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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.
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.
Apparently letting people close their eyes is harassment. Weird. I guess remote controls are, too, as you can use them to change channels. This level of knee-jerk reaction from adults who honestly sound like scalded children is heartbreakingly pathetic.