service shows up in the whois info. Here's an example:

        • Registrant:
          Domains by Proxy, Inc.
          DomainsByProxy.com
          15511 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
          Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
          United States

          Registered through: GoDaddy.com
          Domain Name: MYDOMAIN.NET
          Created on: 18-Feb-05
          Expires on: 18-Feb-06
          Last Updated on: 18-Feb-05

          Administrative Contact:
          Private, Registration MYDOMAIN.NET@domainsbyproxy.com
          Domains by Proxy, Inc.
          DomainsByProxy.com
          15511 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
          Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
          United States
          (480) 624-2599

          Technical Contact:
          Private, Registration MYDOMAIN.NET@domainsbyproxy.com
          Domains by Proxy, Inc.
          DomainsByProxy.com
          15511 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
          Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
          United States
          (480) 624-2599

        I changed the domain name since I don't feel like advertising/etc., but that's what all private domain registrations look like in whois. The E-mail works too, it will get passed along to me as long as it passes spam filters, so I can get DMCA notices and what-not.

        Basically all it does is keep prying eyes from getting my real name, address and E-mail address. This keeps the spammers and whackos at bay. If I do something illegal, the police can get my real contact info with a subpoena to the proxy service.

    13. Re:Use a third-party to register your domain by aonaran · · Score: 1

      I don't think you could do that, the best you could probably do is the trusted 3rd party had to be a lawyer.

      I would think it'd always be possible for a person who has a legit privacy concern to hire a lawyer to register the domain and handle that stuff for them.

    14. Re:Use a third-party to register your domain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      The point that godaddy and others are trying to make is that third parties may NO LONGER register your domains for you, and may NO LONGER provide that level of privacy. How else do you think private registrations in the WHOIS tables was being done? They're NOT talking about incorrect/false information, they're saying third parties can NO LONGER provide this registration service for .us type domains.

    15. Re:Use a third-party to register your domain by hausmaus · · Score: 1

      Let's not forget that it's against the law in the US to use fake info in your WHOIS info (I believe it's a seven-year sentence). Yesterday, after receiving the email from GoDaddy (with whom I have three domains), I immediately dropped my .US domain, registered a .NET domain and bought an account to privately register my domain. My problem is with spam-I have tons and tons of spam from making the mistake of not registering privately my domains years ago. Hopefully now, that'll stop somewhat. Granted, I do use a PO Box and my cell phone number for my registrations that are both easily changed, but still, I don't want being necessarily public information. If you need to reach me, you can send an email to admin@, abuse@, postmaster@ and you can still get me. You don't have to go through the backchannels to reach me. One of my friends thought it was funny that his "discovered a way" to contact me through my private registration. It burst his bubble when I told him the above.

      --
      Your email has been returned due to insufficent voltage.
    16. Re:Use a third-party to register your domain by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So? It's damn easy to resister a business?

      Bingo, you're an orginazation.

    17. Re:Use a third-party to register your domain by jmcmunn · · Score: 1


      Who the heck cares if 'Joe Public' can get my info. There's a hundred ways for my name to be seen by the public. It's much easier to go fish for names on YelowPages.com or whatever your favorite site is...Google your phone number, it likely comes up with your name and address unless you have gone to the trouble of removing it.

      My point is, the registrar is one of the least of my worries about my address/phone being found by 'Joe Public', it's all over the place already.

  7. so umm... who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    aren't there enough other choices for someone craving pseudo-anonymity? .com,.net,.org,.randomislandnation?

  8. Am I missing something? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I was under the impression that DNS ownership records for other TLDs (E.g. .com) had to be publically? At least in theory, it should also be geniune and correct.

    Why should .us be a special case? Being able to find accurate data from a simple whois is an important tool for a lot of network administrators.

    1. Re:Am I missing something? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      seeing as USA is the number 1 spammers choice its not hard to connect the dots, those who have most to lose always shout the loudest, anon/name proxy domains always are american, coincidence ?

    2. Re:Am I missing something? by haagmm · · Score: 1

      That is true, however what GoDaddy offers is they provide VALID contact information for their "privacy" divition. if a network administrator needs to contact the owner of the domain, they whois is, contact godaddy who then forward the info to the registrant, and it is up to the registrant to contact the initial party.

      this however i dont belive will stop you from setting your whois data to INVALID information. (mine are registered to James Bond)

    3. Re:Am I missing something? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No conincidence, just anti-American paranoia from some random moron.

    4. Re:Am I missing something? by Animats · · Score: 1
      Whois information is supposed to be public. There are many reasons why it should be. Most of the arguments for "private registration" are bogus.

      The "privacy" aspect is overrated. All my web sites have valid domain registration information. The phone numbers are real and are answered. E-mail works. (Spam is filtered out, of course.) I've had two threats in ten years. (The invention broker scam is out of business, and the company who complained about Downside is down 97% from its peak.)

      There is absolutely no right to run a business anonymously. In many states, it's a crime.

      Fewer registrars are offering "private domain registration". GoDaddy is backing away from it. Under the CAN-SPAM act, proxy registration expose the nominal owner, usually the registrar, to liability. They're the name you sue. Domains by Proxy and Verisign still offer private registration, but they will, if there's any risk to them, immediately disclose the real owner of a domain. Check those "sole discretion" clauses in the contract.

      For a domain of any value, "proxy registration" creates real problems. If you have a dispute with the proxy company, they have control of the situation. And if they go bankrupt, it's even worse. The domain becomes an asset in bankruptcy, and you're just an ordinary creditor.

      If you want lightweight anonymity for your family pictures, get an AOL or GeoCities account.

  9. Good by Erik+Hensema · · Score: 3, Insightful

    One less TLD for spammers to abuse.

    --

    This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.

    1. Re:Good by Seumas · · Score: 1

      if you hide behind an anon domain 99.99% its because you are up to no good

      And the same is probably true if you lock your briefcase, luggage, car or house. If you ain't got nuthin' to hide, whatcha' care about yer privassy for, you pinko commie...

    2. Re:Good by ifwm · · Score: 1

      Ok, so to extend your analogy, what happens if I don't lock my stuff. It gets stolen. What is the equivalent situation regarding anonymous domains?

      Oh, wait there isn't one. A little more reason, and a little less (ridiculous) rhetoric would do you good.

    3. Re:Good by Godman · · Score: 3, Informative

      One less? You didn't RTFA. This makes ALL us registrations public, meaning that you can't, for a fee, keep your information out of the whois records. This is one more domain for the spammers to harvest from.

      --
      I have this really funny quote that I like to put here. Unfortunately, there's this really annoying thing called a char
    4. Re:Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yes but what the parent is saying is that by requiring registration spammers can't hide, but the problem is that those being spammed can't hide either. so requiring registration is a double edge policy. It gives away the names of spammers and those who don't want to be spammed.

    5. Re:Good by geminidomino · · Score: 1

      He could have read the article, you just don't know what a TLD is. It stands for "top-level domain."

      example.us is not a TLD. Neither is example.com. .us is a TLD. So is .com.

    6. Re:Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      cleaned up its act?? registration will make a MESS. now it will be easier to harvest names to spam them and easier to steal identities.

    7. Re:Good by Improv · · Score: 1

      The point is, spammers often register these domains and remain invisible with their spam hosts so it's like whack-a-mole when you want to keep them down. I'd like a petition in support of this rule change.

      --
      For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
    8. Re:Good by xMilkmanDanx · · Score: 1

      Aren't spammers primarily using botnets and hijacked servers now? And do they even need a domain registration to be able to spam in the first place?

      So the question becomes, how does this help stop spam?

      --
      I am not in anyway affiliated with Max Cannon
    9. Re:Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dear Anonymous Coward;

      I have been looking all over for you, and now I find your here on /. Great Day!

      Request for urgent business relationship

      First, i must solicit your strictest confidence in this transaction. This is by virtue of its nature as being utterly confidential and 'top secret'. I am sure and have confidence of your ability and reliability to prosecute a transaction of this great magnitude involving a pending transaction requiring maxiimum confidence.

      We are top official of the federal government contract review panel who are interested in imporation of goods into our country with funds which are presently trapped in nigeria. In order to commence this business we solicit your assistance to enable us transfer into your account the said trapped funds.

      The source of this fund is as follows; during the last military regime here in nigeria, the government officials set up companies and awarded themselves contracts which were grossly over-invoiced in various ministries. The present civilian government set up a contract review panel and we have identified a lot of inflated contract funds which are presently floating in the central bank of nigeria ready for payment.

      However, by virtue of our position as civil servants and members of this panel, we cannot acquire this money in our names. I have therefore, been delegated as a matter of trust by my colleagues of the panel to look for an overseas partner into whose account we would transfer the sum of us$21,320,000.00(twenty one million, three hundred and twenty thousand u.s dollars). Hence we are writing you this letter. We have agreed to share the money thus; 1. 20% for the account owner 2. 70% for us (the officials) 3. 10% to be used in settling taxation and all local and foreign expenses. It is from the 70% that we wish to commence the importation business.

      Please,note that this transaction is 100% safe and we hope to commence the transfer latest seven (7) banking days from the date of the receipt of the following informatiom by tel/fax; 234-1-7740449, your company's signed, and stamped letterhead paper the above information will enable us write letters of claim and job description respectively. This way we will use your company's name to apply for payment and re-award the contract in your company's name.

      We are looking forward to doing this business with you and solicit your confidentiality in this transation. Please acknowledge the receipt of this letter using the above tel/fax numbers. I will send you detailed information of this pending project when i have heard from you.

      Yours faithfully,

      drclementokon@nigerianscam.us

      Note; please quote this reference number (ve/s/09/99) in all your responses.

    10. Re:Good by Godman · · Score: 1

      You can register .com and .net privately right now. If they are using .us right now, they will just switch.

      --
      I have this really funny quote that I like to put here. Unfortunately, there's this really annoying thing called a char
    11. Re:Good by Godman · · Score: 1

      I know .us is a TLD. Its one more TLD that spammers can harvest from. If I knew your domain, and I went to godaddy, or someother place and did a whois query on your .us domain after Jan. 26, I could get your name, address, e-mail, etc....and the spammers will just use .com, which can still be registered in such a way that your info is private.

      --
      I have this really funny quote that I like to put here. Unfortunately, there's this really annoying thing called a char
    12. Re:Good by Improv · · Score: 1

      One hopes that that would change as well. You can't win all battles entirely in one sitting.

      --
      For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
  10. I'd accept if by mirko · · Score: 1

    I could keep the right to host whichever information and secrecy I want to on my own site.

    Otherwise, may a non US-ian buy a .US domain ?
    I'm thinking of miroslav-vito.us

    --
    Trolling using another account since 2005.
  11. Abolition of non-country post-fixed TLD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I believe that all .com and .net etc... should be a subset of a country suffix. Too many companys and organisations hide their origin as .com is too generic.
    and this to me blurrs what specific law applies to what information.

    1. Re:Abolition of non-country post-fixed TLD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why the hell is this modded 70% funny? Is there some subtle joke here that I'm missing but that all the mods noticed?

    2. Re:Abolition of non-country post-fixed TLD by jroysdon · · Score: 1

      Where should multinational countries register? Should they have to register a domain in every country they operate in?

  12. MOD PARENT UP by Agret · · Score: 0

    Mod parent informative.

    --
    Have you metaroderated recently?
  13. So get a domain in Denmark by Snaller · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Danish hostmaster recognize the individuals right to privacy, and if you wish to be "unlisted" you can be. Of course they know who you are, and break the law they'll hand over your information to the police.

    --
    If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
    1. Re:So get a domain in Denmark by smithberry · · Score: 1

      You say "Don't use DIV on webpages, it makes them unreadable in MSIE."
      I say "Use DIV on webpages, it makes them unreadable in MSIE. And it will maybe encourage more folk to make the switch to another browser"
      (Sorry about being offtopic)

    2. Re:So get a domain in Denmark by KlomDark · · Score: 1

      What do you mean IE can't render pages with ??

      ASP.NET built with Visual Studio.NET puts DIVs all over the place and IE has no problem with them.

    3. Re:So get a domain in Denmark by Fallingcow · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but the DIV tag works fine in IE anyway. The GP poster posts on Slashdot a lot, so I keep seeing his .Sig, and it always confuses me.

      Yeah, yeah, offtopic. But I'm replying to an offtopic, so that makes it ok, right? Right? *flashes winning smile*

    4. Re:So get a domain in Denmark by Snaller · · Score: 1

      Try going into Internet Options/Accessibility and tick 'ignore font sizes' - then browse around a lot for a week, chances are you'll see how evertyhing totally colapses on a lot of sites, and much of that is because of div's - had it been a normal table it would have been something else.

      --
      If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
    5. Re:So get a domain in Denmark by Fallingcow · · Score: 1

      Sounds like imperfectly-designed CSS layouts, not the fault of the DIV tags.

      I was going to say "poorly-designed", but then remembered that most of the sites that I make probably won't display perfectly under arbitrary font sizes. A wide range of reasonable font sizes? Yes. ANY font size AT ALL? No. Didn't want to insult myself :)

      Could they work, though, with sufficient use of nested FLOATS and some other (kinda hackish, damn CSS, certainly needs a little more work, IMHO) tricks? Yes.

      Oh, and DIV's do something completely different from TABLE's. The only reason they're comparable at all is because lots of people used to (google still does, probably lots of others, too) use TABLE's for page layout, which they were never meant for.

    6. Re:So get a domain in Denmark by Snaller · · Score: 1

      Sounds like imperfectly-designed CSS layouts,

      It may sound like it.

      I was going to say "poorly-designed", but then remembered that most of the sites that I make probably won't display perfectly under arbitrary font sizes

      Almost nobody designs the web as it was intended.

      ANY font size AT ALL? No. Didn't want to insult myself :)

      Naa, better to insult the reader.

      Oh, and DIV's do something completely different from TABLE's.

      What a pity people don't know what when they use them instead of TD's.

      use TABLE's for page layout, which they were never meant for

      Only for data layout - but then HTML was about datalayout, not WYSIWYG.

      --
      If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
    7. Re:So get a domain in Denmark by Fallingcow · · Score: 1

      >>ANY font size AT ALL? No. Didn't want to insult myself :)

      >Naa, better to insult the reader.

      The "didn't want to insult myself" part refered to my almost calling it "poorly-designed" rather than "imperfectly-designed". It was just a joke.

      Anyway, CSS layouts with proper XHTML tend provide better accessability than TABLE layouts, generally speaking, though this one "accessibility" option apparently breaks it.

      Anywho, tables aren't for "data layout" in general, rather they're for displaying tablature data--that is, spreadsheet-style data, or any other data (data, NOT page elements like menus and such) that makes sense in a column-row layout. They're not meant for putting your page menu in a certain spot and your content in another; that's for other things, including DIV's, to do.

      Table page-layouts were always just a massively popular hack to achieve layouts that early HTML was incapable of making otherwise. Now, we have a non-hackish, and, in most ways, better method for doing good-looking page layouts. It's not perfect yet, but remember that using TABLE's for layout can cause lots of accessibility problems, too.

      CSS+XHTML is all about flexibility. No, you can't go around viewing most pages at any font size you want, but most of the good ones can display OK at sizes +/-50% different from what they started out as, which is pretty good.

      Can you set most pages to view at 72pt fonts on an 800x600 screen resolution and expect it to look OK? No, of course not. 2pt on 1600x1200? No, that'll probably break, too.

      Incidentally, I just checked that setting of yours on two pages that I designed recently. One had no problems at all, and the other had a problem with a button in the menu that can best be described as "a slight annoyance that doesn't affect functionality at all". So, I'm gonna go ahead and call and CSS layouts that don't work with that setting "poorly-designed", and call anyone who makes such pages "loosers", since I'm apparently not one of them :)

    8. Re:So get a domain in Denmark by Fallingcow · · Score: 1

      Oh, wow. I didn't just put "loosers" instead of "losers", did I?

      Guess that makes me the "looser". Heh.

    9. Re:So get a domain in Denmark by Snaller · · Score: 1

      CSS+XHTML is all about flexibility.

      To me CSS is mostly about inflexiblity, almost everybody seem to use CSS to specify an absolute fontsize for fonts, and MSIE feels that if the font size is absolute then it shouldn't allow people to change the size. ie, one is stuck with utral small fonts that can be hard for a lot of us to read.

      Can you set most pages to view at 72pt fonts on an 800x600 screen resolution and expect it to look OK? No, of course not. 2pt on 1600x1200? No, that'll probably break, too.

      I don't agree, if one stuck to the design ideas it should be scaleable to any size, perhaps graphics would look bad - but fonts are vector and should be scalable. Of course if its bigger you can see less of it on the screen at one time, but that's better than not being able to see it.

      It's interesting that some countries at least, like the UK, have laws which prevent the discrimination against the handicapped, and that their royal institute for the blind(and seeing impaired) have threatend lawsuit against several commercial websites. The sites in question has always change their sites so it has yet to actually come to court. But good work by the institute as far as I'm concerned.

      --
      If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
    10. Re:So get a domain in Denmark by Fallingcow · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but the nice thing about CSS from an accessability standpoint is the ability to turn off the CSS completely. You can't just shut off the custom page formatting with TABLE's and other, non-CSS methods.

      When I test my pages for accessability, I:
      1) Scale the font size up and down a couple of notches w/ ctrl++ in Firefox.
      2) Turn off the CSS and make sure that the page is still 100% usable w/out it.
      3) Run it through some kind of accessibility-checker. There's one in the Web Developer toolbar extension in Firefox, I can't remember what the URL is, and I'm not at my dev. machine right now, so I can't check easily. Anyway, it's there, and it makes sure that pages comply with legal accessibility guidelines.

      OK, so maybe not everyone does even that much. But, the point is, it's not the fault of the DIV tags. Hell, you can do some crazy stuff to a page w/ CSS without ever using a DIV, those just make it easier to do some things.

      Maybe your complaint would better be voiced as, "Use CSS+XHTML properly or not at all!"

      In fact, when I have some free time later, I may set mine to that.

    11. Re:So get a domain in Denmark by Snaller · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but the nice thing about CSS from an accessability standpoint is the ability to turn off the CSS completely.

