IP Holders Press For Access To WHOIS Data

Stony Stevenson writes to tell us that the battle for access to whois data remains at a stalemate this week. "In a blog post on the Internet Governance Project's (IGP) Web site, Milton Mueller, Professor and Director of the Telecommunications Network Management Program at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies and a partner in the IGP, details the Final Outcomes Report of the WHOIS Working Group, published on Tuesday, and inability of the various stakeholders to reach any kind of consensus."

Comments

I can hear the rationale now...

[Red_Foreman]

I imagine the board meeting went like this:

"Clearly, Simmons, everyone who has an internet connection is a potential criminal, and we need to keep tabs on these potential criminals in case they, at some point, intentionally break international copyright law."

"Here, here!"

"So we need access to this data, and if anyone opposes it - they must be hiding something other than just a guilty conscience."

"Besides, we're doing it for the children."

Article Summary

[David Chappell]

The article summary is vague to the point that one is unsure what the subject of the article is. The "IP holders" of the title are trademark registrants of companies which help trademark registrants identify possible infringement. The Whois data referred to is not the public data to which we all have access. Rather it is the names and addresses of the actually domain name registrants in those cases where the domain registrar is acting as a proxy and has placed its own contact information in the public Whois database. The dispute is about who should have access to this secret data and under what circumstances.

Re:Article Summary

[Overzeetop]

Personally, I think private domains should be illegal. A contact name and physical address, if not phone number and working email, should be required of every domain owner. If this "real estate" on the internet is so valuable, make the disclosure regulations match physical real estate.

Now get off my lawn...

Re:Article Summary

[Neil Watson]

I think domain owners deserve some privacy both from shady marketers and from Internet crack-pots.

Re:Article Summary

[JasterBobaMereel]

The usual problem here is the Internet is not in the USA it is global - so which Police, which Government should have access to this information?

Re:Article Summary

[IBBoard]

I think that's taking it a bit too far. Personally, I think they should roll out something similar to UK domains across on to .coms as well.

With a .uk then you have to show your details unless you are a non-trading individual. If you are such an individual (like me, who run sites as hobbies) then you can opt out of having your details shown and it's free and done by Nominet, not the individual companies you buy domains from.

While I can see a reason for companies not to be able to hide their details (it gives you a definite address for them that you can then match to a trading location, assuming its real), I think individuals have a right to not have their details easily available on the 'net for anyone with a vigilante inclination to be able to find and abuse.

BS

[wytcld]

"If there is no reform they can continue to sell privacy to their users using proxy registrations, making profits that far exceed those they make on normal domain name registrations," said Mueller.

The registrars I've used charge nothing to substitute their own details for the registrants in the public WHOIS response. And their "profits far in excess"? On the $15-a-year fees, they're welcome to any profit they can take.

Why do people like Mueller always lie?

Re:BS

[value_added]

The registrars I've used charge nothing to substitute their own details for the registrants in the public WHOIS response. And their "profits far in excess"? On the $15-a-year fees, they're welcome to any profit they can take.

Well, I'm sure there's sellers on eBay that don't charge for shipping, but the ones I've dealt with always do. ;-) Godaddy charges $6.99 per year for private registation.

As a side note, people on DSL (cable?) connections may want to a whois lookup on their own address. I was miffed when I discovered my personal info published. Asking my provider to mask the private information required a formal request, but unlike some registars, they did it for free.

Not just for IP.

[bladel]

While I consider myself anti-authoritarian, I recognize that there are some situations in which law enforcement and other parties have a legitimate right to pierce the anonymity of private registrations. If someone is operating a site hosting child porn or other illegal materials, the registrar should be required to give up the registrant.

Also, consider the case where a domain / site has been hijacked (or reverse-hijacked) by a thief hiding behind proxy services at a different registrar. The victim and victim's registrar cannot reliably identify them, and the Registry Operator won't get involved outside of invoking arbitration.

So keep the lawyers out, but establish some authority (Internet version of a FISA court) that can pierce anonymous registrations.

Re:Not just for IP.

[damn_registrars]

If someone is operating a site hosting child porn or other illegal materials, the registrar should be required to give up the registrant.

Unfortunately, one problem with this comes down to defining "illegal materials". By who's laws should that be dictated? There are some countries where child porn is considered more or less acceptable, and plenty of countries where the age of consent is something other than what it is here. All that the owner would have to do to claim that they are not in violation of the law is either have their registered domain or their hosting in a country where whatever they are doing is OK.

Re:Not just for IP.

[autocracy]

I just wanted to comment that you are truly insane, and that there should be no urgency for the government to request "real" details of an IP that can't be handled by means of a warrant. There's a reason for that concept.

I still oppose anonymous registration

[damn_registrars]

I've said this before, and I'll say it again. Registrars are a big part of the spam problem. And the fact that they will sell (or provide freely) registration obfuscation services to withhold meaningful registrant contact data shows that many registrars are still in bed with the criminal spammers.

Come on, if you really have some reason to keep your registration data private, there are better ways to do it than letting your registrar do it for you. You could just as well get a PO box and use a free email account somewhere, which would accomplish the same thing but still have some degree of accountability. As it is, registrars have been able to withhold the contact information for their clients and there's been no accountability anywhere.

Re:I still oppose anonymous registration

[IBBoard]

You could just as well get a PO box...

Taking my former blog site as an example:

I run a private little website as a hobby.
I pay $25 per year for hosting (reasonable quality host, 75MB disk space and 3GB monthly bandwidth, email, the lot).
I pay £3.69 per year (~$7-$8) for a .co.uk domain or $9 per year for a .com.

Total normally: about $35 per year, tops.

The Registrars follow your "must show details" and I suddenly have to pay £58 per year (~$120) to get a PO Box, or twice that if I don't want to have to keep checking it but instead have it delivered to my real address? (UK PO Box prices)

Total with PO Box: at least $150 to $250!

I think the only thing I can say there is "WTF? Hell, no!" That's a ridiculous amount of expense compared to the website itself.

Vagueness

[benhocking]

The article summary is vague to the point that one is unsure what the subject of the article is.

My first thought was that the holders of internet protocol addresses wanted access to all of the data stored about them in the WHOIS database. I had to actually RTFA (the horror!) to figure out that IP meant intellectual property and not internet protocol.

Same standard as corporations would be fine.

[raehl]

In most US states, each corporation is only required to maintain a registered agent address on file with the state, so anyone who needs to contact your organization can do so. The registered agent can be anyone, so for example, you might have your lawyer be your registered agent, and anyone who wants to know who owns the company has to go through him.

We've currently got the same system with domain names - your registrar can act as your registered agent, serving as a barrier between the public and you. If someone has a legitimate need to contact you, they can do so through your registrar. If not, they can't. I don't see any reason to change this.

Why change what already works?

[WalkingBear]

There is a perfectly good system in place (at least in the US) for people who have a legal right to access the private information of a domain registrant. It's called due process.

If you think someone is infringing on your trademark, committing fraud, or some other illegal or actionable offense, then you go before a judge and request the court issue a demand for that information.

Yes, it's expensive. Yes, it's a pain in the posterior. Yes, that is as it should be. The more difficult you make it to pierce the rightful barrier of privacy of an individual, the stronger that barrier is and the less capricious that piercing can be.

The courts are the place to go to acquire this information. The Markets make it profitable for legitimate companies to not hide that information.

Seems that's a pretty good system to me.