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Canadian Domain Name Registrants To Get More Privacy
An anonymous reader writes "The Canadian Internet Registration Authority, which manages the dot-ca
domain, plans to change its WHOIS policy to better protect domain name registrants. Quoting the Canadian Press: '[Law Professor Michael] Geist said the changes have raised the ire of law enforcement and intellectual property lawyers, who have used the Whois search to track down sexual predators and copyright violators.' Despite this, the organization seems committed to following through with the reforms."
Geist also gave a talk recently about digital advocacy; the effectiveness of using modern technology to raise concerns and share ideas about issues such as privacy and copyright law.
Do the people in Canada have the same mindset as we do in the USA?
It's not just for the police anymore.
A day without privacy is like... well, like a day living in a police state.
As for the reaction to this.... waaaaaa fucking waaaaahhh
While it's still part of the law, you police people will just have to do your jobs the way you were meant to... investigate, get warrants, follow the procedures laid out in the law. Remember, protect and serve? It hasn't changed. You are still charged with those roles in society. If you forget that, or ignore that, you are no better than warlords in mogadishu.
Get over it.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Because I am sure that the number of cases of 'budgetkiddyporn.com' site hosts being apprehended just because the police did not have to wait for an electronic search warrant before looking up the host's name and address in a public database is just staggering.
Not if it runs up against things like this.
Free is a four letter word
What?
From my experience, WHOIS details are mostly used by spammers and scammers. I get a steady stream of snail mail from scammers trying to pretend that they are my registrar and want me to renew with them (for a significant sum of course).
I've never had any legitimate mail sent to the snail mail address that I use to register my domains.
I get a torrent of spams to my registered email addresses. Ocassionally I get offers to buy my domains or just people wanting to contact me but that's may 1 or 2 emails a year.
I think having contact details in WHOIS is an archaic system left over from the days were everyone on the Internet was polite to each other (or something). It should be scrapped and only law enforcement agencies with a warrant should be able to access my contact details.
When a copyright predators want whois data, make them provide the equivalent information about themselves and give it to the person whose whois data is being queried.
I, for one, cannot wait for this. No, I have been waiting - for several years.
Once again, Canada gets the epic fail when it comes to technology. Great country and all, but can we try to keep on top of this sorta thing?
--- Mr. DOS
The problem I have with this is that lobby groups and think tanks can now astroturf at will, with no fear of being exposed to the general public. In Alberta, for example, what would stop the oil industry from creating an "envorinmentally friendly" website that drew favorable conclusions regarding continued oil sands development? Whois has been used many times to expose fraudulent or biased sources and it is one of the few tools the genral public has to vet the information on the www.
Speaking as an owner of many .ca, .com and other domain names, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is by far the most annoying to deal with.
.ca. After buying the domain from a registrar, you are forced to go to CIRA's website, create a second account, and register again. And you're not done yet. They want you to send in a photocopy of your driver's licence. Can you say identity theft?
.ca registrar) recommends - don't bother fixing it since it is such a hassle. Strangely enough, I attended a CIRA meeting where CIRA was complaining about the large number of errors in their registrant database. THERE ARE SO MANY ERRORS BECAUSE IT IS SO DIFFICULT TO FIX THEM!!!
.ca names are far more expensive than .com. CIRA is swimming in cash from their monopoly fees.
With a normal domain name, you go to a registrar, pay your money, and you get your domain.
Not so with
Even worse, what if you need to correct a minor typographical error? You might think you can log in to your CIRA account and fix it. Nooooo. Can you log in to your account with your registrar and fix it? Nooooo. You need to download and fill out the form, sign it, get it witnessed and send it in with photoID. Most people wouldn't bother - in fact, that is exactly what Tucows (a large
Not to mention the fact that
Frankly, CIRA should contract out the whole thing to Godaddy. They would run it far better and cheaper.
No, thankfully as a rule we are smarter and realize that our children are at higher risk of meeting a pedophile at the park, on a bus, at the mall, at an after school activity than on line.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
For myself, I believe that falsification of information on domain registration (aka the "whois") ought to be criminalized instead of swept under the table as it is right now. There are legitimate reasons for being able to identify specific pieces of equipment and domains ranging from technical (I'm getting a whole bunch of packets from you... would you roll back that software update you just did and fix the bugs) to criminal activity... most of which is mentioned in the parent article.
Or more to the point, if a domain has false information listed, the domain ought to be invalid and can be revoked. I dare any bona fide business to apply for a business license from a government agency giving the kind of information I've seen on most whois databases... especially the dot com types. Business license information is public information and often even published in network accessible databases as well... many even on the web interestingly enough.
Unfortunately, the domain registrars themselves have been allowed to be lax in the kind of information they expect, and is IMHO an example of ICANN and its corruption and mis-management.
For those individuals who are worried about privacy, this isn't to say that you can't communicate and use the internet for private communications. But a domain name was never meant to be private. Insisting upon privacy for what should be public information is a mis-use of the resource.
This is also a situation where a free and just society is required so you can have the freedom to be able to publish your name in a public forum and not fear retribution from those who may want to do harm to you. The real reasons for the desire for privacy is protection from criminal behavior... and it is the criminals who mis-use this information (aka sending spam, threating letters, or abusive prosecution) that should be punished severely. In other words, the desire for privacy stems from a break-down of government in establishing order and consistently prosecuting genuine criminal behavior that most people would consider to be criminal.
How can you say canada gets the epic fail when it comes to technology?
I don't see your logic. We've got some of the best laws (for consumers rights) in the world, we've got freedom of speech and protection from unlawful persecution.
On top of all that, we've got legalized file sharing in the form of a cd levy! (Yes, you americans have it too, but your laws still allow the RIAA to run rampant...) Well, so long as it is paid, there is no criminal basis for non-profit filesharing lawsuits!