      In theory, a lot of pages use inline css on all pages. (and if you actually switch them off, a lot of pages look totally Chaotic )
      can't just shut off the custom page formatting with TABLE's and other

      You don't need to switch of tables.

      1) Scale the font size up and down a couple of notches w/ ctrl++ in Firefox.

      Yes, it would be nice if one could do that in MSIE. But not only isn't there a shortcut, but as i said it refuses to scale fonts which has been set at specific size by CSS

      Maybe your complaint would better be voiced as, "Use CSS+XHTML properly or not at all!"

      Well, 1. Space is limited. and 2. Nobody thinks they are using them improperly.

      --
      If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
  14. toys by 404forbidden · · Score: 2, Funny

    does this mean i can t run a toys r us anonymously ?

  15. What I don't like... by Transcendent · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...is having to pay extra for my domain to be "private"... at least with godaddy.com.

    I got an e-mail from godaddy yesterday about this ruling, and the whole time I was reading it I was thinking of how godaddy is almost hypocritical in sending such an e-mail.

    They want you to sign the petition to allow you to register the .US domain anonymously, but they still want you to pay extra for it.

    Anonymity should be free.

    1. Re:What I don't like... by PetoskeyGuy · · Score: 1

      Anonymity should be free
      I believe that's "Anonymity wants to be Free!"

  16. Uh.. by Enjoi · · Score: 1

    I thought no-one used .us anyway. I've not seen a .us domain for about 3 years, you all use the .com domains.

    1. Re:Uh.. by ZonaldRumzfeld · · Score: 1

      Have you been on irc lately? Take a look at how many shells are using the .us and .info domain. Plenty.

    2. Re:Uh.. by Enjoi · · Score: 1

      Yes, but it's extremely rare compared to most other domains.

    3. Re:Uh.. by johannesg · · Score: 1

      A quick search on reveals there are 32,100,000 .us sites at this time. Not bad, but far less than the number of .com (1,570,000,000) or .net (143,000,000) or even .nl (34,200,000)...

    4. Re:Uh.. by johannesg · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Oops. That will teach me to "preview" next time...

    5. Re:Uh.. by Enjoi · · Score: 0

      But, that's only in the google database...

    6. Re:Uh.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://plugh.us

  17. Fuc.kthe.us by Indy+Media+Watch · · Score: 3, Funny

    The owner of the domain fuc.kthe.us - reported here probably isn't going to like this...

    --

    Indy Media Watch-Proctologist of the Internet

    1. Re:Fuc.kthe.us by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Could you link to the domain next time and not shill your own damn blog?

    2. Re:Fuc.kthe.us by Indy+Media+Watch · · Score: 1, Troll

      I will excuse your cynicism and your anonymity. Hopefully next time you will excuse a link to an entirely relevant commentary on an offensive website, as opposed to linking directly to (or shilling) the offensive damned website.

      Alternatively, in that you went to all the trouble of flaming me, perhaps you could expend that effort next time more productively and merely cut and paste (are you ready for it?) Fuc.kthe.us into your address bar, suck it and see.

      --

      Indy Media Watch-Proctologist of the Internet

    3. Re:Fuc.kthe.us by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What is so bad about that website?
      I see nothing really offensive on it - am I missing something?
      Is a flag turned upside down considered offensive where you live? That's a rather weird custom..

    4. Re:Fuc.kthe.us by Twanfox · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      The flag, turned upside down, is supposed to be used in times of distress. A signal, or otherwise quiet notification, that someone needs help there. I imagine it was considered a simple thing that one could do that would not be considered relevant by an invading party.

    5. Re:Fuc.kthe.us by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Interesting.
      But makes me wonder why the IndyMediaWatch guy is so upset!?

    6. Re:Fuc.kthe.us by Indy+Media+Watch · · Score: 1

      The upside down flag wasn't my problem, the domain name was. Particularly since it was a statement about the US by an American, not a foreign entity.

      I daresay however others might not share my inddiference towards the association (in any orientation) of the flag with this statement.

      --

      Indy Media Watch-Proctologist of the Internet

    7. Re:Fuc.kthe.us by ScrawnyPaleGuy · · Score: 1

      Well, unless he lied, it doesn't really matter. It took me about 30 seconds to find his WHOIS info. I won't post the rest, but, seriously, if this guy or anyone else wants to hide they just put in false info because it's easy to find. [whois.melbourneit.com] Domain Name: KTHE.US Domain ID: D5364419-US Sponsoring Registrar: GO DADDY SOFTWARE, INC. Registrant ID: GODA-05208188 Registrant Name: Brian Szymanski Registrant Organization: Unknown Registrant Address1: 406 Oak Ave. Registrant City: Ithaca Registrant State/Province: New York Registrant Postal Code: 14850 Registrant Country: United States Registrant Country Code: US Registrant Phone Number: +1.6072803103 Registrant Email: ski@indymedia.org

    8. Re:Fuc.kthe.us by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's fine for him to have that opinion. In fact, its his right. If you don't like things like freedom of expression then you should leave to a more regulated place.

    9. Re:Fuc.kthe.us by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Particularly since it was a statement about the US by an American, not a foreign entity.

      So you mean to say that only a non US-citizen may be of that opinion?
      Somehow your reasoning is... hard to follow.

    10. Re:Fuc.kthe.us by Indy+Media+Watch · · Score: 1

      I'll clarify.

      I meant, a non-citizen who says "F**k the US" may have his reasons for saying so. I may not agree but that's not important.

      On the other hand, a citizen of the US (as is the case here) who is free to leave, yet stays, enjoys all the benefits of the country and still says "F**k the US" should stop his whining. He should also remember there are plenty of places where a comment like "F**K countryname" would see the person strung up. He is abusing in an offensive manner a freedom he takes for granted.

      I trust that clarifies what I said.

      --

      Indy Media Watch-Proctologist of the Internet

    11. Re:Fuc.kthe.us by phats+garage · · Score: 1
      Thats the whole argument against the new .us policy. Having even a slightly unpopular opinion and expressing it will get you much worse than spam if random, whacko readers know where you live.

      Now for me, I have unpopular minority opinions but I get away with these otherwise dangerous mind patterns by not sharing them with anyone. Ultimately, the new .us regulations means that you only publish happy feel good stuff, and thats exactly what your government wants to happen.

    12. Re:Fuc.kthe.us by Fear+the+Clam · · Score: 1

      You can't have it both ways. You're either for freedom of expression or you're not. Just because something displeases *you* doesn't make it un-American. I don't suggest that you leave my country even though you have a sentence fragment in the header of your blog.

    13. Re:Fuc.kthe.us by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think a person that has a problem with a free US citizen saying F**k the US. Is, in fact, free to leave to another coutry where they regulate speech. If a free US citizen wants to say F**k the US IT'S THIER RIGHT. We enjoy the benefits of living in the US and having the right to say F**k The US as it should be if we disagree with some of its policies.

  18. Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1


    its about time USA started to clean up their act, im fed up of all the phishing and spam from there and of course a whois on scam/fraud domains always is a USA domain owner, coincidence ? all those billions of sites worldwide and USA always seems to be involved in the dodgy ones

    people need to take some responsibility

    if you hide behind an anon domain 99.99% its because you are up to no good

  19. I have no problem with this by CaymanIslandCarpedie · · Score: 1

    Besides the tin-foil hat folks who really wants to hide who runs a domain?

    It'll be the phishers, spamer, ect. I have no problem with getting rid of "proxy" registrations. I'm not a fan of "big brother" knowing everything about me, but really if you want to host a domain I think that should be public knowledge. The only reasons I can think of the not want to give this is your a tin-hatter, up to some nafarious activity, or would be ashamed to have your name associated with the site. In any of those cases, either live with it or you shouldn't host the domain.

    --
    "reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
    1. Re:I have no problem with this by geminidomino · · Score: 1

      And the anti-spammers, who are often harassed, stalked, and/or threatened with violence...

      And users of security communities such as Full-Disclosure, who many big companies would LOVE to silence...

      And anyone who might want to run a website criticizing an oppressive government, not necessarily (nor discounting) the U.S...

    2. Re:I have no problem with this by gorbachev · · Score: 1

      "Besides the tin-foil hat folks who really wants to hide who runs a domain?"

      Ever ran an anti-spam site and had a spammer visit you?

      No? Well, good for you, but others haven't been so lucky.

      There are reasons not to plaster your home address all over the net. If that makes me one of the tin-foil hat folks, then I'll be proud to wear mine, shiny side out, of course.

      --
      In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
    3. Re:I have no problem with this by Maestro4k · · Score: 2, Informative
      It'll be the phishers, spamer, ect. I have no problem with getting rid of "proxy" registrations. I'm not a fan of "big brother" knowing everything about me, but really if you want to host a domain I think that should be public knowledge. The only reasons I can think of the not want to give this is your a tin-hatter, up to some nafarious activity, or would be ashamed to have your name associated with the site. In any of those cases, either live with it or you shouldn't host the domain.
      • You appear to have no idea how private proxy registration works. The owner's real information is stored in escrow with the proxy service. The E-mail address listed in whois will be yourdomain.net@proxyservice.domain and it forwards stuff to the real owner. (Well at least the stuff that's not spam, so DMCA notices, etc. get through.) The police can easily get your real contact info by presenting a subpoena to the proxy service.

      • The spammers/phishers/etc. just register a domain with a stolen credit card and give false whois info. They'll continue to do so in fact, this won't affect them. It will affect those trying to avoid the spammers (that's why I registered my domains privately, I have to pay extra for the privledge in fact) and those who need privacy (rape victims, stalker victims, etc.)

    4. Re:I have no problem with this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      By "tin foil hat" are you talking about your rights? I hope not, because America is slowly losing rights and people like you with name calling and regulation worshipers are part of the problem. If you want more regulation go to china. But don't ruin it for the rest of the americans who want thier freedom.
      are you saying that people who want to have thier rights wear tin foil hats?? Why don't you say, people who don't want to register thier gun wear tin foil hats? or how about, people who don't want martial law wear tin foil hats.

  20. Links to decision? by Jumbo+Jimbo · · Score: 5, Insightful
    This is an interesting story but the Original poster gives 2 links to the petition website but not links to the decision by the NTIA.

    By following the link from the petition site to the NTIA home page, there's nothing there about this particular decision, and some preliminary hunting hasn't shown up the relevant article for this.

    Most of the time us Slashdot readers can find the information for ourselves, but here we are being asked to sign a petition based on the evidence presented by the poster, not by reading the docs for ourselves (of cause we would all have RTFA if it was posted, obviously). I think it's a bit underhand asking us to sign this petition on an obsure decision that is not easy to find, without providing a link to the decision.

    If anyone can find a link to the decision I'd be very grateful.

    1. Re:Links to decision? by dema · · Score: 1

      Bob Parsons, founder of GoDaddy blogged on the subject recently. I actually discovered this via a mass-mail sent out from GoDaddy. Unfortunately I already deleted the email, but it had some insight as to how this actually happened under everyone's nose.

    2. Re:Links to decision? by Phroggy · · Score: 1

      In particular: does this decision make it illegal to a) use a proxy domain registration services (e.g. DomainsByProxy.com or similar) to register a domain name on your behalf, with their contact info, keeping your contact info confidential; b) pay the actual domain registrar (e.g. GoDaddy, the ones who are so freaked out about this) to do the same? In both cases, actual valid contact information is listed in WHOIS - but it's contact info for the registrar or proxy service, rather than the person actually using the domain. I see no reason why this should not be permitted, nor have I seen evidence that the NTIA has actually decided it will not be permitted.

      I suspect they may be talking about something else: an option from the .us registry to not list any contact information in WHOIS. This is just a guess, as I've never registered a .us domain and I don't know if such a feature has been available. If so, I'm not aware of any other registry offering this feature, and while it definitely sucks that they'd offer it and then change their minds, I really don't see why they felt the need to offer it in the first place (if this guess is correct) when registrars and third parties already offer proxy registration.

      --
      $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
      $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
  21. In Finland by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    we had THK (Telehallintokeskus, Central command of telecommunications) to control every .fi domain. Not only that, one had to have a company to get a .fi domain. Everything (addresses, names, phone numbers etc.) gets listed this way.

  22. What's the big deal... by jmcmunn · · Score: 3, Insightful


    Most of us will pay to register them with a credit card or a check or something with our identity attached to it anyway. If anyone really wanted to find out who owns/runs the domain it wouldn't be too hard. Most of the time, they could also figure it out by tracing where it is hosted and finding some information on who pays the bills there as well.

    If you want a free (and anonymous) web page, sign up for some cheesy service online where you are a subdomain of someone else. If not, then pony up and give some legit information to the company you buy the domain from.

    1. Re:What's the big deal... by Seumas · · Score: 1

      There is a world of difference between, say, the police serving your registrar, webhost or colocation service and some unstable troublemaker typing your domain into a whois interface and getting your name, phone number, address and email address with three seconds of work.

    2. Re:What's the big deal... by cpghost · · Score: 1

      There is a world of difference between, say, the police serving your registrar, webhost or colocation service and some unstable troublemaker typing your domain into a whois interface and getting your name, phone number, address and email address with three seconds of work.

      Oh yeah. That troublemaker would need to shell out $$$$ to a p.i. who in turn has good connections to the police.

      --
      cpghost at Cordula's Web.
  23. E-mailing your elected represetatives by George+Tirebuyer · · Score: 0

    These e-mail campaigns would be more effective if they included a demand to cut the funding of the agency in question in the canned letter. Make them think twice before trying to pull off another stunt.

  24. A petition? by Juvenall · · Score: 1, Insightful

    If you don't like this, feel free to sign the petition.

    At the risk of sounding like a torll, what ever happened with using market demand to get thigns done? If you don't like what they're doing with .us, don't buy/renew and then tell them why.

    No one cares about your signature unless it's written on cash.

    1. Re:A petition? by theWrkncacnter · · Score: 0

      Agreed. Its amazing that people still think online petitions work.

      --
      -1 (Troll) is antihammer
    2. Re:A petition? by dos_dude · · Score: 1

      don't buy/renew and then tell them why

      Good idea. But will I be able to tell when I'm finished not buying/renewing?

  25. NTIA Follow up statement by nixfixer · · Score: 5, Funny

    All your domains are belong to .US

  26. Get over it Daddy! by CaymanIslandCarpedie · · Score: 1, Interesting

    If you are outraged by the governments insistance of proof of identity before giving you a drivers license or passport please visit www.TheDangerOfNoPrivacy.com

    The right of privacy isn't absolute. You are forced to give your identity for tons of stuff, for the most part this is just a responsible requirement. If you REALLY want privacy, go buy a shack in the mountains of Montana and put on your tinfoil hat.

    Nobody is forced to register a domain! If you really don't want to give this info to NTIA, there is a VERY easy solution. Don't register a .us domain!

    --
    "reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
  27. Re:What Problem? by JanneM · · Score: 1

    I don't see a problem with disclosing contact info either.

    That said, ".us" doesn't look like a government site anymore than ".se" looks like a Swedish one, or ".jp" looks like the Japanese government. Not a very good argument for it.

    --
    Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
  28. .US Registry Censors Domains Too ... by Ron+Bennett · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The .US Registry has disabled and locked numerous .US domains containing "dirty" words alone, regardless of whether the domains were actually used or not.

    So much for freedom of speech and expression in .US - but then America is full of contradictions :(

    I've owned FuckCensorship.COM / .ORG / .NET for years and never had any problems ... yet, my FuckCensorship.US domain was only active for a short time and then disabled/locked.

    In short, .US domains are best avoided for anything critical ... not solely because of the censorship issues, but rather more so because the .US Registry changes polices willy nilly with little regard to registrants.

    Domain Name FUCKCENSORSHIP.US
    Domain ID D1877066-US
    Sponsoring Registrar INTERCOSMOS MEDIA GROUP, INC. D.B.A. DIRECTNIC.COM
    Domain Status serverDeleteProhibited
    Domain Status serverTransferProhibited
    Domain Status serverUpdateProhibited
    Registrant ID IMG-146583
    Registrant Name Ron Bennett
    Registrant Organization Ron Bennett
    Registrant Address1 PO BOX 6532
    Registrant City Wyomissing
    Registrant State/Province PA
    Registrant Postal Code 19610-0532
    Registrant Country United States
    Registrant Country Code US
    Registrant Phone Number +1.6107776566
    Registrant Email bennett@wyomissing.com
    Registrant Application Purpose P1
    Registrant Nexus Category C11
    Administrative Contact ID IMG-146583
    Administrative Contact Name Ron Bennett
    Administrative Contact Organization Ron Bennett
    Administrative Contact Address1 PO BOX 6532
    Administrative Contact City Wyomissing
    Administrative Contact State/Province PA
    Administrative Contact Postal Code 19610-0532
    Administrative Contact Country United States
    Administrative Contact Country Code US
    Administrative Contact Phone Number +1.6107776566
    Administrative Contact Email bennett@wyomissing.com
    Administrative Contact Application Purpose P1
    Administrative Contact Nexus Category C11
    Billing Contact ID IMG-146583
    Billing Contact Name Ron Bennett
    Billing Contact Organization Ron Bennett
    Billing Contact Address1 PO BOX 6532
    Billing Contact City Wyomissing
    Billing Contact State/Province PA
    Billing Contact Postal Code 19610-0532
    Billing Contact Country United States
    Billing Contact Country Code US
    Billing Contact Phone Number +1.6107776566
    Billing Contact Email bennett@wyomissing.com
    Billing Contact Application Purpose P1
    Billing Contact Nexus Category C11
    Technical Contact ID IMG-146583
    Technical Contact Name Ron Bennett
    Technical Contact Organization Ron Bennett
    Technical Contact Address1 PO BOX 6532
    Technical Contact City Wyomissing
    Technical Contact State/Province PA
    Technical Contact Postal Code 19610-0532
    Technical Contact Country United States
    Technical Contact Country Code US
    Technical Contact Phone Number +1.6107776566
    Technical Contact Email bennett@wyomissing.com
    Technical Contact Application Purpose P1
    Technical Contact Nexus Category C11
    Name Server INVALIDNS1.NEUSTAR.COM
    Name Server INVALIDNS2.NEUSTAR.COM
    Created by Registrar INTERCOSMOS MEDIA GROUP, INC. D.B.A. DIRECTNIC.COM
    Last Updated by Registrar BATCHCSR
    Domain Registration Date Wed Apr 24 17:52:47 GMT+00:00 2002
    Domain Expiration Date Sat Apr 23 23:59:59 GMT+00:00 2005
    Domain Last Updated Date Sat Apr 24 04:35:46 GMT+00:00 2004

    Whois database was last updated on: Thu Mar 31 13:14:23 GMT 2005

    1. Re:.US Registry Censors Domains Too ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why didn't you sue? It's not expensive to do it yourself.

