ICANN Punts on WHOIS Privacy Proposal

An anonymous reader writes "The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has essentially put off consideration of a proposal that would have dissolved a requirement that domain name registrars collect and display personal information about people who register Web site names. Privacy activists said the WHOIS database has become a data-mining dream for marketers and spammers, to say nothing of stalkers and harassers. Companies representing some of the world's biggest brand names appear to have prevailed, arguing that any change to the current system would interfere with law enforcement investigations and trademark disputes. In the end, ICANN voted 7-17 to table the issue in favor of further studies on the privacy impact of the WHOIS database."

Comments

Would have saved a fee

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that would have saved me the annual $9 that I spend for the anonymous option with my registrar.

Registrar contracts MUST BE enforced for whois

[www.sorehands.com]

To correctly do whois, there must be some changes to the Whois to work.

For those people who use Fake information, they need to lose their domain names. 3.7.7.2 states that a registrar may cancel a registration when there is intentionally false information given. This is rarely enforced. (see http://www.icann.org/correspondence/touton-letter-to-beckwith-03sep02.htm). In fact, I was told by a person at ICANN (I shall allow her to remain nameless, for now -- but for those who were at the IP meeting on Tuesday, she was sitting next to me) that there is no provision for punishing a registrar, except by terminating them and ICANN does not want to terminate registrars because all of them do not have a good data escrow in place. (think registerfly). I believe this is incorrect. I believe that suspending a registrar's ability to prevent NEW registrations by a registrar would be within the ability of the contract and not harm any domain registrant.

Many registrars give 15 days (the period for mistakenly false information, ie. typo, aged, etc.). What needs to be done is to suspend the domain name, for intentionally false false information, for this 15 day period. And then when they provide updated information, this updated information MUST be proven to be correct (ie. don't change 123 Yellow brick Road to 123 Main Street, Oz, Kansas.) and allow the registrar to charge a reasonable administrative fee.

By allowing registrars to ignore invalid whois and complaints regarding such leads to the argument that since the all data is not correct, that the Whois should be scrapped.