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ICANN's Plan To End Commercial Website Anonymity Creates Real Problems
An anonymous reader notes that ICANN is closing the comment period for its plan to prevent owners of commercial websites from keeping their personal details out of a site's public-facing registration information. Digital rights groups are taking the opportunity to explain how real harm can result from this decision. The Online Abuse Prevention Initiative posted an open letter to ICANN pointing out the rise of doxing and swatting: "Our concern about doxing is not hypothetical. Randi Harper, a technologist, anti-harassment activist, and founder of the Online Abuse Prevention Initiative, was swatted based on information obtained from the Whois record for her domain. The only reason law enforcement did not draw their weapons and break down Harper’s door was that she had previously warned her local police department about swatting."
Cathy Gellis at Popehat refers to the situation surrounding Charles Carreon, the man who antagonized The Oatmeal (Matthew Inman's webcomic) and issued legal threats to those who called him out. "In that case the critic had selected a domain incorporating Carreon's name in order to best get his point about Carreon's thuggery across, which the First Amendment and federal trademark law allowed him to do. ... Unfortunately, the registrar immediately caved to Carreon's pressure and disclosed the critic's identifying information, thereby eviscerating the privacy protection the critic expected to have, and depended on, for his commentary."
Cathy Gellis at Popehat refers to the situation surrounding Charles Carreon, the man who antagonized The Oatmeal (Matthew Inman's webcomic) and issued legal threats to those who called him out. "In that case the critic had selected a domain incorporating Carreon's name in order to best get his point about Carreon's thuggery across, which the First Amendment and federal trademark law allowed him to do. ... Unfortunately, the registrar immediately caved to Carreon's pressure and disclosed the critic's identifying information, thereby eviscerating the privacy protection the critic expected to have, and depended on, for his commentary."
Randi Harper is a notorious harrasser and citing her in relation to anything (especially harrassment prevention) seriously damages the credibility of your cause.
The problem, IMO, is that .com(.*) sites are not exclusively commercial, and other TLDs can be commercial. If you want to run a commercial site that takes money (not advertising revenue) from sales - you should provide publicly accessible, verified, identification and contact details.
If your site doesn't sell things then you should be able to protect your details from the public.
You should also be able to not be liable for people speaking their mind, within limitations - but that's another complex issue.
Given that it's been associated with people that harass under the banner of "anti-harassment", their claims are impossible to believe. The only reason that such "anti-harassment" groups exist is for the coordinated silencing of individuals that present uncomfortable, narrative-breaking facts.
The bulk of their harassment claims end up being disproven, while their harassment of individuals is well-proven (see Chelsea "ZQ" van Valkenberg, R.H., and others).
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
This is particularly concerning for organisations who speak the truth about Islam. The "religion of peace" has a habit of violence towards those who expose it's true nature.
Please don't post stupid. There is no one Islam any-more than there is one Christianity or Buddhism (or Hindu). If all Christians were "true" Christians (literally interpreted all the Bible) there'd be a lot more public stonings (throwing rocks that is). Religion is stupid full-stop - but until the world is solely occupied by those that don't need religion we have a problem. You and your broad brush of hate trying to pass as truth - which invariably hides a fundamentalist religious agenda - are part of the problem.
What's appalling is that the /. editors must be aware of her history by now. It's been pointed out repeatedly in the comments of multiple stories posted to the front page (including OAPI's founding). They're exploiting serious issues to try to build publicity and goodwill for hypocritical, attention-seeking "activists" who clearly deserve the opposite.
Never post anything I wouldn't want my kids to read, this was long time ago; knowing that one day they may search my post out.
I've never been in a flame war and the only curse word I've ever used on-line - was go figure when chatting to my youngest :) now mid 20's.
I used a handle on the Usenet and only posted there, Googling that handle now gets 12,000 hits and all of them on .com sites, they are everywhere. Chances are very good if you Google a computer help question you'll come across a post of mine as a first hit at tomshardware.com (they must pay for that honor), a place I found as many of my post were showing as being from there..