    2. Re:.US Registry Censors Domains Too ... by Ron+Bennett · · Score: 1

      I haven't sued because the .US registry currently has the legal right to restrict registrations...

      I could perhaps file a lawsuit against the NTIA, but doubt I'd succeed based on past lawsuits against the "old" NSI years ago over a similar issue with "dirty" domains in .COM/.NET/.ORG - NSI prevailed everytime from what I recall; eventually the domains in question were released when registrar competition was introduced, but were most all grabbed by domain name speculators - most all the folks who originally filed lawsuits never got the domains they desired ... digressed a bit here.

      In a nutshell, I'd have a heck of a time getting anywhere. As far as the money I paid for the domain - it was prompty refunded in full years ago, so I can't sue for that ... the FuckCensorship.US domain record remains in their system because there are other people, from my understanding, who have taken various legal actions - but at the end of the day, all such "dirty" .US registrations will likely eventually be deleted.

      Ron

    3. Re:.US Registry Censors Domains Too ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "So much for freedom of speech and expression in .US"

      What? You can still put whatever content you want on your site, right? They're not restricting your speech, just the address your speech is retrieved from.

      What you're saying is akin to saying that prohibiting certain kinds of public street names is a restriction of freedom of speech. It's not. Just because your streets are named after presidents and tree varieties doesn't mean your business or home's signage or the things people say or do there are restricted.

      Domani names are part of a global namespace. They are not content, they are how the content is addressed. They aren't even how the content is found! That's what search engines, portals, blogs, and word-of-mouth are for. It wouldn't even be a free speech issue if domain names were changed to the hex digits for the request number of the domain. They'd be useless domain names, but you could STILL post whatever you want at them.

    4. Re:.US Registry Censors Domains Too ... by arbitraryaardvark · · Score: 1

      I disagree with the grandparent post that suing is easy or quick or cheap or anything of that sort.
      I've spent much of the last 7 years suing about internet anonymity without much to show for it.
      majors.blogspot.com
      On the other hand, if there will be a lawsuit over this issue, maybe you'd like to be the named plaintiff, fuckcensorship.us, et al. v united states.
      I always look for fun distinctive case names.

      As you say, they would probably win about naughty domain names, although there are cases like Cohen v California or Price v Indiana that protect fuck as political expression.

      I am guessing the government took this step without thinking much about the constitutionality of their action.

      The right to privacy at issue here was "discovered" in Talley v California, 1960.
      www.findlaw.com.
      Talley held that there is a right to anonymous political speech.
      If flyers and books are protected, internet sites may be also. I wouldn't bet the farm, but there's a case there.
      ACLU v Johnson and a series of other state decency act decisions found that there is a right of privacy such that they can't make everybody use a credit card to verify age.
      Whether this would extend to domain registration is an open question.
      There also seem to be search and seizure and due process issues raised. It's not a case I could handle myself, but I wouldn't be opposed to being part of a team. Does EFF have a position on this?

  29. Re:What Problem? by ImaLamer · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I do...

    But I see your point. Imagine that I could take a .us domain name and create something that looks real. Especially because we already have official pages under the [statecode].us pages.

    I guess we don't want "attorneygeneral.calif.us" to be a phishing site asking people to sign up for identity theft protection.

    --
    Get your Unix fortune now!
  30. Re:Good - uh, think again by gorbachev · · Score: 4, Informative

    This has NOTHING to do with spam or spammers.

    A Mailboxes, Etc. address is just as anonymous as a fake address.

    If you really need to know the contact information, you can subpoena the billing information for the domain. That can NOT be forged, unless the owner also wants to do time for credit card fraud.

    These sort of rules only inconvenience ordinary people, who wish to remain anonymous for one reason or another.

    My reason to always put fake info (it looks real though) in my domain registrations is that I don't want the net.kooks come knock on my door every time they get upset about what I publish on the websites. If they want to contact me, they either use email or subpoena the billing info (which is not fake).

    --
    In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
  31. ISO 3166! why not use .gov ? by fantomas · · Score: 2

    Surely if you want to appear affiliated with the US govt then you should use a .gov address. My belief was that having a .us address meant that you were situated in the US; following the ISO 3166 country codes. I understand of course this is not strictly adhered to but perhaps it would be worth opening the debate again? After all, I'm in the UK and we mess it up by using .uk instead of .gb (anybody know how that came about?) , and nobody minded me registering .com and .org addresses even though I gave a UK address when registering.

  32. Constitutional right to privacy by tepples · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The constitutional right to privacy in the United States springs from an interpretation of the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure combined with the et-cetera clauses in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.

    1. Re:Constitutional right to privacy by gr8_phk · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Privacy is not the same as annonymity (see the recent Hibble case - which I was a bit disappointed with). Domains are used on the net - a very public place. Doesn't it make sense that someone should be able to see who a site is registered to? People want total annoymity and then bitch about spam.

      Slashdot over reacts to some things...

    2. Re:Constitutional right to privacy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just a guess, but couldn't a different court read those amendments differently (for example, applying the search/seizure to law enforcement only), thereby passing the lube to whoever wants to do your privacy over?

      In the EU, the regulations are clear - there are specific hoops that you need to jump through to even share EU citizen/business info with the US

    3. Re:Constitutional right to privacy by Fastolfe · · Score: 4, Insightful

      When you buy land, or register a name for your business, you have to provide certain details about yourself to your local government, which becomes public information.

      Why is this any different? Why does a "constitutional right to privacy" not apply to these situations, but should apply to someone registering a DNS domain? A DNS domain is intended to reflect an administrative domain over Internet infrastructure. We need published contact information if you intend on connecting infrastructure to the Internet when that infrastructure is significant enough to warrant its own second-level DNS domain. If you intend to (ab)use a DNS domain as a content label for your Interweb content, you need to be aware of what the DNS domain is intended to represent, and be prepared to abide by the requirements that result from that even though you aren't using your DNS domain for what it was designed.

      It's like me going downtown and buying a lot of land just so that I can post some signs carrying some anti-government statements, and then balking because the evil government wants me to identify myself as the owner of that parcel of land. I don't have to own that land in order to exercise my right to free speech. You don't have to own your own little DNS domain in order to have a web outlet for your content.

    4. Re:Constitutional right to privacy by CDarklock · · Score: 2, Insightful

      > an interpretation of the Fourth Amendment

      Holy crap, someone ELSE on the planet knows this. I keep having to explain this over and over to people who claim there's no right to privacy in the Constitution except under the catch-all clause of the tenth amendment. You have just restored some small amount of my faith in humanity.

      What concerns me is that people feel that knowing who owns a given domain name is an unreasonable search. When you operate a public presence like a domain name, you *normally* have to identify yourself. Nobody is allowed to operate a broadcast station or publishing operation without providing a certain amount of identification to the public, and it can be productively argued that a web site is both.

      I think sometimes we get a little carried away with our demands for rights, and forget that while we are guaranteed the right to freedom of speech, we are NOT guaranteed the right to own a mass-media outlet for broadcast and dissemination of that speech. The bar has gotten a lot lower, but there's still a bar.

      --
      Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
    5. Re:Constitutional right to privacy by lbmouse · · Score: 1

      There is also the Privacy Act of '74, but administrations since then have been chipping away at it.

    6. Re:Constitutional right to privacy by Altus · · Score: 1


      Im not sure this is analogous to Broadcasting since public airwaves are not in use... and although a large publishing operation is public a small stereotypical poorly xeroxed socialist news letter could be distributed with a reasonable degree of anonymity.

      Im not entirely sure how I feel about this yet... but it does seem like having an outlet with anonymity might be a good thing.

      --

      "In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson

    7. Re:Constitutional right to privacy by Arker · · Score: 1

      What you're saying is true as far as it goes, but there are perfectly fine ways to satisfy both interests here - you can provide working contact info without actually revealing your identity to the entire world.

      --
      =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
      Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
    8. Re:Constitutional right to privacy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yes privacy is not annonymity in theory, but annonymity is most certainly privacy. privacy by any other means then annoymity is no guarantee. So therefore, in practice, privacy is annonyity.

    9. Re:Constitutional right to privacy by CDarklock · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure, either, but it *can* be productively argued. At the very least, it will produce an argument. ;)

      I've been of the opinion for some years that privacy is an illusion; if people want to know something about you, they will find out. This has given me a somewhat detached view of the whole online privacy thing. I tend to believe that making things hard for automated processes is good enough, so I have no problem with a lack of anonymity on .US domain records -- I just think it should be unavailable to automated processes without some sort of delay to impede large-scale harvesting.

      --
      Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
    10. Re:Constitutional right to privacy by sconeu · · Score: 1

      . I keep having to explain this over and over to people who claim there's no right to privacy in the Constitution except under the catch-all clause of the tenth amendment.

      You mean the Ninth. The Ninth is "Even though we didn't talk about it here, you still have all your natural rights." The Tenth is "If we didn't say it, the feds can't do it."

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    11. Re:Constitutional right to privacy by CDarklock · · Score: 1

      You're right. I tend to get the ninth and tenth amendments muddled up in my head, where the ninth admits the existence of other rights and powers for states while the tenth admits the existence of other rights and powers for individuals; it's actually divided on the other axis -- the ninth admits the existence of further rights, while the tenth admits the existence of further powers.

      Sorry about that.

      --
      Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
    12. Re:Constitutional right to privacy by feloneous+cat · · Score: 1

      Bad analogy. You can easily use dummy companies to hide land ownership. Hell, they don't even have to be U.S. companies (just ask Halliburton).

      So, yes, this is different. A DNS domain is not property in the sense that it has a physical form. It exists purely as a dictionary entry. So, your analogy pretty much falls apart.

      As to what the requirements are, I have two domains and I have never had to sign a document. There is no contractual agreement.

      As to "abuse" - please explain how one abuses a domain name? One can misuse the servers by posting copyrighted content, but as there is nothing physical, the whole concept of abuse is laughable.

      Again, this is purely fear based. "What if I'm a terrorist?" Yeah, sure. And what if I'm the Manchurian Candidate (careful what you say to me! I just might go off!)

      Joe McCarthy would LOVE this Administration!

      --
      IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
    13. Re:Constitutional right to privacy by Fastolfe · · Score: 1

      It's not abuse of the domain name that I care about, it's abuse of the network. Maybe a host under your domain is causing problems. Maybe a host on your network is compromised and I want to let you know. Maybe someone has defaced your web site.

      I still like the analogy because when you register a DNS domain, you are effectively stating that you are declaring an administrative domain that is subject to no other administrative domain, and that you intend to place Internet hosts within that administrative domain. If that isn't what you're doing when you're registering a domain name (which is increasingly common, as DNS is treated as a content label or an identifier for a web page), you're actually abusing DNS. When you use something for a purpose it wasn't designed for, you frequently discover that there are side effects. This is one such side effect.

    14. Re:Constitutional right to privacy by tepples · · Score: 1

      I have two domains and I have never had to sign a document. There is no contractual agreement.

      Under the uniform commercial code, offer + acceptance + lawful consideration + competent parties = binding contract. You indicated your acceptance when you provided your credit card number (consideration) after having been shown the TOS ("offer" in contract legalese).

    15. Re:Constitutional right to privacy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, when I buy land I do it using a land trust, which does not identify me, and can only be contacted through the trustee. Most sophisticated real estate investors do this to avoid having property tied up in frivolous lawsuits. My business is registered as an LLC. Likewise, you cannot find me using that information, unless you contact my agent. All of this is legal and normal in this country.

    16. Re:Constitutional right to privacy by feloneous+cat · · Score: 1

      Under the uniform commercial code, offer + acceptance + lawful consideration + competent parties = binding contract. Well, I would argue that it was closer to a letter of intent as the last I checked money was NOT a substitute for a signature. For example, when I buy music I do NOT sign a document (nor is there one that is signed) that prohibits me from sharing said music. What I CAN get in trouble with is violating U.S. Copyright. That is far different than a contractual agreement. The only aspect of "binding" is that they can drop my domain if I don't pay. Whether it is transitory as a CRT or verbal, until it is on paper, it isn't worth the paper it is written on. That's what MY attouney's tell me.

      --
      IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
    17. Re:Constitutional right to privacy by deke14 · · Score: 1

      The point was not "money" as a substitute for a signature, but a credit card, for which you have provided your signature at some point. Money is not contractually tied to your name. A personal check or credit card is. You have entered into a contract.

  33. Ban Dihydrogen Oxide!!! by ecklesweb · · Score: 4, Informative

    The thing that aggravated me about godaddy's letter (yeah, I got that email too) is that there is absolutely NO information directly from the NTIA about what the policy is, says, how it was arrived at, what the goal is, or when they believe the results will be. This petition drive has thus far been a completely one-sided story. As a result, I have to think that anyone who would sign the petition, save those that have managed to dig up more info that I have, are just drinking the koolaid.

    I will fault NTIA for apparently having no mention of the policy on their website (at least last time I checked yesterday). There's no rational reason for them to either set new policy like this or start enforcing existing policy without hearings or public comment. It's even less excuable that after the fact they won't provide their side of the story. They refused comment in the couple of media stories I saw about this.

    By the way, that's right, it's not a new policy, it's enforcement of a previously unenforced existing policy. So for that, I think some blame may lay on the registrars who allowed proxy registrations for .us domains. Shame on them if they failed to inform the registrants that a proxy registration of a .us domain was technically a violation of NTIA policy. If they did inform registrants, then the registrants should have seen this coming.

  34. Ooooh a web petition! by darkmayo · · Score: 0

    I'm sure they will be very swayed that Heywood Jeyblome cares about his privacy.

    --
    "I am a kernel in the linux army"
  35. Re:What Problem? by Seumas · · Score: 1

    As I can tell, the goal is to make sure that anyone who has a tld that looks like they might be affiliated with the US gov't

    Why should America be so special? Is every *.uk domain a government domain? Of course not. Hell, there's *.co.uk for commercial UK sites, afterall.

    And the government already has a TLD for sites that are affiliated with the government. It's called -- gasp -- .GOV.

  36. Here's what I put into the petition. by sheol · · Score: 0

    I strongly disagree with the precedent this decision will set. As a strong believer in personal privacy, and an avid internet user, the thought that my personal information would be freely available to any person connected to the internet is scary. Leaving information such as my name, address, and telephone number open to the general public (and not just my fellow Americans, either) puts me at great risk of becoming a victim of identity theft, internet scams, computer hackers, and even terrorism. Please reconsider this decision, for my sake, and yours. It is in everyone's best interests to allow those who want to keep their information private to do so.

    I firmly believe in the tenets on which this country was founded: truth, justice, and the American way. This decision is anathema to these core American beliefs, and goes against the teachings of the Holy Father. He would certainly not like to see His children harmed through inaction by the representatives of His children.

    AND THE HOLY FIRES OF HEAVEN WILL RAIN DOWN UPON THEE, O CONGRESSMAN!

    1. Re:Here's what I put into the petition. by Fastolfe · · Score: 1

      the thought that my personal information would be freely available to any person connected to the internet is scary.

      The only reason this information would be available is if you have registered a DNS domain for infrastructure that you are connecting to the Internet. If you are not connecting infrastructure to the Internet, you should not need a DNS domain.

      If you want to publish web content anonymously, get in touch with any of the hundreds of web providers out there that will host your content on their own servers (on their own DNS domain). DNS registration will reflect their identity. They will divulge your identity to others only as allowed by their privacy policy.

      DNS domains are intended to be administrative domains for Internet infrastructure, not as a content label or key for accessing web content. Nevermind that DNS is being used as a content label/key. This very issue stems from the fact that it wasn't designed to work that way. If we want to continue warping DNS's purpose like this, we have to deal with issues such as this one.

    2. Re:Here's what I put into the petition. by sheol · · Score: 2, Insightful

      For those of you who failed miserably at catching the satire in this, let me explain it.

      I strongly disagree with the precedent this decision will set. As a strong believer in personal privacy, and an avid internet user, the thought that my personal information would be freely available to any person connected to the internet is scary.

      I make the false assumption that by being on the internet, my information is available to everyone.

      Leaving information such as my name, address, and telephone number open to the general public (and not just my fellow Americans, either) puts me at great risk of becoming a victim of identity theft, internet scams, computer hackers, and even terrorism.

      First, this is information which is generally available freely in a phone book, in online directories, and any number of other places. Should I choose to remain unlisted, I can pay a small fee or buy a mobile phone. Should I choose to remain unlisted in the .us registry, I can buy a different domain name which doesn't have such draconian terms imposed upon it, or write an angry letter to my congressman (which I certainly have done, though it's not quite as it appears here ;). Secondly, it's quite typical of today's sensationalist media to make references to terrorism where it's pretty much irrelevant.

      Please reconsider this decision, for my sake, and yours. It is in everyone's best interests to allow those who want to keep their information private to do so.

      This part is true.

      I firmly believe in the tenets on which this country was founded: truth, justice, and the American way.

      Did nobody catch the reference to Superman?

      This decision is anathema to these core American beliefs, and goes against the teachings of the Holy Father. He would certainly not like to see His children harmed through inaction by the representatives of His children.

      Typical appeal to patriotism, and religious scare tactics.

      AND THE HOLY FIRES OF HEAVEN WILL RAIN DOWN UPON THEE, O CONGRESSMAN!

      AND IF THE SUPERMAN REFERENCE DIDN'T TIP YOU OFF, PERHAPS THIS ABOVE SENTENCE SHOULD HAVE!
  37. Re:What Problem? by rbanffy · · Score: 1

    .us does not look like US government. .gov.us would look like that.