Imagine if it were the other way around: that these records were not published, and some government now wanted us all to post all our contact details. Most of us would be pretty horrified.
I think we've all gotten a bit used to the way things are. Does the world and their dog really need the contact information (other than, perhaps an e-mail address) of every domain out there?
Why is this such a big deal for law enforcement? They should have to get a court order to view this information, and I don't see that being a big deal if they're actively pursuing an investigation.
What happens if a registrar just decides to "forget" about a domain? Or refuse to transfer it? Or something similar...
A whois record, at the very least, is proof that I own the domain. In fact, I believe certain obfuscation services, like GoDaddy's, may actually involve the registrar taking legal ownership of the domain on your behalf.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Registrant:
Joe Bloggs
Registrant type:
UK Individual
Registrant's address:
The registrant is a non-trading individual who has opted to have their
address omitted from the WHOIS service.
"our children are at higher risk of meeting a pedophile at the park, on a bus, at the mall, at an after school activity than on line."
That's true, but does it really matter if they do meet a paedophile? Due to the occurrence of paedophilia in the general population, most children are frequently in the presence of paedophiles anyway. A paedophile is just someone who is sexually attracted to young children; the term doesn't refer to an act or to criminality.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
yawn
i'm the proud owner of a gaggle of .ca domains, going back to the days when they were administered as a labor of love out of the university of british columbia by one dedicated soul - John Demco. he was rewarded by having abuse heaped on him for being way too particular about whether applicants were stealing trademarks, or were otherwise out to make trouble. unsurprisingly, he was a volunteer working under the de facto authority of Jon Postel.
many Canadians, esp those in business, wanted a system more like .com, so anybody could get registered in 2 minutes flat - a great system until we had to endure years of cybersquatting, reverse-cybersquatting and the like. when CIRA took over 8 years ago, they had far more resources to throw at the .ca domain, yet have built a system very much in the spirit of the old one - fair, secure and extremely well administered. the decision to pull .ca data out of whois is just another step along that path.
why anybody is surprised or upset by this decision is a mystery to me. law enforcement officials everywhere will always be disappointed if they're not allowed to stick a probe up your ass to see what you've had for lunch. as for privacy on the Internet, it's long gone - in so many ways it's hard to count 'em.
if "officials" are pissed about CIRA, it ain't because they're pulling whois out from under them. it's because CIRA operates at arm's length from the government, which is a lot more than you say for ICANN and the Dept of Commerce.
One! Two! Three! Four! Canada demands more! (money)
Someone needs to float a new rfc updating 1032. Its over 20 years old and dreadfully outdated.
Fortunately tonic (.to's nic) has not been forced to sign a contract with ICANN yet and has always protected its customers' information. They are an open TLD and will sell domains to anyone as long as they aren't used for spamming. While their prices were originally competitive with Network Solutions's (especially considering Network Solutions incompetence at that time), these days their prices are significantly higher than what you would pay for a .com address.
You can't take the sky from me...
"Thankfully we are smarter"?
Alas, that has been disproven.
A study several years ago, concluded that fully FIFTY PERCENT of the Canadian population had IQs of less than 100 !
And you still think you are smarter than Americans? HA!
.
- aqk
F U
What is the percentage of pedophiles? Are the any studies that have been done on this? They say that 10% of the population is homosexual. What percentage of the popuplation is sexually attracted to children. And what percentage of those people would follow through on those attactions? Based on the news you hear (sensationalist, I know), it seems to be quite common. But how common is it really, and is it more worth worrying about your child being hit by a car while crossing the street, because somebody didn't stop at a red light?
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
That really depends. If you define the IQ scale to be based on every person on the planet, I think that most people in Canada and the US, would be above 100. Especially considering that most IQ tests are inherently biased to the type of schooling we have received. How do you measure the IQ of someone who has no formal math or language instuction? Certainly lacking those things doesn't make one unintelligent, but lacking those things, most people would score quite low on an IQ test.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
As a Canadian domain owner, I can say it's about time... and I hope the rest of the TDLs go the same direction. I get way too much spam from my Whois email address and I even get phone calls. .ca doesn't support who-is privacy services, and I would have been happy just with that, but this is even better. Thank you CIRA.
IQ as measured by 'standard IO tests' from which this data was extracted is not a measure of true intelligence but rather intelligence based on parameters related to schooling and social mores of the person or organization creating the tests. Therefore if the tests were generated by Americans it would favor them. This is why they are not given the same weight today as they were in the past.
But then being a smart American you already knew that , right?
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
It's hard to give even first-guess estimates, because people who want to have sex with children fall into a variety of categories.
Many child rapists, for example, are not sexually attracted to the children they abuse; rather, they get sexual gratification from being able to abuse and humiliate someone weaker than they are, and children are of easy prey.
On the other hand, you have the people who genuinely fit the category of 'pedophilia'; that is, they are for whatever reason sexual attracted to young children. Like homosexuals at one time, in most cases these people are able to live a normal cover life and have relations with adults, but they are so given to fantasies about being seduced à la Humbert Humbert by young girls or boys; these are most often the targets of Dateline-style stings.
Then there are people who are into it solely because it is illegal and forbidden; they usually end up being the ones interested in mostly-developed adolescents. However, people in the first category typically end up that way because they were themselves abused by a parent or authority figure. No one really knows about people in the third category, but it's possible that like homosexuals their behavior has a genetic component. Lastly, the people in the third category are included only by an artifact of the law; change the law and you change their behavior.
Nah. Just a smart assed American.
We excel at that and it pisses off all the totalitarian states peons.
33%.. was the link someone gave about a week ago on this same topic. It's funny though how it says "sexual predators" and everyone jumped to pedo... have we been brainwashed by media this bad already?
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.