Now many sites it appears use the Usenet postings as showing how busy/active their comment sections are. At least most are now showing up as "guest" or not able to be replied to (a reply that would never be seen nor sent).
I can't be held accountable for anything posted to a .com site under that handle, as I can't vouch for any of them not being edited.
This plan would perhaps make limited sense if companies would actually answer emails and snail mail. They often don't, especially not in the problematic cases when anonymity could also be a nuisance. No, you will not suddenly be able to contact the poker company on Malta registered by a strawman in order to tell them that they should kindly delete your credit card information. It's not going to happen.
The whole construction is useless. A de-anonymization will not give any advantage to customers of businesses, it will online increase online harassment, particularly of semi-commercial bloggers and media, and increase the amount of spurious legal letters sent to small businesses by copyright and patent trolls.
Since you can always get the information by showing legal cause and obtaining a court order, I really don't see what use de-anonymizing domain name registration serves, other than to make it less expensive to obtain large amounts of information for relatively little cost, as opposed to having to be sure enough of something that you can justify the court order.
The ICANN proposal as it stands is pretty stupid, and Doug Brent would likely have never had his name associated with it while he was COO, and Jon Postel sure as *hell* would not want his name associated with it.
ICANN exists to make money. This plan is not helpful for that goal. They are just doing this to get people to pay attention to them again to justify the salaries they pay to their top management. In another few weeks they will announce a "compromise" that will make this all go away and make them look like they are pro-privacy (or in some other way good for the hobbyists who they actually don't give a shit about).
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
True but there are few religions that call for violence against people that leave the faith.
The simple facts are that the Islamic definition of apostasy includes anyone who leaves the faith. That inst so uncommon among world religions. What is a little more unusual is that Islamic law does hold that the death penalty is appropriate for such cases.
Christianity has some similar history around heretics (centuries ago) and phrases like "thou shall not suffer a witch" are still in print. I don't think any major branch of Christan scholorships still advocates for the killing of people who leave the flock though and that isn't true of Islam.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Something similar to this almost happened to me. There's a woman online who has been harassing people. She found my blog where I post under a pseudonym. (I'm not posting the pseudonym or the woman's name here lest she link my pseudonym with my real name.) She claims to be a prophet from god and "god" tells her all sorts of awful things people have done. She then goes and alerts the police/family members/companies those people work with/etc. about those bad things.
One of her primary targets is a teacher in New Zealand. She alerted his university to the "fact" (as told to her by god) that he was a pedophile. Luckily, he had already warned his superiors about her and they shrugged off her reporting. Unfortunately, she then used Facebook to track down his relatives so she could tell all of them.
When she targeted me, she decided that I and "New Zealand Teacher" were the same person because we both liked photography. (Because NOBODY else online likes taking photos, apparently.) I ignored her the best I could but she threatened to alert every company I was working with about my "crimes." Thankfully, there was no actual damage to me beyond some stressful months as I endured her attacks on me and my wife. She couldn't track down my employer due to my pseudonym. Eventually, she moved on to other targets, but still comes back to us every so often.
She has harassed others and had other companies break off ties due to her claims. This is more a bad mark on those companies believing $RANDOM_INTERNET_PERSON who claims "god told me they did this bad thing", but unfortunately all it takes is one overly cautious company shying away from any potential controversy (no matter how ridiculous) to cost someone money.
BTW, I did try filing reports, but the police don't seem able to do anything due to her being in another country. The one time she harassed someone in her country (costing that person some business), a lawsuit was filed and the police went to her and TOLD her just who had filed the lawsuit. Way to give the stalker personal information. (The lawsuit got tied up in the courts, never went anywhere, but now she had this woman's contact information.)
Were I required to specify my real name and address on my domain names, this woman would know just where I live and could make my life a living hell.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.