    Also, I guess that the US could also play nice and give up on the TLDs .gov and .mil

    The need for anonymity is a symptom, not a problem. You shouldn't need to hide in order to freely express your opinions without fear.

    --
    http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
  38. Sounds totally reasonable to me. by Fuzzums · · Score: 1

    If you have 1. a domain you probably also will have 2. a website which probably will have 3. content.
    3. can consist of all kinds of 4. data which in turn can contain 5. encoded information.

    Just this slightest possibility will make you 6. a terrorist and therefore all you 7. civil rights will be taken from you untill further notice.

    Am I negative? NO WAY! In the Netherlands there are plans to force ISP's to log and keep track of theur users. Websites they visited, mails they've sent and so on and so on.

    Ey. It's only 21 years later, but finally we're getting somewhere.

    --
    Privacy is terrorism.
    1. Re:Sounds totally reasonable to me. by cpghost · · Score: 1

      data which in turn can contain 5. encoded information. Just this slightest possibility will make you 6. a terrorist

      OMG! I have a lot of encoded information on my web site: ASCII- and JPEG-encoded! Now I'm in big trouble!

      In the Netherlands there are plans to force ISP's to log and keep track of theur users

      Software has bugs, servers get "misconfigured", backups fail... esp. regarding those pesky log files. A quick review of BOFH excuses should be required knowledge of every good ISP admin.

      --
      cpghost at Cordula's Web.
    2. Re:Sounds totally reasonable to me. by Fuzzums · · Score: 1

      you're in BIG touble ;)

      every BOFH knows what not to do. Personally I use /dev/null for unlimited storage space. but the scary thing is politicians think this kind of legislation is 'reasonable'. Personally I think they're out of their minds and they're responsable for attacking democracy from within.

      --
      Privacy is terrorism.
  39. This is just stupid. by nberardi · · Score: 0

    Well there is nothing stopping you about lying about the information on the Whois information. If they think this is going to solve any problems with criminals they are just fooling them self.

    1. Re:This is just stupid. by Seumas · · Score: 1

      Well there is nothing stopping you about lying about the information on the Whois information. If they think this is going to solve any problems with criminals they are just fooling them self.

      There is everything stopping you.

      If you provide false information to your registrar and someone notifies them of a problem regarding your site, they will send you a notice. If you do not respond to that notice, they will immediately nullroute your domain. I used to use incorrect information for my mailing address and phone number because my site is very public and I would prefer not to have people showing up at my door.

      Someone, known to be a troublemaker who was then banned from my site, contacted my registrar and made some flimsy complaint to stir up trouble. The registrar logged the complaint, but did nothing directly regarding it. What they did, however, was nullroute my domain because the complaint caused them to look up my whois data and that proved to be false information. They then nullrouted my domain without any further notice. I was only lucky enough to have done a whois of my own on my domain that very day and noticed it; corrected it before the world's DNS servers were updated.

  40. dont sign the petition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    a) petitions have exactly 0 influence, i havent heard of an success stories where the decision was swayed by an internet petition, its way too open to fraud, if someone came to me and said they had 2million web users upset i would laugh at you and carry on

    b) its just a great way to harvest personal data, look at who you are handing the data to (are they a commercial company?) and what type of data do they want?,
    internet petions are just nice way to build a db of personal data, entered by a human (hence the captcha) which you can later utilise for marketing as you now have a relationship with the company in question (you volunteered the data) so CANSPAM laws wont apply

    enjoy

    1. Re:dont sign the petition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good idea. Lets never complain to our government either and never let them know we do not like something that is going on. After all, they may try to punish us by having Kroger target us with advertisements.

      Remember people, not getting fliers in the mail is more important than addressing vitally important political concerns. You should have been taught long ago the compliance and conformance are accepted ways to behave as a citizen.

  41. I don't mind and look forward to the day... by SComps · · Score: 1

    when I can do a whois and actually have a decent idea of who I should be calling when I get spammed etc and so on. This has been a long time coming, and I for one wouldn't be the least bit disturbed to see it happen across the board.

    --
    The world according to SComps
    1. Re:I don't mind and look forward to the day... by base3 · · Score: 1

      Please, as if the non-US addresses and fake telephone numbers aren't still going to be placed in whois by spammers. This is all window dressing that will only serve to kill GoDaddy's proxy business (the real reason they suddenly care about "free speech") and impinge on the long-established right of Americans to publish anonymously.

      --
      One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
    2. Re:I don't mind and look forward to the day... by SComps · · Score: 1

      yeah, I guess you're right. I don't know what I was thinking. Boy, it sure seemed that doing "something" was right at the time. I guess doing nothing is better than something any day.

      [end of sarcasm]

      as I see it, this isn't about free or anonymous speech at all. it's about registering with valid information. Period. If somebody finds out it's not valid, at least in this instance there's somebody to complain to -- even if in the end they do nothing about it. At least we've got an avenue to persue now.

      --
      The world according to SComps
    3. Re:I don't mind and look forward to the day... by base3 · · Score: 1

      The point is that they don't do anything about blatantly false contact information. Thus, my statement stands that this will only affect law-abiding people who heretofore have been able to keep their domain registration out of the hands of vindictive spammers, crackpots, stalkers, and the like.

      --
      One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
  42. Re:What Problem? by DarkSarin · · Score: 1

    Okay, maybe you are correct (and maybe that's why it got modded (incorrectly, I might add) as flamebait) about not looking like a gov't site.

    That said, I don't think its a big deal. Let me put it to you this way. If you own a website, there are only a few reasons. One is to distribute some type of information (software counts). This is the one that could get you in trouble. Another possibility is to sell or advertise something. There are more, but these seem to cover the majority.

    In the second case, allowing people to contact you is important--it is hard to sell something otherwise.

    In the first case, the expectation of privacy is only good as far as you don't put anything up that is of a personal nature. That means that bloggers don't have a real (or rather, reasonable) expectation of privacy (and I'm fairly certain the courts would agree).

    Why would someone need privacy in this case? There may be some very good reasons, but I don't see the need--most of what you do on the net will eventually be traceable back to your name if you start publishing anything personal.

    Now, if you are publishing torrents to questionable downloads (movies, etc), then I can see the desire for privacy. But why the .us TLD? Why not put it out there as a .name or a .info? These are available, and frankly, I would not see a problem with an .anon TLD designed just for that.

    So, I will ask again. What is the big deal with disclosing contact info?

    Disclaimer:: THIS IS NOT FLAMEBAIT. IT IS AN HONEST QUESTION!

    --
    "We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
  43. Waaaaa! by GrBear · · Score: 0, Troll

    Give me a break, this has nothing to do with privacy but everything to do with accountability. You need to be held accountable for what ends up on your website, or what comes from you mail server. If privacy is what your looking for, get yourself a geocities account, but don't expect to hide behind a public TLD.

    1. Re:Waaaaa! by haagmm · · Score: 1

      no, this has nothing to do with Accountability and EVERYTHING to do with privacy. If you are a responcible accountable person you USE a privacy service to ensure that while your information is private, anything that requires you to be arountable, ie DMCA notices, spam notification, etc, WILL reach you despite the fact that your information is not avalable so that any yahoo can get your home address and mail you things your dont want.

      In fact as many posters have said this does NOTHING to address actuall acountablity, because using a Fraudlent credit card and filling False contact information is still quite east to do. All the law serves to do is force people to be unable to prevent the junk while being accountable.

    2. Re:Waaaaa! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      your really fooling yourself to think that registration will make people accountable. The only thing registration does is make it easier for people to get investigated and harrassed for thier political views. Accountable means that the government,corporations or the church can shut you up if they dont like your views. If being accountable to speech codes and regulated speech is your goal then you ought to take a look at china who has state speech regulators that regulary search and scan chinese blogs for political dissent. They are then sent to re-eduaction camps. This all started with trying to regulate spam and fraud on the internet. There are power brokers that are licking thier chops at the thought of regulation. Because the internet , as seen by them, is a dangereous thing. It allows the common person to say what they want without accountability. Instead when the government gets involved it will ruin what the internet.

  44. bollocks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Most of the time, they could also figure it out by tracing where it is hosted and finding some information on who pays the bills there as well.

    ok phone or write to Verisign and ask for information on a customers billing names and credit card details, see how far you get, the RIAA cant even get a name from an ISP let alone billing details

    1. Re:bollocks by Fastolfe · · Score: 1

      Fortunately the US legal system has already thought of that. You can file suit against someone without knowing their identity. In the course of discovery for the suit, you can subpoena things like billing records to identify the person. You then amend the complaint with the actual name. Happens all the time, and works well.

    2. Re:bollocks by base3 · · Score: 0

      Or you file a baseless lawsuit, use discovery to find the name, then drop the suit having gotten what you wanted.

      --
      One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
    3. Re:bollocks by base3 · · Score: 0

      Ooh, overrated. That's nice. I have more karma than God. Bring it on.

      --
      One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
  45. Good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    My inbox and referrer logs are full of spam from holders of .us registrations - to the point that I've considered just blocking the entire TLD. If it were harder to cover your tracks when making a domain registration, then it'd be easier for me to take holders of domains seriously.

    You don't need an anonymous domain registration to run an anonymous Web site. You don't need a domain registration to run a Web site at all. Domain registrations aren't anonymous anyway - your information is still vulnerable to subpoena and other legal threats, so those who really need anonymity have always had to use other techniques to get it. The whole point of registering a domain is to allow people to have a way of contacting you; it's the opposite of anonymity.

    Before signing the petition, I hope you'll consider that the people anonymous registration benefits are primarily spammers - not the friendly Libertarians next door.

    1. Re:Good! by Yer+Mom · · Score: 1
      Of course, removing the ability to cloak your WHOIS entry also benefits spammers - now they can get a boatload of email addresses with some WHOIS queries. And what's this? Home addresses and phone numbers too?

      They must be creaming their pants at the thought.

      --
      Never mind Spamassassin. When's Spammerassassin coming out?
  46. Re:What Problem? by DarkSarin · · Score: 1

    I can agree with that assessment. After all, as I understand it, the concept of free speech was not to justify any type of pornographic filth that someone wanted to publish, but to make sure that Citizens had the RIGHT to criticize the gov't and talk about what happened to them with regard to the gov't without interference or fear of reprisal. The idea is that for a country to stay strong and to be free requires that citizens be able to criticize, in an open and public manner, not only the leaders of the gov't, but the gov't itself.

    To me, that is what freedom of speech is all about. It has nothing to do with a right to publish porn, just a right to tell Sen. Clinton that you think she's a lying ... you get the point. (Or if you prefer, tell President Bush that you think he's a moronic $var). It also would protect the right to say that you think that the gov't has gone to hell in a handbasket (or maybe a rocket-propelled car), and needs to be replaced. THESE are the things that I can see a need for privacy when saying--but only if the gov't is no longer protecting free speech.

    All that said, I don't think that there should be a NEED for anonymity when saying things of this nature. Maybe there is a need, but there shouldn't be.

    --
    "We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
  47. Registrar by KiloByte · · Score: 1

    Well, my registrar (home.pl) doesn't even allow non-private registrations.

    Just check the whois record for angband.pl...

    On the other hand, GoDaddy considers privacy to be an "extra service".

    --
    The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
  48. Finally... by CleverNickedName · · Score: 1, Funny

    www.goatse.us will be available to the masses.

    You've *never* seen the Grinch like this before.

    --


    Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
  49. My take on it... by fudgefactor7 · · Score: 1

    ...is this: I don't care one way or another, if I have to go through an intermediary to contact the people controlling the domain, or directly through a whois lookup. All I care about is that there is a legit way to reach them--no false information listed. The people who make these decisions should weed out all the fake registrations first before anything else.

    1. Re:My take on it... by Fastolfe · · Score: 1

      I agree.. the only issue with that approach is that it requires the intermediary to act as a proxy and to use their own judgment before allowing your message through, or in providing their client's contact information.

      Further, if you have some form of network emergency and need to contact the domain holder immediately, you're not just limited by the availability (business hours?) of the domain holder, but by the availability (business hours) of all of the proxies in between.

      In short, just having contact information of an intermediary isn't enough if the intermediary isn't available (even if the domain holder is), or if the intermediary unilaterally decides not to pass your message on or decides to sit on it for a few days.

      If you own a DNS domain, then you probably own some sort of infrastructure connected to the Internet. If that infrastructure starts causing problems for others on the Internet, you need a way to contact the owner ASAP. This means valid, published, contact information.

      If the only reason you want a domain is for a trendy vanity DNS label for your web content, that's not what DNS was designed for, and so long as you continue down that path, you're going to run into issues like this, where requirements target infrastructure owners, not content owners.

    2. Re:My take on it... by http101 · · Score: 1

      Further, if you have some form of network emergency and need to contact the domain holder immediately, you're not just limited by the availability (business hours?) of the domain holder, but by the availability (business hours) of all of the proxies in between. You've obviously never played with web-forms. Any time I would need to contact a site operator through an intermediary, the intermediary would need to be contacted first for the site operator's contact information. If the site operator declines to reveal personal contact information, an electronic mailbox would be used whether its an internally connected vmail box or email box. If the host fails to return the call/contact within a reasonable amount of time, perhaps 2 weeks, a complaint can be filed with the intermediary. After 30 days, a freeze would be placed on the domain. If contact from the site operator or approved site manager is not made to the registrar within the next 60 days, the domain is closed due to inactivity. Since webforms usually sit in a queue until processed, the need for a 24-hour organization to handle this is not necessary, however, will be overburdened at first due to high demand for resolution from a wide range of domains.

      --
      -- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
  50. Re:ISO 3166! why not use .gov ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    .gb is obsolete because John Postel allowed Great Britain to have two ccTLDs. .gb has since become deprecated.

  51. Using GB vs. UK by zoney_ie · · Score: 1

    GB more often stands for Great Britain rather than the United Kingdom of Great Britian and Northern Ireland.

    Northern Ireland is not in Great Britain, so GB is a bit of a misnomer to use in place of UK.

    I haven't seen any NI cars with the standard EU-type numberplates yet. Will they have GB on them the same way English ones do? It makes little sense if they do.

    --
    -- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
  52. Re:Good - uh, think again by Ron+Bennett · · Score: 1

    I guess you missed the news about a recent bill that passed the other day that, from what I recall, adds upwards of 7 YEARS to offenses committed using a domain name with bogus contact information; do a Google news search for more details.

    With that said, the Mailboxes, Etc. approach is among the best overall - *legal* when done correctly, and can be very anonymous if one has an alternate bonafide physical mailing address that's not directly tied to them; not intended to stop the authorities tracing one down, but such approaches are ideal for keeping troublemakers at bay.

    Ron Bennett

  53. Privacy is the reason by Wrexs0ul · · Score: 1

    Information provided by third party domain registrants give you a layer of protection from who sees your personal information. I see it as a good idea, of all the domains I've registered for future use not a single one hasn't been spammed to hell because of crawlers parsing information off new registrations. Luckily my spamassassin is well-configured and I can identify junk snail-mail pretty quick, but most people aren't so fortunate.

    This isn't designed to protect us from the law, it's a means to have a little privacy on the internet. Yes, usually the innocent have nothing to hide, but there's some very legitimate spam/stalking/fraud concerns for allowing private registrations and I feel the option should be there, especially now that so many domains hand-out private individual's contact information via WHOIS.

    -Matt

    --
    --- Need web hosting?
  54. Most people with privacy needs don't need a domain by Fastolfe · · Score: 1, Informative

    Typically, the only reason individuals want their own second-level DNS domain is vanity. They want a cool, short hostname so that their URLs are trendy. This is not a barrier to your freedom of speech because there are hundreds of free web providers out there who would be glad to post your web pages on the Intarweb without needing to put them on their own domain.

    Like it or not, the purpose of a DNS domain is to identify a namespace for hosts under your control. In short, a DNS domain reflects Internet infrastructure, not some vanity content label. If you're going to connect infrastructure to the Internet, you should be prepared to announce your identity to the rest of the Internet so that if/when you cause problems, you can be contacted.

    If you don't want to connect infrastructure to the Internet, and just want an outlet for your speech, again, there are plenty of ways to do that that don't involve your own little DNS domain. Because of that, you should have no expectation that the US constitution somehow "guarantees" your right to privacy here, or that you have some sort of "freedom of speech" claim that should allow you to keep your registration private.

  55. Yawn. by base3 · · Score: 1

    What's really interesting is how they let Neustar stop maintaining the locality domains, as they are required to do under their contract. Why isn't the Commerce department on their asses about that?

    --
    One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
  56. Re:What Problem? by log0n · · Score: 1

    My fiance and I have a .us website for our wedding information, bridal party, etc etc. No personal info is on it other than first names and general locations in the country. The only personal contact info comes from WhoIs.

    Being that I'm a guy (and why do guys care about wedding crap ;-) as well as single (pre-engagement) for most of my life, it's funny to see the amount of wedding-related-spam, wedding-related-phishing (free honey moon trips in particular) and general 'newlywed'-minded spam I get now.

    And not just email..

    I've been phone contacted by various scammers hawking wedding packages, giving away free trips for sitting in informative-sessions, etc.

    All because of registering a .us website for our upcoming wedding.

    So yeah, there's a big reason imo to be able to keep contact info private.

  57. You have no right to privacy. by dosboss · · Score: 1

    A. Your right to privacy from the US Government extends only to information held by the US Governemnt, then only personally identifying information.

    B. The domain registration system has not been the perview of the US Government since the NSF turned over the system to Network Solutions (now Verisign).

    C. Your privacy relies upon the individual company's privacy policies. There are laws that govern the dessemination of private information from a public company, but they only go so far, and a generally reseved for credit or bank based businesses. Standard busniesses not engaged in finance have no real incentive to keep your information private other than your patronage.

  58. Should be this way for everything by JeffTL · · Score: 0

    An honest whois is an important thing to be able to fetch.

    Not just for .us; for all the other domains, this should be required as well.

  59. Re:Good - uh, think again by gorbachev · · Score: 1

    "I guess you missed the news about a recent bill that passed the other day that, from what I recall, adds upwards of 7 YEARS to offenses committed using a domain name with bogus contact information; do a Google news search for more details."

