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

[Neil Watson]

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

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.

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.

[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.

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.