Slashdot Mirror
Private .US Registrations Disallowed by NTIA
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."
Here's the email I received from Godaddy.com regarding this issue:
.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.
.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.
"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
I personally find it ironic that our right to
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!--
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.
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
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
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.
.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.
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
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.)
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
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.
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.
So system admins can contact each other to deal with problems.