    No, I didn't.

    That law would only applies, if I commit a felony crime and use a domain registered with fake contact information in some way while committing the crime.

    --
    In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
  60. If ICANN, UCAN2! by http101 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The ironic part is, anyone saying this is going to stop spammers from sending spam, IS WRONG. Spam is mostly send from over-seas servers and enters the US from, you guessed it, a big fat internet pipeline. Sure, the spammers might get a phone call or two, but the spamming won't stop.

    As for providing false information, an article on the CircleID website quotes, "It is now illegal to provide false information when registering a domain name." It goes on to say, "Last year, there was a brief attempt to make registrars responsible for the accuracy of the Whois database. Fortunately, that legislation failed. What did become law was a new, stiff penalty (7 years) for providing false WHOIS information. While this looming jail time might have some sway over US-based crooks, it will do little to get accurate information from those who live overseas." As I mentioned before, this is merely a flesh-wound in stopping the spam-war.

    My greatest fear is having someone show up on my doorstep with intent to harm my family, property, or myself because that person wants my domain name. And as it seems with almost every law in America, it takes spilled blood to have those laws abolished or less, modified in some feeble attempt to make a slight few of us happy.

    What needs to happen is the placement of an organization who tracks the "licensing" of domains and their registrants. If I were to require contact with a site operator, I would first have to call them to obtain contact information, however, that information would be limited to a mailing address, NOT a home address, name, phone number, and email.

    Registration would require a name and a mailing address (NOT a home address). If a mailing address is not possible, then a phone number and email may be relinquished by the domain host. The registrant has the option of unlisting this information completely, however, contact/complaints must be made through the organization. A failure to comply with requests from the organization within 30 calendar days would ultimately mean a "freeze" on the domain. After 90 days (60 days from the beginning of a domain freeze), the domain is wiped off the face of the internet. This should light a fire under anyone's ass.

    This may not sound like the most 'perfect' plan, though is a lot better than what's in place now. And you may be thinking, "we already have an organization that does that," but no, ICANN functions like a cat, lying around all day, looking pretty, propping up a leg in the corner of the room to lick itself and essentially, just look pretty. We need an organization that isn't afraid of grabbing some sack to make things happen.

    --
    -- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
  61. HYPOCRITE !!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You don't have your real name nor address on your blog site, presumably because you don't want that some nut come to your house and do not very polite stuff (like another type flaming, but the real thing: burning your house down).

    BUT you paste in your blog the name the Fuc.kthe.us owner and a link to his address.

    1. Re:HYPOCRITE !!! by jdunn14 · · Score: 1

      That's just a great post to do as AC.... =)

  62. There is no... by kir · · Score: 1

    There is no "right" to anonymity anywhere that I am aware of.

    Correct me if I am wrong. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

    (BTW, privacy != anonymity)

    --
    3cx.org - A truly bad website.
    1. Re:There is no... by base3 · · Score: 1

      Right to anonymous speech

      --
      One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
    2. Re:There is no... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yes but anonymity==privacy
      so in all practical terms, how do you guarantee privacy?
      answer: by being anonymous

    3. Re:There is no... by Fulcrum+of+Evil · · Score: 1

      Correct me if I am wrong. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

      You're wrong. The right to anonymou speech is a part of the 1st, 4th, and 9th ammendments. Hell, the federalist papers were published anonymously. Sometimes the simple knowledge that somebody can find you is enough to curb your tongue.

      --
      "We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
  63. Re:What Problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The problem when you let the government decide what is and isn't free speech is that the goverment will start saying that political speech they do not like is "obscene".

    However, the 1st Amendment was written very broadly and does not restrict the publication of pornography as it is phrased. The framers of the constitution were not a bunch of prudes (I'm sure they wouldn't have let such a gaping hole go through if they had a similar defintion as you), they truly believed in a limited government. Remember that the Constitution is an expression of what the government can do. The Bill of Rights was only included to appease the concerns of some states that the lack of an express enumeration of rights would cause the eventual denial of the rights the government did not have the express power to encroach anyway.

    I can say first hand why anonynimity is needed when expressing views that are not liked by the government. I criticized my local public school system. I didn't really place much emphasis on anonynimity and as such, there were numerous attempts to shut me down, such as concoting fake discipline reports against me, having lawyers try to shut me down, and general harassment. The same school district punishes employees for disagreeing with school policies and fired a whistleblower who tried to report fraud that was going on in the school district. These are the cases where anonynimity is important becuase governments have far more power than individuals. Even if you can win out in a legal battle, you've just consumed enormous legal resources in doing so.

  64. Seriously misleading headline by ab762 · · Score: 1

    I thought that the story was about restricting private persons from registering .US domains. But then, I own a .ca domain.

  65. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  66. The usual. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Recently submitted stories:
    Privacy declared illegal for .US domain
    12:05 AM -- Thursday March 31 2005
    Rejected


    Grr!

    1. Re:The usual. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your headline is totally inaccurate. Nothing was declared illegal. A company simply changed the rules on how its manages its resources.

      Kudos to Slashdot staff for rejecting a blatantly false headline.

    2. Re:The usual. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And besides, how many people do you think submitted that story as soon as they got that email from GoDaddy or other registrar yesterday? Hundreds.

      So qwitcherbitchen as the /. FAQ says. Does the OP wanna take /. to court for disenfranchising them?

  67. Re:Good - uh, think again by gorbachev · · Score: 1

    "With that said, the Mailboxes, Etc. approach is among the best overall"

    Wanted to address this as well.

    It is not the best overall approach, because it would cost me money. I do not own a business, probably never will. I have no use for a Mailboxes, Etc. mailbox, other than to circumvent .us TLD requirements for non-anonymity.

    --
    In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
  68. I don't get it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    One would think...

    Registering domain administration roles instead of individuals would prevent personal information of the administrators from 'getting out there'.

    As for domain ownership. A blind trust is pretty easy and inexpensive to set up. Should some privacy rights group want to secure anonymity, it's a ticket.

    This same group might also act as proxy to register domains for the poor who might want anonymity but are not privileged enough to set up their own trust.

    IANAL so if SLs know this to be crap, let us know.

  69. Re:What Problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So, I will ask again. What is the big deal with disclosing contact info?

    Lets see.. Spam is the usual one I can think of.

    Here are some legitiamte ones I can think of:

    People who publish controversial information. Abortion activists, whether you be pro-choice or pro-life, emotions are highly charged and lots of times, people on BOTH sides lose any rational thinking and civility. There is defintely a good reason not to want to publish your home address or anything else tracable to you here, no one wants some angered nutball coming to your house to slash your tires or try to take your life.

    Corporate and government whistle blowers also have much to lose. Although protections do exist, that does not always stop them from penalizing or punishing those who uncover fraud or express dissent. Remaining anonymous prevents these issues from occuring.

    You should also note that there is no way to verify the accuracy of contact info for a domain. There is no requirement that you answer your phone. There is also no good way to tell if the individual listed for contact actually is reacable at the address given. So in reality, these requirements are absurd beucase there is no good quality requirement for the data (other than the data not being fake, which is easily found). People who want to remain anonymous will simply choose to list a pay phone number (Theoretically, you could answer the payphone) and a more generic address that cannot be proven fake.

  70. there is no right to privacy being a domain holder by tscrum · · Score: 0

    You may not like what I have to say, but there should be no right to privacy for ANY domain name. The nature of the Internet is public, albeit those browsing the net have a guaranteed right to privacy. But those participating in the public nature, ie. using a domain name, of the net have no right to privacy. This is like standing out in a public square shouting, but when someone recognizes you and blurts your name out, you scream that your privacy has been violated. For those who want to live privately, I would recommend not using a public forum (the Internet) to express your views. Get out of the Internet entirely for that matter. I heard drywall hanging is a fairly private career.

  71. It's called "satire" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Will those who are taking the parent post at face value please look at the poster's name.

    The poster is an "Anonymous Coward" who is says
    if you hide behind an anon domain 99.99% its because you are up to no good

    The poster is using satire to make a point.

  72. Re:there is no right to privacy being a domain hol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    False analogy.

    Someone who shouts out your name already knows who you are, he did not try to force you to tell him.

    No one knows (unless you tell people or you give them clues) who publises a website unless you expressly tell them.

    However, I do believe you are right, there is no right to privacy regarding domains. That does not mean people who want to remain anonymous cannot find other ways to do so (such as letting an a hosting company own the domain). That also doesn't stop people from using other people's websites (message boards, etc) to express their opinions anonymously.

  73. How about *.private.us domains? by hains · · Score: 1
    I have heard 2 arguments so far:
    1. Against privacy: *.us is heavily used by spammers and fraudsters.
    2. For privacy: People running their own mailservers, etc. for mostly private use should be able to appear on the web without exposing themselves to spammers, fraudsters, and nuts.
    How about if we allow those of us who want privacy to use the subdomain .private.us? Everybody in the world can then blacklist .private.us by default (i.e, that can be the first rule in every spam blocker), and we can selectively whitelist only the .private.us domains of our friends.
    1. Re:How about *.private.us domains? by swv3752 · · Score: 1

      Those claiming *.us is full of spammers are a bunch of US hating trolls. I am an American and I get less spam from .us than any other country tld.

      --
      Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
    2. Re:How about *.private.us domains? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You don't run a Web site, do you?

      My referrer log is full of online-poker spam from *.us. The open proxies they're using are in Saudi Arabia, but the spammers are US-based and advertising *.us sites.

      Stop being a nation of spammers and I'll think about not being prejudiced against you.

  74. in Estonia by fakespheare · · Score: 1

    Same here

  75. Re:What Problem? by rbanffy · · Score: 1

    The need for anonymity may exist, but hiding behind it in order to manifest your opinions only takes away from their meaning.

    Not only you shouldn't need to hide, you shouldn't hide to express your opinions.

    --
    http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
  76. Re:there is no right to privacy being a domain hol by tscrum · · Score: 0

    Agreed, but my analogy I believe is quite accurate. That's the problem with the Internet and privacy. To be public in "real" life you must give up your privacy to "go public". You risk being fingered. To be "public" on the Internet it just requires some nut with time on his hands hiding behind a monitor and keyboard blurting out crap.

  77. Re:there is no right to privacy being a domain hol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    but my analogy I believe is quite accurate

    No, its not. The person shouting your name knows who you are. No one made you reveal your name to him, you did on your own.

    Whereas here, people are being forced to reveal their identities. Different situation and incorrect analogy.

    You risk being fingered. To be "public" on the Internet it just requires some nut with time on his hands hiding behind a monitor and keyboard blurting out crap.

    I guess you've never heard of masking your face. But thats beyond my point, my point is that people only know you if you had told them or otherwise let them know who you are.

  78. Re:Most people with privacy needs don't need a dom by macdaddy · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Like it or not, the purpose of a DNS domain is to identify a namespace for hosts under your control. In short, a DNS domain reflects Internet infrastructure, not some vanity content label. If you're going to connect infrastructure to the Internet, you should be prepared to announce your identity to the rest of the Internet so that if/when you cause problems, you can be contacted.

    Do you own a car? If so then you are part of the automotive infrastructure of whatever state/country you live in. What would you say if a government agency unilaterally required that all members of the automotive infrastructure post their name, address and telephone number in big bold letters on all their vehicles? That way all the other members of the automotive infrastructure can clearly see your identity so that if/when you cause problems, you can be contacted. Sound good to you? It must because that's exactly what you're condoning for the owners of .us TLDs.

    This is not 1988. The Internet can't be summed up in a hosts file. Get your head out of the glory days of the past and join the rest of us in the real world.

  79. Re:What Problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In an ideal society where the government and people respect the idea of free expression, then yes. However, this has never been the case. This is why, for example, that newspapers will publish anonymous letters.

    You should already know that much of what became the basis for the US government was initially published via anonymous means becuase of the fear of reprisal.

  80. I wouldn't sign the petition... by heybo · · Score: 1

    Well you never read the Terms of Service for domain names. This has always been this way. You have to have a valid record to have a domain. There is a good reason for this and personally I think that any site that doesn't have some type of valid contact information should be shut down. Has you said this is badly misused by spammers and every other person trashing the Internet.

    At our company if you want your information hidden. We use or NOC address and contact information for that person. This way your personal information is not up but in case something is going on with your site someone that has control over the site can be contacted.

    Maybe you want to play with you own mail server and web server but the Internet is not a play ground. Just like needing a drivers licenses to drive there is a need in knowing who you are if you are running a site.

    Yes I am the first to admit it is abused all the time, but without valid whois information how can I track down the person that is abusing the system? The people that could put an end to this is ICANN. I have tracked down many a spammer and ICANN allows them to stay on. If ICANN would do something to stop this the abuse that would cut down and then your so called private information wouldn't be abused. Then this information would be used for only legitmate reasons.

    For instance lets say your box has been 0wned. The hacker then launches an attack from your box to my network. With valid information I am able to contact you and something can be done to fix the problem. If your phone number is 555-555-1211 and your email address is myname@example.com then you are subject to a counter attack. Now would you want that? Wouldn't you rather me contact you in a good way and we fix the problem and also have some help in finding who hacked you? There are a lot more good reasons for having valid Whois info than bad.

    You say it is not your responsibility to give out this information. Yes it is again read the Terms of Service you signed. No matter what you think what you signed and agreed to says you must. Tne Internet is not a right nor a freedom it is a network bound by rules. Just like in Baseball you got to play by the rules.

    1. Re:I wouldn't sign the petition... by Malor · · Score: 2, Funny

      Just FYI, I'm a professional sysadmin and have been doing it a long time. Your comments about 'running toy servers' are a cheap shot and misdirected.

      Very simply, you don't EVER need to know who and what I am, simply because I own a domain. You just don't. A domain is not IP space. And even if I DO have IP space, if you have a problem with an attack coming from that space, you can contact my ISP, who maintains records and can contact me, likely within minutes. If you have a complaint about the domain, then you can contact my registrar. (not sure how long that takes... but if it's not involving a specific IP, it's highly unlikely to be an emergency.) You can also email me directly via the Namecheap anonymous relay. Those three contact methods are enough. You don't need anything more than that.

      The alternative is that you can contact me in ways I don't approve of and can't control. Probably any address listed in the WHOIS is going to be a good target for breakin, for instance -- probably going to be more tech goodies there than most places. And, of course, if you happen to disagree with something I'm saying, you can find out precisely what window to throw a brick through.

      A domain is not automatically IP space, and it's not automatically a server. Requiring non-anonymous domain registrations shows poor thinking, a fundamental confusion over how the Internet works. It's IP SPACE that matters, not domains.

    2. Re:I wouldn't sign the petition... by Malor · · Score: 1

      And one more comment... the TOS I agreed to said I had to provide accurate information to my registrar, which I did. It does NOT say that every Tom, Dick, and Harry should automatically have access to that information.

      As long as my ISP and my registrar know who I am, you don't need to.

    3. Re:I wouldn't sign the petition... by heybo · · Score: 1
      Check the ICANN regualtions on domain information. I don't remember the RFC number right off the bat, but it there has been since the advent of domain names. You agreed to that too. Why doesn't your ISP or whoever is doing your DNS have their address in there? That is what the Tech Zone contact is for. They could put their address in for yours. That is what we do here. We have customers that don't want there address listed. So we use ours. This is still a valid contact address and nobody know where you live. Still someone that as some authority over the site can be contacted.

      Simple solution

    4. Re:I wouldn't sign the petition... by heybo · · Score: 1
      The why not insert the ISP contact information or you hosing companies information or get a PO Box. Actually the reason you agree to that term is because they need it to enter into the record!

      If your server has a trojan and it is beating the hell out of my network would you rather me politely call you and reslove the issue of crack your server and make sure the attack stops? Personally I'd rather make the phone call.

    5. Re:I wouldn't sign the petition... by heybo · · Score: 1
      It wasn't ment as a cheap shot, but if you are a sysadmin then you ought to know what it is like getting the hell beat out of your network by some zombied machines. Especially running a mail server you should understand about having a point of contact. How do you get contacted with mail problems?

      Being as professional sysadmin means that you work for a company. Does you company not have a listing in the phone book. Do they not advertize with the address, email address, web address and phone number in it? So why not have it listed in the whois? Most likely your company site has that information right there on the site. so whats the deal. If you are running a business site with the address and company phone numbers hidden then you are up to no good anyways. That wasn't meant as a cheap shot just a general truth. If you are marketing your business you need to let people know where you at. If you business is web based you still need an address to show your are credible.

      IP space does matter and is the most important. It will will work without a name. Still for the above reasons valid contact information matters. too.

    6. Re:I wouldn't sign the petition... by Malor · · Score: 1

      You do realize that you can be put in jail for 'counterattacking', don't you? The net is no place for vigilante justice. Call the ISP and get the server taken down. Counter-hacking is illegal, no matter what your intentions may actually be.

      Basically, I perceive what you just posted as a threat..."do it the way I want you to, or I will break your server". I hope you don't actually do things like that.

    7. Re:I wouldn't sign the petition... by Malor · · Score: 1

      If a server or set of servers is beating you up, what matters is their IP space, not their domain info. Contact the hosting ISP. They should know about the problem anyway. I can't, offhand, imagine any emergency situations that would be based around the domain name.... only IP space. Sure, you might WANT TO resolve a problem with a domain quickly, but a problem that can't be traced to a specific set of IP addresses is unlikely to be a true emergency... just an annoyance, at worst.

      I agree with you about most companies wanting to be as public as possible, overwhelmingly so in fact. Whatever I may do doing the day, however, doesn't imply that I also want publicity about me in my private life, running my private server(s).

      As far as mail problems go, postmaster@ still works. Spammers seem, for whatever reason, to avoid postmaster addresses. And of course you can always send mail to the WHOIS addresses. I do get those. They're anonymized, but they do work.

      I react this way because I have tons and tons of spam with my real name and address, as well as boatloads of junk snailmail. I DON'T LIKE IT when any sleazeball can get that info for a couple of cents.

    8. Re:I wouldn't sign the petition... by heybo · · Score: 1
      Well you know you should put things in quotes I did say. I never said "do it the way I want you to, or I will break your server" Don't put words in my mouth. First thing it is no threat just a promise of Self Defense. Read your words "Counter Attacking" This in itself means the other person started the attack. I do have a right to protect my investment. Don't want to get counter attacked then don't attack. Simple. Much like in the real world you try to break in here you will get shot. If you don't want to get shot then don't break in.

      What I am talking about is the last ditch attempt to put a stop to things. If you had valid information up on thw whois then like I said you would get a polite phone call and we would work it out like business people. Again Simple.

      Besides none of you against this I guess don't understand the obscurity is not security.

    9. Re:I wouldn't sign the petition... by Malor · · Score: 1

      That is vigilante justice, and you can be arrested and put in jail for it. Tread carefully.

    10. Re:I wouldn't sign the petition... by heybo · · Score: 1
      Obviously you haven't ever called SBC, ATT, or UUNET with a problem. you talk with no one and nothing gets done. Whois gives you another contact.

      Question.. You are talking about your "private" life and "Private server" If they are private then why are the on the "Public" Internet? Your right I don't want my private life on the Internet so nothing of my personal life is on a server. I'm sure you did a lookup of my domain. Do you think any of that info has anything to do with me personally? It is all valid for the company and for the site. Still there is nothing there about me personally.

      You are right spammers stay away from address like postmaster@ and hostmaster@ and especially abuse@ they know these address lead to an asshole like myself that will try to bring the walls of Jericho down around their heads. If you looked the address listed is hostmaster@ Actually this makes a good trap address. You ever called a spammers and they say "Oh you must have opted-in with that address at sometime." Nope! that address leads to a ticket system and is never used except in the whois info of domains hosted here. If you got it you harvested it. Got ya! Especially the postmaster account your spamming the guy (or lady) that is pulling their hair out over the spam. Not the right person to piss off.

      I understand the reaction to the ton of spam. REALLY! It is the thing that cost this company the most money to deal with. It makes me sad to see just a great form of communication get screwed up to the point it is damn near unuseable. Still I would never list my personal nor my business email address in the whois. You are right it is a great way to get a boat load of spam. If our customer wants to admin his own site we still setup a hostmaster@ mail account and point it to the mailbox of their choice. There personal address isn't out there.

      Now don't get me wrong there are hosting companies that forward mail from and basically bogus account to yours. I have no problem with that. I can send you an email through that address. I can contact you and still your phone number is listed if I need to call you. This to me is fine but hiding it all together no.

  81. This is a good thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Having contact information brings about a level of responsibility that needs to exist.

  82. Re:What Problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    well unfortunately in practice speaking your mind can get you fired or worse. It's a fact of life that if people dont like you or your unpopular attitude they will harass you. I think the best way to have free expression without fear or reprisal is by being anonymous. If you know a better way please tell me. Because I think that an ideal society where people are free and open about things can never be achieved .

  83. Stupid... by Patrick+Mannion · · Score: 1
    I've never heard anyone every complain that they were getting phised, scammed or whatever blah blah blah... When they owned a .com/.org/.net domain. It's stupid if you ask me. I'm liberal, but this is just retarded liberalness.

    I mean, whoopy-doo-dah It's just the stupid libreals believing this is a major invasion of their privacy. Oh, wow....

    So let me ask you this, if you owned a gTLD, and you required to enter your info, would go OMFG THIS IS INVADING MY PRIVACY. No, I think you'd go ahead and sign it, but it's it a .us, you freak out. Are you afraid just because you have a .us domain all the sudden every spammer/cracker/telemarketer/phisher is going to be heading in flocks towards you info. Nope, I doubt it.

    I liked it better when it the .us registry was run by that college/university/insitute. Not the company that handles the NANPA.

    If you so worried about your privacy. Why don't you use a .tk domain like me. I mean, I just whois'd it and no info came up. Happy now? Feel safe? Good.

    --
    In America, you spam computers In Soviet Russia, computers spam you!
  84. Re:public airwaves by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Public airwaves??

    I get very tired of hearing this, and especially the more extreme form "The airwaves belong to the government, so the FCC has the right/duty to regulate them."

    "Airwaves" can only meaningfully apply to sound waves. (Since they are carried by air, rather than by [luminiferous ether | self propagating | projectile-like motion of corpuscules].)

    If we want to talk about "public airwaves", all that can mean is broadcasting sound waves loud enough to be detectable in public air, such as car stereos or walkmans with the volume cranked up.

    Radio waves are not a public asset used by broadcasters; rather, they are produced by electronic equipment owned by those broadcasters!

  85. You know what this means... by TiMike · · Score: 1

    ...No more funny domain names like del.icio.us...
    ...and cumulonimb.us
    ...and snufflupug.us

  86. How absurd! by gottabeme · · Score: 1

    What a foolish attitude.

    * So, in order to have a more permanent e-mail address and Web site address, I have to give my real name, address, and phone number to every person in the world? How absurd!
    * In the case of libelous or illegal material, the real contact information would be immediately given to law enforcement as soon as it was requested. That is always mentioned in Terms of Service agreements, and a subpoena is a subpoena.
    * Having contact information kept out of plain sight is no barrier to law enforcement activities. That should be obvious to anyone.

    There is absolutely NO REASON for this decision to have been made. It should be reversed immediately, and whoever authorized it, and did so while blatantly refusing to hear arguments against it, should be fired from their job, and fined for violating the interests of American citizens, which the government is supposed to be protecting and upholding, not demolishing.

    --
    "Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
  87. Re:What Problem? by pommiekiwifruit · · Score: 1
    You shouldn't need to hide

    The former Prime Minister of New Zealand had his home address and home phone number in the phone book, under
    Muldoon, Rt. Hon Sir Robert.
    But it seems this is not the case with the current one.

    Public figures seem more worried about nutters these days.

  88. Goatse.us by Geoffreyerffoeg · · Score: 1

    Remember the flipside of this...it's that much easier to track down the owners of a hypothetical goatse.us, etc.

  89. Re:What Problem? by gottabeme · · Score: 1

    Get real. Impersonating a government official like that is not legal. Anyone trying to do so would be quickly tracked down by law enforcement and/or the attorney general and hauled into court and/or jail, WHETHER THE WHOIS INFORMATION WAS OBSCURED OR NOT.

    --
    "Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
  90. Re:Good - uh, think again by Phroggy · · Score: 1

    You might want to read your contract; providing false contact information is grounds for revocation, i.e. if they catch you (read: someone notices and reports you to the registrar/registry/ICANN/whoever) they can cancel your domain registration and give your domain to someone else (presumably the person who complained).

    --
    $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
    $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
  91. I for one by merc · · Score: 1

    welcome our new TLD-regulating overlords... *ducks*

    --
    It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
  92. Re:Most people with privacy needs don't need a dom by bluGill · · Score: 1

    No, I want (and have) my own domain so that I can connect to my computers from whereever. Sure I have a static IP, but I change ISPs from time to time, when I get a better deal. (Or I move).

    I want a stable email and web address. I no longer have .umn.edu addresses, and I haven't since I graduated in 1998. The ISP I used after that doesn't provide anything other than dial-up in my area. (There are at least 3 high speed options to choose from) yahoo used to provide free email with pop access, but I'm glad I never signed up as they no longer provide it.

    By running my own servers I spam filters that I can control.

    I get plenty of benefit from my own domain. I don't care if you know what it is or not though. I don't have it for vanity, I have it for convenience.

    Read the 9th and 10th ammendments. Just because a right is not listed doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

  93. Quick history lesson by Phroggy · · Score: 1

    Has everyone forgotten that five years ago nobody could register a domain "anonymously", and the privacy everyone is up in arms about the government taking away didn't exist?

    --
    $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
    $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
  94. Re:What Problem? by ImaLamer · · Score: 1

    Yeah?

    Because it's illegal they'd be tracked down? What about phishers?

    Any type of fraud is just as illegal.

    --
    Get your Unix fortune now!
  95. Dude, that's fucking awesome! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hillary is getting into that religious shit, too. You have a point. Send some shit like that to Orin Hatch, and he'll fucking go apeshit over it. I'm going to start writing all my letters like that.

    You just need some scripture quotes in there. Do not covet thy neighbors' domains, and shit.

    Good stuff. Good stuff.

  96. The space by tepples · · Score: 1

    Radio waves are not a public asset used by broadcasters; rather, they are produced by electronic equipment owned by those broadcasters!

    However, the space that these electromagnetic waves propagate through is controlled by governments, no?

  97. The email sent to godaddy.com customers. by blanks · · Score: 0, Redundant

    This is the email that was sent out to godaddy customers on 3/30/2005.

    Dear Valued Go Daddy Customer,

    Today I have the unfortunate responsibility of informing you that there has been a decision made by bureaucrats of a Federal agency that takes away your right to privacy as guaranteed by the United States Constitution.

    This decision was unilaterally made by the National Telecommunications and Information Association ("NTIA") www.ntia.doc.gov without hearings that would determine the impact on those affected, and delivered without notice -- in short, the NTIA decision was made without due process of any kind. This is exactly how our government is not supposed to work.

    The effect of this decision is to disallow new private domain name registrations on .US domain names. In addition, if you already own a private .US domain name registration, you will be forced to forfeit your privacy no later than January 26, 2006. By that time, you will need to choose between either making your personal information available to anyone who wants to see it, or giving up your right to that domain name.

    I personally find it ironic that our right to .US privacy was stripped away, without due process, by a federal government agency -- an agency that should be looking out for our individual rights. For the NTIA to choose the .US extension is the ultimate slap in your face. .US is the only domain name that is specifically intended for Americans (and also those who have a physical presence in our great country). So think about this for a moment. These bureaucrats stripped away the privacy that you're entitled to as an American, on the only domain name that says that you are an American. I am outraged by this -- you should be also.

    If, like me, you are outraged at the NTIA's decision to strip away our constitutional right to privacy, www.TheDangerOfNoPrivacy.com will provide you with a petition to sign. (Only your name will be published, your address and email information will be kept private.) This Web site also provides a very easy way for you to send either a fax or an email, expressing your outrage, to your Congressperson and Senators. This is all provided at no cost to you. All that is required is for you to take the time to visit www.TheDangerOfNoPrivacy.com sign the petition, and send the fax or email to your legislators.

    On my personal Blog, www.BobParsons.com there are a number of articles where you can learn more about the NTIA's unfortunate decision and what you can do to help get it reversed.

    I also will be talking about our right to privacy on Radio Go Daddy, our weekly radio show that debuts today, March 30, at 7 PM PST. To find out how to listen in, please visit the Web site dedicated to the show, www.RadioGoDaddy.com.

    You can be sure that I, and everyone at GoDaddy.com, will do everything in our power to get the NTIA decision reversed. However, we need your help. Please visit www.TheDangerOfNoPrivacy.com to sign the petition and express your feelings to your Congressperson and Senators.

    Sincerely,

    Bob Parsons
    President and Founder
    GoDaddy.com

    --
    TruePunk | Games
  98. Is this about privacy or dollars? by Nkwe · · Score: 1

    Is this really about privacy or is it about the money that will be lost by registrars and third parties that offer anonymous solutions and charge for it?

  99. I have to agree by Servo · · Score: 1

    If you are running a domain, there needs to be some sort of accountability and identification. Sure its a hassle, but if its that bad you don't want people knowing your home address, get a PO BOX

    --
    A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
    1. Re:I have to agree by xMilkmanDanx · · Score: 1

      I don't know about you, but I would not care to have my full name, phone number, email address and city (if done with PO Box) posted in an easily machine readable format ANYWHERE publicly accessible on the internet. From that information it is not hard to track down a home address.

      I don't do anything outright offensive or illegal but I know that there are many nutcases out there who wouldn't think twice to show up on a stranger's doorstep or call at all hours of the night for the weirdest of reasons. Stalking sounds fun /.ers until you experience the reality ;) (btw, for the humor impaired that last part was mostly a joke)

      --
      I am not in anyway affiliated with Max Cannon
    2. Re:I have to agree by Servo · · Score: 1

      I hate to tell you this, but most people already are listed somewhere. Ever hear of the White Pages?

      The real question should be though, what kind of website are you running that makes you a big target for stalkers?

      --
      A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
  100. A Hoax? by KidSock · · Score: 1

    There's no infomation on this decision anywhere. Does anyone else get the feeling this is just a hoax. I mean there must be *something* official that explains the situation. Where is it?

    1. Re:A Hoax? by cpghost · · Score: 1

      GoDaddy already sent out a mass mailing to all its customers about this.

      --
      cpghost at Cordula's Web.
    2. Re:A Hoax? by KidSock · · Score: 1

      For some reason I still think it's a hoax.

  101. Re:Most people with privacy needs don't need a dom by Excelsior · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Typically, the only reason individuals want their own second-level DNS domain is vanity.

    So what? If I'm willing to pay money for a product for my own vanity, and someone is willing to sell it, that's what commerce is all about. Should I not be allowed to anonymously purchase a mirror at the store for my purposes of vanity?

    If you're going to connect infrastructure to the Internet, you should be prepared to announce your identity to the rest of the Internet so that if/when you cause problems, you can be contacted.

    Says who? All Internet users connect our infrastructure to the Internet every single time we access the Internet, which is 24/7 for a big chunk of the public. That doesn't mean that everyone connecting to the Internet should be identifiable. That would be absolute insanity. Part of what I enjoy about the Internet is being able to do things freely without concern that I am identifiable.

    If you don't want to connect infrastructure to the Internet, and just want an outlet for your speech, again, there are plenty of ways to do that that don't involve your own little DNS domain.

    So what? Just because there are alternative mediums doesn't make it okay. The Internet is clearly the single most useful medium for the average person to disseminate information. It is very important that a person be comfortable using the medium without fear of identification. Only then do you have true freedom of speech on the Internet.

    If we cannot expect total freedom on a .us domain, how can we ever expect that to be true of a .cn (China) domain? Americans hold the U.S. to be a shining example of freedom, but clearly .us is not an example of freedom.

  102. Re:Most people with privacy needs don't need a dom by SquadBoy · · Score: 1

    You do know that your car is registered, right?

    And you do know that that is public information, right?

    Your analogy is borken. I can get your license plate number and call the DMV and get your info. This is the same as running a whois and getting it.

    Notice that I don't say if I think this is right or wrong this is simply the way things are.

    --

    Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
  103. WTF is the big deal? by suitepotato · · Score: 2, Insightful

    First, in these days of whackers (script kiddie hackers cracking with one hand, stroking themselves over free porn with the other), spam-masters, and other assorted cretins and weasels, what is the point of allowing secret domain registrations? OF COURSE there should be accountability.

    Second, if you really need to publish anonymously for whistle-blower reasons, et al, then between open proxies and nym and mixmaster, it ain't hard to put out what you need anonymously. But domain registrations? Come on, we have bigger and more realistic fish to fry in the world of privacy than that.

    --
    If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
  104. Re:What Problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Why should America be so special?
    Because we invented the Internet and still have the majority of traffic?
    Is every *.uk domain a government domain? Of course not. Hell, there's *.co.uk for commercial UK sites, afterall.
    That was Britain's decision. Must the US do it too? In a world of globalization, is it necessarily useful to have commercial domains which are tied to specific regions smaller than Florida?
  105. Re:Good - uh, think again by Improv · · Score: 1

    Nonsense. Subpoenas are great when what one is doing is clearly against the law, but if you want to, say, find the address of some spammer who's acting inside the law, so you can go picket their house or even decide if they're irritating enough to sue, then you're screwed. It's not good enough that if you're already going to sue, you can get the information. This rule change inconveniences spammers, and so it's a wonderful thing.

    --
    For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
  106. The Right to Privacy is the Right to be Left Alone by HopeOS · · Score: 1

    Domain owners are not asking for anonymity. They are asking that a reasonable buffer be put between them and the public. When I walk into a shopping mall, I am obviously in a public place. No one has the right to know my name. No one has the right to know my address. This does not mean that this information should be protected by force of law. It does mean that I should not be required to provide it to any and everyone simply because I am in public.

    -Hope

  107. Exactly. by Colol · · Score: 1

    As long as my ISP and my registrar know who I am, you don't need to.

    I agree completely. The government is being entirely stupid here -- there's no reason you shouldn't be able to register .us domains through a proxy. The registrars are supposed to verify you qualify for a .us already, and there's no reason thereafter that you shouldn't be able to keep your private information private.

    One of my domains, which used to host my blog, is held by Domains By Proxy through GoDaddy. I commonly linked to and discussed current news stories, and at one point a crazy white supremacist found my discussion of his appearance in a news story and took it as a personal affront. Given he was an advocate of violently overthrowing the damn liberal Yankees, I decided to let the domain be held by proxy so interesting people like him didn't have immediate access the best place to kill me.

    Result is no whackos who don't need my contact information can get it. And the proxy service provides a unique email address in my WHOIS that still goes directly to me so I'm reachable.

    I fail to see the problem the government sees. They can still (a) contact me directly, and (b) subpoena the proxy service for my contact information if I ignore them.

    1. Re:Exactly. by Malor · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure they'd even have to issue a subpoena, they'd probably just have to call up the registrar and ask for the info. What with it being the .us domain and all, they kinda own the data. So I just don't understand what problem they're trying to solve at all.

      The only explanation I can think of so far is that the thought of widespread public anonymity might scare them. The Bushies aren't known to tolerate dissent well.

  108. Re:Most people with privacy needs don't need a dom by dillon_rinker · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The flaw in your analysis is that you fail to take into account the economic cost of locating the personal information.

    A whois query costs seconds. A qwuery to the DMV can be minutes, hours, or even days (DMVs are state agencies, and there are varying levels of response from the various states).

    To take your analogy to an extreme, I will suggest that we are all millionaires. Some people can and withdraw $1 million from an account, while others must work 50 years to earn a total of $1 million. Nevertheless, in both cases, people have possession of $1 million. The difference, of course, is the cost in time.

  109. Re:Good - uh, think again by cpghost · · Score: 1

    That law would only applies, if I commit a felony crime and use a domain registered with fake contact information in some way while committing the crime.

    You can get in legal trouble much faster than you think: some unintentional copyright infrigement or someone suing you for libel is not so unlikely. I don't know if it's felony though... But if it is and you happen to be convicted, using a domain with bogus contact info would come back and bite you.

    --
    cpghost at Cordula's Web.
  110. MOD PARENT UP! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is an important point everyone seems to be missing.

    The ruling isn't that you can't provide false information -- it's also that you can't use a proxy service. You're left with no option but to enter your full and complete personal information.

  111. No -- "valid" vs. "private". by JavaRob · · Score: 1

    The pre-existing requirement is that DNS ownership information must be *valid*, i.e., you have to provide an actual address, phone number, and email through which you may be contacted. This could be the address of a company that will forward messages to you and protect your privacy.

    The new requirement for .us domains is that the DNS info be *non-private* -- i.e., it has to be YOUR information, not the info of a redirector.

    There are lots of services out there that will provide redirection services for you (GoDaddy, for one). Law enforcement can still easily get your actual information if they have a legal reason for it, but the wackos who feel you deserve to die because you're pro-abortion, or that violent ex-husband who's hunting you, or Big Brother who knows you're not doing anything *illegal* but would like to keep an eye on you just in case CAN NOT see your actual address and phone number.

    This change they made will mean that all of those people *can* see your actual address and phone number. Anyone in the public can.

    Personally, my sites are all pretty boring (so I don't have private registrations), but I have no trouble at all understanding the need.

  112. domains are not just www by mepr · · Score: 1

    > What concerns me is that people feel that knowing who owns a given domain name is an unreasonable search. Let us assume you are correct. Still, you only cover a small part of the issue. Think communication: email, voip, jabber Disallowing private registration is also similar to disallowing unlisted phone numbers. Examples: * private mail servers to keep your email archives private. What if you don't appreciate all of your private email being hosted on commercialwebsite.com, subject to their vacuous subpoena policies (sure, we'll bend our client over) and whatever their idea of security is? * private voip domains.. when voip overtakes POTS, user@mydomain.com becomes your phone number. If you can't afford a static IP address, domains are needed. Then private phone numbers are outlawed. And even so, what if your political views put your life in danger?

    1. Re:domains are not just www by CDarklock · · Score: 1

      > similar to disallowing
      > unlisted phone numbers.

      Businesses already can't have unlisted phone numbers. If you want an unlisted phone number, you can't have a business at that phone number.

      Now .us domain owners can't have a private domain. If you want a private domain, you can't have a .us domain.

      I don't see the problem.

      > user@mydomain.com becomes
      > your phone number

      And mydomain.com can be private. However, mydomain.us cannot. So don't put your phones on mydomain.us, and the problem goes away.

      Please don't hand me a slippery slope argument about "first they came for the .us domains". We live in a reasonably free market economy. If there is a market for the kind of privacy you want, someone will sell it to you.

      > what if your political views put
      > your life in danger?

      Maybe that's natural selection at work.

      --
      Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
    2. Re:domains are not just www by mepr · · Score: 1
      Please don't hand me a slippery slope argument about "first they came for the .us domains". We live in a reasonably free market economy. If there is a market for the kind of privacy you want, someone will sell it to you.

      Not if it's illegal to do so.

  113. What about RFC 1834 by bulldog2260 · · Score: 1

    What about the RFC's, it says you have to have the correct info in whois. I realize that in today's world, RFC's have come to not mean a whole lot, but I do try to follow them as much as possible.

  114. Re:Most people with privacy needs don't need a dom by SquadBoy · · Score: 1

    Welcome to the Internet.

    Yeah. Almost everything has a lower time cost. This is why almost all analogies to RL are borken. Notice that I have not made any arguments about if this is a good or bad thing. I have merely pointed out that the orginal analogy left one with the impression that car registration info was "private" in some fashion. I was merely pointing out that it was not.

    Yes getting public information on the Internet will be faster/cheaper than getting it in RL. This is true of *most* things. If you don't like that stay off the Net.

    --

    Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
  115. re: good... No, Bad by mepr · · Score: 1

    It is one _More_ tld to abuse by harvesting addresses. Spammers use false registration info to avoid getting caught, and use non-false registrations to harvest your email address. Law abiding people that value privacy and not spam and not stalkers, etc., should be able to register privately, like an unlisted phone number.

  116. More like... by CDarklock · · Score: 1

    ESPECIALLY if it's illegal to do so.

    After all, that jacks up the price.

    --
    Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
  117. Re:Most people with privacy needs don't need a dom by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    While I agree the analogy is stupid, you are wrong about the DMV, at least in my state. Here they'll sell you the who database on CD. Seriously.

  118. Re:What Problem? by xMilkmanDanx · · Score: 1

    The difference is that illegal registrations are already trackable back to their owners (or at least to the registar that didn't get the proper information or check for stolen cc's etc). Adding the information to public knowledge does not make it more likely for law enforcement to reach them.

    Just like this post, if there was something illegal about it, law enforcement would be able to track it to me. Posting contact info with it would just slightly shorten the process.

    Of course, the above analogy is not accurate in scale, it is much harder to track an annonymous post on /. than it is to track an 'annonymous' domain registry but the concept remains the same.

    --
    I am not in anyway affiliated with Max Cannon
  119. Re:Most people with privacy needs don't need a dom by Fastolfe · · Score: 1

    So what? If I'm willing to pay money for a product for my own vanity, and someone is willing to sell it, that's what commerce is all about. Should I not be allowed to anonymously purchase a mirror at the store for my purposes of vanity?

    A DNS domain is intended to represent an administrative domain for network resources. A consequence of registering a domain for that purpose is that you should have published contact information.

    What you're doing is registering a DNS domain for a purpose other than what it was designed for. That doesn't exempt you from adhering to the requirements of a domain registration.

    Says who? All Internet users connect our infrastructure to the Internet every single time we access the Internet, which is 24/7 for a big chunk of the public. That doesn't mean that everyone connecting to the Internet should be identifiable.

    I agree. But when you set up shop on the Internet by declaring that you need your own second-level DNS domain, there are other obligations that go with that privilege.

    When you merely "connect" to the Internet, or publish content on some web server somewhere, there's nothing requiring you to register your own second-level DNS domain for that. When you dial up to an ISP, your system is connected to the Internet using a hostname beneath your ISP's DNS domain. When you publish content through your ISP's or web provider's servers, that content doesn't necessarily have to reside directly beneath some vanity DNS domain. DNS is a hierarchy.

    So what? Just because there are alternative mediums doesn't make it okay.

    Since there is no technical reason the domain is needed in these cases, people should not expect any sort of constitutional protection. People are still free to publish content elsewhere in the DNS hierarchy, or without using DNS at all. You can have an Internet presence without needing to pretend via DNS that you actually have Internet infrastructure, which is what a DNS domain is intended to reflect (and why these rules exist). Just because you want to abuse DNS doesn't mean that the rules should be changed to suit you.

  120. Re:Most people with privacy needs don't need a dom by Fastolfe · · Score: 1

    Your situation wasn't really what I was talking about. I do exactly the same thing that you do, for exactly the same reasons.

    When I talk about people "abusing" DNS, I'm referring to people that register their own second-level domain just so they can have a shorter or trendy URL for their home page. This is using DNS domains for a content label.

    You and I are using DNS domains as intended: to reflect an administrative domain of network resources.

    These domains don't have to be second-level domains, though. We could have easily "registered" them with an ISP as a third- or fourth-level sub-domain. Whether our contact information is collected or published then becomes a matter for the provider, not the US Government or ICANN.

  121. Re:Most people with privacy needs don't need a dom by Fastolfe · · Score: 1

    This isn't a good analogy. You can use the Internet without needing your own little second-level DNS domain. You can browse the Internet, you can post content on the Internet, you can do whatever you want. If you want other people to find you or your content, you generally want some sort of DNS hostname (though you could always pass around IP addresses), but that hostname can be anywhere in the DNS hierarchy.

    Registering your own second-level domain is not needed to use or publish on the Internet. DNS is a hierarchy.

  122. Re:Most people with privacy needs don't need a dom by mikethefreak · · Score: 1
    What would you say if a government agency unilaterally required that all members of the automotive infrastructure post their name, address and telephone number in big bold letters on all their vehicles?

    NYC requires commercial vehicles to do just that actually sans phone number anyway.

    -Mike
  123. The Opposing View... by richardtallent · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I got the same letter from GoDaddy (former customer, love how they don't let me unsubscribe without snail-mail), but though I am a HUGE believer in privacy/speech rights, I had a different reaction to it:

    1. This is only the .US TLD, a limited (if artificial) resource, just like frequency spectrum, real estate, game animals, trademarks, etc. You are trading some public registration information for a monopoly on a domain name. Get over it.

    2. If you have a legitimate need to be private, don't register a domain name. Not all URLs must be in the form "www\.[^.]{3,}\.us".

    3. GoDaddy makes a FREAKING CRAPLOAD of money with their "unlisted" domain "feature." Even if there are NO spammers among their customers, GoDaddy has a huge incentive to spread FUD about information anyone could find in a phone book anyway.

    More on my blog:

    http://www.tallent.us/blog/CommentView.aspx?guid=2 864defd-c34b-403b-a789-6172ffe61186

  124. So what? by Syberghost · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If the domain reserved for a country shouldn't be run by the government of that country, who the hell should run it?

    The government makes decisions like this. If you like the decisions, you vote for the same people next time. If you don't, you vote for somebody else. If most of the people who vote disagree with you, you cowboy up and live with it, or move.

    Use a different domain if you want to be anonymous.

  125. WHOIS getting more useful by Anders+Andersson · · Score: 1

    I really like what Namecheap is doing. For an extra five or six bucks a year, they'll hide your real address and give you an anonymized contact address... mail sent to this random address will be forwarded to your real email, invisibly to the sender.

    If you are running your own mail server for your own domain, then why would you need to obtain an "anonymized" contact address from your registrar? Can't you simply define an alias whois-contact in your own domain and have it forward your mail anywhere you like? If the spammer has found your WHOIS entry, your domain name isn't exactly secret anyway, and I suppose postmaster should work as well to reach you whether you want it or not.

    Obtaining an entry in the DNS without providing at least some contact information is a bit like obtaining an entry in the phone directory without providing a phone number.

    So, if there is a problem with your domain, you are still contactable.

    When I obtained my own domain (pdcs.org), my ISP registered it with NameCheap without me asking for it, and my contact information was cloaked by default. I don't think I'm paying extra for it; maybe NameCheap stopped charging. I have hinted to my ISP that I don't appreciate that cloaking feature, as it makes me look like a potential spammer to anybody investigating my domain for whatever reason, though it hasn't been a top priority issue to me. I understand that NameCheap doesn't want me to encourage people to actually use their proxy contact address to reach me.

    It's the only domain I have, and once it was set up I defined contact addresses within that domain to use for WHOIS. I know they won't work if the domain goes down, but I'm dependent on it enough not to need anybody else telling me when it goes down; I'll surely investigate if I don't get a daily article listing from Slashdot...

    If there's a legal problem with a domain, then of course the real info is going to be available to any form of law enforcement.

    If there is a legal problem with my domain, I'd like to learn about it before law enforcement gets involved. I'm interested in legal issues, and I want to discuss them with my fellow citizens without requiring every comment or complaint be delivered by the police. I don't want a police state where government agents have access to all sorts of information the general public hasn't. One way to avoid that is to deny even the police access to my contact information. Another way is to voluntarily provide it to the world.

    In some cases, I'd like to exclude government agents from inspecting information I'm offering everybody else, but I realize this is hardly possible, and I'm satisfied with equal access for all as the default rule. Granting law enforcement privileges beyond those already granted by the law itself isn't really my cup of tea. Give them an inch, and they'll claim you owe them every mile they can think of.

    But it's hidden from the casual spammer/identity thief, and I am very, very happy about this.

    Spammers don't care where I live; they just want an address where somebody lives. My street address isn't exactly secret; it can easily be determined from reading street signs and numbers in my neighbourhood, if not from a gazetteer. Yes, there actually are broadband companies sending bulk snail mail addressed to "Every Tenant on 13 Sernander Rd" and getting it delivered to 56 separate mailslots in that single building, without knowing the real names of individual recipients. Am I going to spam their customers by e-mail in return? You bet, to inform them that I have blacklisted their entire broadband network and that they should ask their customer support

    1. Re:WHOIS getting more useful by Malor · · Score: 1

      That's a thoughful reply, and I appreciate it.

      First, it's not a good idea to use contact info from Domain X in the registration records FOR Domain X. If Domain X breaks, it's quite possible to end up in a spot where you can't fix it BECAUSE it is broken. (back when all administration was done through email, in fact, this was pretty common... with the web based interfaces now, it's less likely.) So as a rule I have always used at least one contact that wasn't in the domain. I may or may not have full control over that domain, and those addresses will get a torrent of spam.

      The Namecheap anonymizer is really nice, because I don't have to make a special address that discards a lot of junk mail. It shifts the burden of administration to them... they just need to rotate the random address every so often. I get very little spam that way, and it costs me essentially zero effort. You can still get ahold of me easily, without actually knowing what my 'real' address is.

      You say, "Obtaining an entry in the DNS without providing at least some contact information is a bit like obtaining an entry in the phone directory without providing a phone number.". You're close, but I think you got the metaphor wrong. Obtaining a domain name without publishing info is like getting a telephone but choosing not to go into the phonebook. It is the Internet equivalent of an unlisted number.

      In your particular case, you have decided that the benefits from publishing your info outweigh the loss of privacy. I have no beef with or complaint about that choice. You choose to list yourself in the phone book. I generally do not. There are good reasons for both approaches.

      The current .us regime (and .com/.net/.org to a lesser degree) is basically saying "you can't have an unlisted number". Depriving me of the choice doesn't seem like a good idea at all.

      As far as the law enforcement comments go... at the moment, they have access to nearly everything, often without needing a subpoena. Like it or not, we already live in a police state, it's just one that hasn't showed its fangs too much yet. (since the government claims to now be able to hold people, even US Citizens, indefinitely, without charges, and without access to legal counsel.) You have virtually no privacy protections against the government, and they can disappear you at will. Under that circumstance, talking about whether or not the government should be able to access domain info is like wondering about the placement of a picture in the hall while your house is burning down.

      I do like what you're saying, but it's so far from present reality that it's nothing more than vaguely theoretical.

      As an aside, I just looked at your whois info. It's very strange, not at all like how mine is set up. It looks like NameCheap is claiming OWNERSHIP over your domain, instead of just being your registrar. It looks like you might be vulnerable to having your domain stolen, since you don't appear to be the owner of record. If they're fighting you on listing your name properly, this might be why -- the people who actually registered the domain may be trying to get you over a barrel so you can't change providers and keep it.

      My contacts all show 'WhoisGuard Protected' rather than claiming that Namecheap actually owns my domain.

    2. Re:WHOIS getting more useful by Anders+Andersson · · Score: 1

      First, it's not a good idea to use contact info from Domain X in the registration records FOR Domain X. If Domain X breaks, it's quite possible to end up in a spot where you can't fix it BECAUSE it is broken.

      I obtained my domain only last year, when my previous ISP modified their e-mail system and broke my per-address spam filtering mechanism. As I had been using their domain, I couldn't simply transfer my setup to another ISP, but I had to give up my 50+ addresses as well (the oldest ones dating to 1998). I'm now trying hard not to become dependent on another domain I don't control myself.

      If a problem with my domain renders my e-mail contact address unusable, my telephone number or snail mail address should be available as a last resort means of reaching me. I could of course obtain another domain as a backup, and let the two domains provide WHOIS contact addresses for each other, but right now I feel that would be overkill to me.

      The Namecheap anonymizer is really nice, because I don't have to make a special address that discards a lot of junk mail. It shifts the burden of administration to them...

      Shifting burdens of administration where they don't belong is something I try to avoid; that's rather something spammers are notorious for doing.

      My six-year relationship with my previous ISP didn't prevent them from eventually screwing up the services I had become dependent on - services that I had essentially implemented myself in their Unix environment. The lesson I have learned is that I should have more control over the e-mail addresses I use, not less. Also, I like to buy fundamental services such as DNS, web and mail separately, possibly from different providers, rather than in a single package, simply to know what I'm paying for. Obtaining a spam filtering service from my registrar doesn't quite fit my view of what the role of my registrar should be.

      Obtaining a domain name without publishing info is like getting a telephone but choosing not to go into the phonebook. It is the Internet equivalent of an unlisted number.

      I agree that metaphor of mine wasn't exactly on the spot, but I think yours is worse. The DNS is the phone directory of the Internet, in that it translates names to numbers (IP addresses). An unlisted phone number is rather the equivalent of an unnamed IP address; you can run a working HTTP server on that without ever disclosing any domain name of yours (since you may not even have a domain in that case). You can even send e-mail to <postmaster@[12.34.56.78]> if you have an SMTP server running but no domain name. That IP address is "some form of contact information" albeit not a very convenient one.

      Phone directories generally list residential addresses as well, although nothing in principle prevents you from being listed with your name and phone number only. Problem is, with a few billion telephone subscribers around the world, you can't expect your real name to be unique, and therefore you may need some additional items for identification, perhaps geographic or organizational ones.

      In your particular case, you have decided that the benefits from publishing your info outweigh the loss of privacy. I have no beef with or complaint about that choice. You choose to list yourself in the phone book. I generally do not. There are good reasons for both approaches.

      I'm indeed listed in the phone book, like a majority of telephone subscribers I believe. I grant you the freedom to do otherwise. However, as I don't buy your analogy between a proxy WHOIS contact for your domain and an unlisted phone number, I think your wish not to have your e-mail address listed at all doesn't rhyme with your desire to have a domain name listed in the DNS.

    3. Re:WHOIS getting more useful by Malor · · Score: 1

      The purpose behind an unlisted number is to prevent people from looking you up and disturbing you when you don't wish to be disturbed. There are two pieces of data; name, and phone number. (and, optionally, street address.) Having an unlisted number, at least in theory, breaks the connection between the two required data elements for those who should not have it. (in reality it no longer works that well, but at least it's proof against a casual snoop.)

      DNS names are mnemonics for numbers. They serve many more functions than a phonebook does. The most fundamental part of it, A records, are simply shortcuts for humans, so that they can find sites more easily. It's a lot easier to remember 'www.google.com' than it is to remember 64.233.161.99 (plus two more addresses in the lookup I did just now... who knows how many ACTUAL addresses they have.) With an A record, you're in essence dealing with THREE pieces of data, not two: the site's name, the address where it's hosted, and (via the WHOIS info) who runs the site.

      So by using indirect (WhoisGuarded) listings for domains, the chain is broken a little further down. It still serves its mnemonic purpose, but doesn't give away ownership data. This is very close to the idea of an unlisted number. You can still reach my site by number (1.2.3.4), for convenience purposes by name (www.example.com), yet you can't instantly determine who I am. Your argument that having a number-only domain is most like being unlisted really isn't correct. You are breaking the mnemonic function of DNS when you don't need to.

      Being MOST precise, WHOIS would be like a reverse phone number directory, in which one looks up a number and determines who owns it. In the United States, this is considered special information and isn't routinely accessible to ordinary citizens. It can be gotten much more easily now than it once could, but it costs money to do so.

      Interestingly, the 'forward' lookup facility in WHOIS doesn't seem to work anymore. At one time, you could use my NIC handle in the WHOIS lookups to determine all the domains I ran. I don't think you can do that anymore. So the way in which it's MOST like a phonebook, looking up a site owned by a person, seems to have gone away. (My own domain doesn't even list NIC handles, perhaps they have removed that feature entirely??)

      I'm not too worried about being considered a spammer for using Namecheap... my domain is six years old. If it were newer, I might very well have listed myself for awhile before taking it private, or perhaps I'd register it and not use it for a year or so. (less likely). But at this point, I'd just rather be anonymous... I have run the domain well for a long time and I intend to continue. I don't see any reason to plaster my address all over the Net. It can't POSSIBLY help me and it could certainly hurt me. I was getting a lot of snailmail advertisements when I still lived at the address last listed for me.

      I don't really understand your objections to the police having extra access to this info. I'm not arguing, and never HAVE BEEN arguing, that one should be able to run a domain and be TRULY anonymous, just anonymous to non-authorities. (it would be better to be TRULY anonymous, I admit, but the chances of that are near-zero... it would be abused instantly and on a massive scale by spammers.) I think the authorities in the name service system (registrar of record and ICANN) should have access, and that, by extension, the police probably should too. You might be right that this should be protectable with a subpoena, but again... in the US, that idea is mostly moot. And since the registries are mostly hosted in the US, those laws will probably reach out and apply to you in Sweden.

      (If you use the registrar Joker.com, which is quite good, though, you MIGHT be able to escape somewhat from US jurisdiction, if that matters to you.)

      But I don't really get where posting your info outside a police station would really prove anything. I mean, in your c

    4. Re:WHOIS getting more useful by Anders+Andersson · · Score: 1

      I still don't agree with your reasoning regarding the DNS vs the phonebook, but I don't see any point in continuing that argument.

      I don't really understand your objections to the police having extra access to this info.

      I don't object to the police having extra access to domain name contact information in particular; I object to the police having extra access to information in general as a default prerequisite for them to be able to do regular police work. Our perception of the world is built on the information we have about it, and if different groups of society have access to different information, they effectively live in different worlds. I accept the police being able to use special powers as an exception to the default rule of equal access, but I don't want to promote a society where nobody but the police is even capable of finding out whether a crime has been committed.

      And since the registries are mostly hosted in the US, those laws will probably reach out and apply to you in Sweden.

      Which is one reason why I don't mind having a public contact address, because to me, US law enforcement agents merely constitute another subset of "the general public". I'm not entrusting foreign law enforcement with any sensitive information of mine; I'm entrusting them with a published phonebook entry. If I had a secret address, I certainly wouldn't use it when ordering goods and services from abroad.

      But I don't really get where posting your info outside a police station would really prove anything. I mean, in your case, you don't really care who knows it anyway, so what does it matter if only the police can know it?

      Sorry, I was unclear. The street outside the police station is public property; anybody who happens to be there can read my sign, which I'll post in addition to having my entry listed in WHOIS. It's just my metaphorical way of telling the police "You don't need a subpoena to find my contact address; just look it up, stupid!" (that last word not spelled out but rather implied by the large sign itself firmly planted in the sidewalk). I recall some story about the FBI being unable to locate two "suspected terrorists" because they didn't bother to check the San Francisco phonebook (where the "suspects" were actually listed), so it may very well be that the police needs an extra investigatory hint now and then...

      I consider where I live to be rather sensitive information, more than my shoesize or religious belief. The latter two can't hurt me, the first one can.

      In a free society, being impopular is not dangerous. I don't claim to live in a free society, but it's an ideal to strive for. If your residential address is indeed sensitive information, then you are right to protect it, and even to ask society for help in protecting it. To relieve you of some of the pressure from groups seeking to obtain your address anyway, I'm placing my own address in full public view, hoping to satisfy the curiosity of the masses. If you think I'm doing you a disservice, please let me know.

      I do ask however, that people don't use their freedom to be anonymous for entirely trivial reasons. I use a caller-ID display to see who is calling, but I don't refuse to answer merely because the caller's number is withheld, even though I know it's a telemarketer in 9 cases out of 10, because some of my friends withhold their numbers too. Rather than ask my friends to give up their privacy, I try to force the telemarketers to give up theirs. Having a product to sell is simply not a legitimate reason for anonymity. Avoiding telemarketing calls is just the second worst reason. If a public registry such as the phonebook or the WHOIS database allows my friends and the telemarketers to be anonymous regardless of reason, that registry will in my view be discre

  126. Wha ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    It says something that .gov is in fact the US government, while all other countries which are not THE country must do with gouv.fr for instance. Doesn't it ?

    Personnally I don't care what happens with .us.
    If I want domain anonimity I'll use a dynamic DNS or something.

    I'm fed up with Americans bitching and whining about how their great country somehow now isn't that great anymore. They rant and bitch but they can't help some words of pride go through. That GoDaddy email is sickening.

    If the current US government is not to your liking, elect another one, you'll do something nice for every one on this planet.

    I don't live in the US.
    I don't WANT to live in the US.

  127. Unbiased Details? by Anm · · Score: 1

    Umm... anyone have a link to an unbiased source? In particular, does this apply to my la.ca.us domain, or is it limited to whatever.us?

    Honestly, I don't mind doing it, as long as every protection is taken to prevent harvesting.

    Anm

  128. Re:Most people with privacy needs don't need a dom by waferhead · · Score: 1

    The car anology works, but IMHO, it works AGAINST your argument.

    If people had to post in HUGE letters their name and address, I suspect many people would drive in a far more courteous manner.

  129. Re:Most people with privacy needs don't need a dom by anthony_dipierro · · Score: 1

    Your analogy is borken. I can get your license plate number and call the DMV and get your info.

    I seriously doubt it. But just in case, I'll use my friends. Florida, D10 NKV. Name and address please.

  130. Re:Good - uh, think again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    its $160/yr. your domain costs $35 or so.
    big deal. spend the $160 and dont bother.

  131. Re:Most people with privacy needs don't need a dom by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    California passed a law years ago restricting access to DMV info after an actress was stalked and killed by someone using it to find her.

  132. This ruling violates UCC 57A-2A-305a by MrTwist · · Score: 1

    I agree with Bob Parsons. By my reading, this administrative ruling without public comment is a horrendous abuse. It is also directly contrary to Universal Commercial Code section 57A-2A-305a -- the section dealing with sub-leases. Think about it: You don't "own" a domain name. You rent it for a period of time. This is an egregious power-grab by federal authorities that deserves a swift and loud rebuke. So do it! Sign the petition, write your Representatives and your Senators, both state and federal. In the immortal words of The Dude "This agression will not stand, man!"

  133. Re:Most people with privacy needs don't need a dom by Fastolfe · · Score: 1

    It's difficult to come up with a really good car/road analogy. A better (but still poor) one would be the road itself. Someone registering their own second-level domain would be akin to someone registering their own street.

    Some people want their own street name because they are a developer building new condos or businesses. There's going to be loads of paperwork associated with that, and a lot of it is going to become public information. There are good reasons for all of that.

    Other people want their own street name because they want their address to be "1 David's Way" instead of "26513 Evergreen Terrace". So they submit an application and get their driveway officially named "David's Way".

    This is obviously an abuse of the street naming system. If there is a lot of paperwork and filing information that is to become public, the government shouldn't be asked to change that policy because some people want to abuse the system.

    The policy is there for very legitimate reasons. They just happen to be inconvenient for those that are using the system for what it wasn't designed.

  134. Re:The Right to Privacy is the Right to be Left Al by gr8_phk · · Score: 1

    I agree with that. However, walking into a mall is like being a customer. Having a domain is like being a store owner (assuming you have any sort of public server). Now if I want to track down a store owner, I'm not sure if public records contain the information or not - I suspect they do but I've never tried. The problem then would be the classic - it's always been that way, but putting everything on the internet makes abuse much simpler.

  135. I live at by lorcha · · Score: 1
    PO Box XXXX

    Come find me.

    --
    "Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
  136. False by lorcha · · Score: 1
    When you buy land, or register a name for your business, you have to provide certain details about yourself to your local government, which becomes public information.
    I have several Land Trusts and a Nevada corporation (officers not public) that disagree with your statement.

    I didn't read any more because the basis for your argument was totally false.

    Have a pleasant day.

    --
    "Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
    1. Re:False by Fastolfe · · Score: 1

      Depends on where you live, like most things in the US.

  137. Re:Most people with privacy needs don't need a dom by RockDoctor · · Score: 1
    Do you own a car? If so then you are part of the automotive infrastructure of whatever state/country you live in. What would you say if a government agency unilaterally required that all members of the automotive infrastructure post their name, address and telephone number in big bold letters on all their vehicles? That way all the other members of the automotive infrastructure can clearly see your identity so that if/when you cause problems, you can be contacted. Sound good to you?

    Well, you know, it does sound kind-of good. Just imagine how those "cops chasing crack-head driver" videos will change ... the helicopter cuts away from the chase to film the smashing down of the door of the driver's house, the extraction of any living people in the building followed by it's bulldozing. That would deal with the responsible proportion of the crack-head drivers of the world. The less responsible ones ... in the words of Niven and Pournelle "Just Think Of It As Evolution In Action".

    Personally, I'd add another piece of data to what you have to write on the car - the date of your last and next driving tests. About 5 years apart.

    Yep, you heard correctly - your driving license requires passing the driving test every 5 years. Now there's radical. (You'd have to add a provision that your car is immobilised before you get into the test centre's vehicle to be re-examined. Can't allow failed drivers on the road without an instructor.)

    Back to the original point though ... why should the administrator/ owner of a domain be anonymous? You're standing up in public shouting what you're opinions are. So you ought to be willing to defend your opinions publically. If that means that you have a gun-toting god-squadder come round and put a cap in your less-than-reverential non-god-fearing ass, then equally that exposes the gun-toting god-squadders to a drive-by shooting or two on their own. Just roll that frag grenade down the aisle next holy-day and improve humanity immesurably.

    (Bloody septics with their guns and gods and cars. We should have shot them instead of transporting the deviants.)

    Should I post anonymously? I don't think so.

    --
    Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  138. Contact Info vs. ICBM / Legal / Sleeping address by billstewart · · Score: 1
    • If there's a problem with the registration for my computer, the registrar needs to be able to contact me, or take alternative action. Typically this means that either they need to charge my credit card, or else let me know my credit card bounced.
    • If there's a problem with my computer, my upstream provider needs to be able to contact me, or else possibly my machine will be shut down (either because it crashed itself or because they had to cut off my access.)
    • Neither of those means they need to know where I sleep, or how to send an ICBM or cop to my address, or what my True Name and Mother's Maiden Name and Birthdate are, extract fingerprints, DNA, retina scans, the number tattooed on my arm, the RFID under my skin, or what protection service I've sworn fealty to.
    • My cellphone is much more useful to them than the wired phone in my kitchen or on the desk in the office that I'm not in, and it works just as well whether it's a pre-paid 7-11 phone or registered to my employer's purchasing department as opposed to registered in my True Name and Social Security Number.
    • A working email address is important (usually much more important than the cell phone, unless something is Terribly Wrong), but it can just as well be MyDomainDotComDNSadmin@yahoo.com as opposed to my main home or work email address - and if it's a business-related domain, it's much more important to have the address be a generic address because I might not be the domain administrator next year when the renewal happens, or I might sell the business to someone else.
    • "Valid" DNS is a fiction made up by the Intellectual Property Protection Mafia, and adopted by the Anti-Privacy Politicians. Since the only IP that ICANN cares about is Intellectual Property, they've tried very hard to insist that domain registrars collect legal jurisdiction information and True Names and True Contact Info, because if there's a trademark disagreement about a domain name or somebody's sharing music at your domain, they want the purported IP owner to be able to send a subpoena to the domain name holder instead of bothering the registrar or ICANN about it. And the politicians want to be able to send out a SWAT team to your house if you publish UnAmerican Material on your web site.
    • It's especially hypocritical for the trademark/copyright folks to insist on it, because most of them are corporations, which are fictitious legal persons to start with.
    • It can be frustrating to have non-useful contact information for a domain - I've occasionally tried to track down spammers using their DNS information, and bogus information slows that down. But at least once I've found that the spammer's address was a mailbox in the same building as The Company Corporation, which is the canonical agent for setting up a Delaware Corporation - so even if I were to haul the spammer into court and sue them into bankruptcy, that just means I get to seize whatever's in their mailbox, and they get to spend another $100 to set up a new corporation to do their spamming.
    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  139. Re:Contact Info vs. ICBM / Legal / Sleeping addres by heybo · · Score: 1
    You talk about the registration of "my computer". We're not talking about your computer on a DSL. For one thing the DNS information is on your ISP and yes if there was problems from your computer I want the whois information to look them up. Now if you are talking about running your web site off of your computer then welcome to the real world.

    Question. Who has control of your DNS for your site? Your telco provider or ISP? If they do then change the contact information to them. We do that here for our customers that don't wnat their home address out there. The thing is then their is a valid phone number and a vaild email address for contact to someone that has control of the site, or can at least contact you.

    If you are running your own DNS then really welcome to the real world. If you are going to play in the big pond you must obey the rules. Maybe your are just doing one domain but still you are entering the world of being an ISP and yes you need to have vaild contact information out there. You need to have you host and MX records in order. There are standards for a reason. If you are that worried about your address then get a PO box.

    Boy want an rant. What the hell do I care about where you sleep. If you are running a network and your box gets hacked and decides to send my mail server ten million mail messages. I want someone I can politely (notice I said politely) call and resolve the issue. Shit happens on the network and engineers need a way of contact. This is the propose of the whois. Or would you rather me turn it off because I couldn't reach you or someone to correct the problem? I don't think you would want that. I personally want to resolve the matter in a respectfull manner .

    Don't rant about the above threat. If you are going to run a server on the Internet there comes responisabilty with that. Like keeping your machine patched and if something does go wrong with you server there is a way to contact you. It just the rules of the road. You know if you don't drink and drive you will never get arrested for drunk driving.

    Actually what you said about email address you are requried to have hostmaster@example.com, postmaster@example.com, and abuse@example.com valid and working on your mail server for your domain. These addresses are for the use we are talking about. This wasn't the topic so why rant?

    "Valid" DNS is a fiction made up by the Intellectual Property Protection Mafia, and adopted by the Anti-Privacy Politicians. Since the only IP that ICANN cares about is Intellectual Property, they've tried very hard to insist that domain registrars collect legal jurisdiction information and True Names and True Contact Info, because if there's a trademark disagreement about a domain name or somebody's sharing music at your domain, they want the purported IP owner to be able to send a subpoena to the domain name holder instead of bothering the registrar or ICANN about it. And the politicians want to be able to send out a SWAT team to your house if you publish UnAmerican Material on your web site.

    Boy and I thought I was parinoid. You know screaming this loud about hiding for the world I have to wonder are you up to no good? Wouldn't happen to be in the bulk mail business? Ypu see this has nothing to do with the SWAT team coming to get you because if they want you hell they got more ways to find you than the whois info. If you really want to hide then get a subdomain at some place like geocites.com. The no whois info and you don't need to use your real information at all.

    If you are worried about the guys in black suits coming to get you for publishing UnAmerican material. The problems doesn't lie with ICANN nor the Internet it lies in the fact we have the new Hitler in the White House with all his clowns. I remember a day when you could say or publish anything you wanted without fear. Still if you are that worried get a PO Box.

    Well if you ened up sueing the mailbox corporation then I guess you didn't dig deep enough. Yes I run a whois on spammers but that isn't the only tool I use because you know the info is wrong. Even if it does turn out to be right you have to verify it.

  140. Re:short story by tomhudson · · Score: 1
    So much of what we do is based on the social construct I call "apparent trustworthiness" - I know, WTF is that. The following example should help clarify it.

    You want a divorce, but you DON'T want the hassle and expense of a long court battle. So, you get someone else to substitute as the "other party", pretending to be your spouse who you want the divorce from, while pretending to "try to work things out" with your real spouse.

    You do all the paperwork via a lawyer, have the papers served (at a time when your real spouse isn't around, so the substitute can be there to accept service), etc.

    You both go to court, the judge is told that both paries are present,. the divorce is uncontested, terms have been worked out amicably, blah blah blah. Divorce granted.

    So you continue to live with your real spouse for a couple months more, then, one day, you change all the locks, etc.

    Your spouse calls the cops.

    You produce the judgment of divorce, dated a few months prior, and tell them you've been stalked ever since the divorce was granted.

    The pther party is hauled away, spends a night in jail while awaiting a court appearance, is finally released on condition they see a psychiatrist, don't come within 500 feet of you, etc.

    Scary part is, it would work. The financial incentive is there in many cases, and in others, payback/revenge/pure spite would be sufficient.

  141. Don't present as fact by lorcha · · Score: 1
    things that you don't know to be true.

    Anyone can have a Nevada corporation and enjoy the privacy of not having officers be public information.

    Anyone can use a land trust to own property in any state. Or if you'd prefer, you can have your Nevada corporation own land. Either way, your name is most decidedly not in the public records.

    Really.

    --
    "Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent