Slashdot Mirror
Should Domain-Name Registrations Require A Verifiable Real Name? (blogspot.com)
lpress writes:
The Internet was a major source of news -- fake and real -- during the election campaign. The operators of fake sites, whether motivated by politics or greed, are often anonymous. We avoid voter fraud by requiring verification of ones name, age and address. A verifiable real-names domain registration policy would discourage information fraud.
"I understand the wish to protect the privacy of a person or organization registering a domain name," argues the linked-to blog post, "but there is also a public interest." ICANN already requested comments on this back in 2015, but I'm curious what Slashdot's readers think. Should domain name registrations require a verifiable real name?
"I understand the wish to protect the privacy of a person or organization registering a domain name," argues the linked-to blog post, "but there is also a public interest." ICANN already requested comments on this back in 2015, but I'm curious what Slashdot's readers think. Should domain name registrations require a verifiable real name?
Just two days ago there was an article about a guy who put up what he thought were satirical stories, with the main actors all having HIS OWN NAME.
And people still bought it.
With as little fact-checking as we see today, do you really think a journalist is gonna do a thorough WHOIS lookup on the domain before rushing to post, let alone the average internet surfer?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
the US Supreme Court has already ruled that anonymity is a necessary requirement to protect free speech. And it's easy to see why.
case closed.
It seems easy enough to lie about no matter what they do.
I would hope people wouldn't have anything to hide, but that seems impossible.
The thing about many identities is that some people use them in huge situations when they aren't real and become filthy rich (be it in money or some other form).
That's not a good thing, but I don't really know what anyone can do to resolve it.
Basically just be good and hope that the biggest people are good, the sad thing seems to be that this is not true.
I don't know what to tell you, but don't make it a pain in the ass to register domain names. Fight some other way.
Make real relationships a priority and it seems pretty simple from there. Don't help closed people.
It doesn't make it easy to have a bunch of friends, I can tell you that from experience.
This is all you need to know: https://www.eff.org/issues/ano...
It must still be allowed.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Require a verifiable PGP public key.
No, it won't work. In the beginning of the Internet, it was done that way, then slowly people realized you can use shell companies since they are also legal names in a legal sense and then people realized it was just as easy to put a fake name and now you can't even see names anymore in most whois lookups.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
People can legally have multiple names (alias), or you can use the name you came up with on a business license. Does not solve anything.
works as well as one that isn't. so, yeah.shakespeare said something like that.
We already know that censorship is evil. The people that aren't convinced never will be. So save your breath...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Domain names are a nickname for an IP address, nothing more. Should you require real name to associate a nickname with an IP address, well, kinda up to each and every single domain name registry, they want a real name, then they get a real name, they don' want a real name, they don't get a real name.
When it comes to fake news, well no one is worse than the multi-national news organisations the very worst example of fake news being Fox News with CNN a close second. So, it is easy, simply make 'NEWS' are protected word, you use that word in your title or identity yourself with that in a substantive sense ie using that nomenclature to attract an audience to generate views and or revenue, than when challenged on veracity you should be required to prove it in court, big or small. Fake news in a corporate sense also means claiming to be a news station when all you produce is celebrity pulp to sell shit, throw in a tiny amount of real news to bring in viewers and censor everything you come across that your main advertisers do not wish the greater public to see. So fake news channels like Fox News and CNN how do you categorise active censorship and not on an individual basis but as a cartel.
Now the main propagandists are just all butt hurt because they have been fucked over by independent media as main stream media could no longer steal an election and nobody much gives a fuck what they write about any more. New York TImes, have not bothered with it in over 4 years, why log into something I could no longer be bothered to read. The BBC went real bad when the 'fake' conservatives took over and stacked it with corporate propagandists from the top down.
In the most absurd fashion imaginable to get more accurate news about any country the last place you go to is that countries news site. So for the US go to RT for Russia, well, you are stuck with the Beeb (BBC) there are still plenty of good journalists in there, etc. Real legislation is required to protect the word NEWS, why, because it is no different from yelling fire in a crowded fire and that is exactly what most of those fuckers have been doing for decades, even lead to war and millions of deaths just in the last couple of decades (US news, you are shite, do not use for anything, except local community news channels which can be quite good and are often far more accurate than the main stream media channels).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
The internet is full of maniacs just waiting for an excuse to ruin your life; the last thing you want to do is give them your real name.
A full name, especially a relatively obscure one, and a city is plenty enough for someone with a serious grudge and a few hours free time to find you (perhaps excluding major cities like london, new york etc etc where there's likely to be 50 people with your name).
The problem with real-name policies is their speech-chilling effect. Better that 1000 bogus sights hide under anonymity than one legitimate individual feels too intimidated to share his views. And before you get all "Don't you think the government can figure out who you are anyway?", I'm not referring to intimidation and reprisal from three-letter agencies. I'm talking about the guy with views on local building ordinances that may not agree with his next door neighbor but doesn't want that neighbor leaving flaming bags of poo on his doorstep if he voices them.
Fake news story from a random butt hurt Hillary supporter blogspot about fake news. Guess we can have real discussions from the onion now.
In the US, the same people currently complaining about fake news sites also tend to be the ones who fight voter ID programs. I can't see how a "verified person to has web site" would fly with that crowd.
There's a hell of a lot more 'public interest' in knowing who is behind the SuperPACs that spend orders of magnitudes more money to influence elections, but it's already been ruled that the right to participate anonymously in the political process is still more important.
After those damnable SuperPAC donors shed their anonymity then we can talk about whether to give up anonymity for Internet publishers.
We on the left have a moral duty to correct the thinking of those on the right, and we should not let freedom, truth or justice stand in our way. All publications opposed to our views should be labelled as "fake" and destroyed. All individuals pushing opposing views should be sent for re-education. We must not stop until everyone thinks as we do! We must not let the fascists defeat us!
And then the left were the fascists...
- Shouldn't.
- Couldn't anyway.
- You're still gonna try.
30 years and we still think we can control the internet.
and death penalty for pedophiles, which is basically... 50% of usa, so... this is like saying death to america. shit I just sounded like a terrorist now.
Once the 'Freedom Gang' gets going, everything online will require a real name - and address - so the Patriots can have frank and candid discussions with those that don't seem American enough.
You just know this is where we are heading.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
If you want to publish shit you like, stand for it.
I own a few parody and """troll""" websites, so I'm biased here.
But I don't think the real name or information of a URL owner should be available to the public. To law enforcement, sure, assuming their reasons for wanting such information are valid and come with a warrant.
I'd rather not have my personal email/name/place of work be flooded with "offended" children that can't understand sarcasm and/or satire demanding that I be fired, thanks.
No. How would that solve anything? If investigators wanted to prosecute fake news vendors they could follow their ad monetization to their bank accounts already. The problem is that nobody that matters thinks fake news is a bad thing.
What a joke you are. "The goyim know! Shut it down!" cry the Jews...
When the Jew says "fake" he means "the truth"...
Labor unions spend far more than "large-money donors and super-pacs". If you need a citation you can look it up yourself.
This is impossible to enforce, because ICANN does not oversight ccTLD domains (such as foo.co), neither does it manage gTLD subdomains (such as foo.bar.com). These will be immediate loopholes to a real name policy.
really want some idiot from the internet to drive to your house to settle an argument. DO YOU? Stupid.
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
"Perfect Privacy LLC" - if you look up clintonemail.com, you'll see them. I've looked up various site owners and their name has popped up before. When you search for the owner of the domain, instead of the true registrant, you'll find this company. There are probably others like it.
"That doesn't sound good at all. Clinton's private email system added third parties into the equation, meaning that a hacker could effectively snoop on US government mail without directly hacking US government servers. Nielsen explained that the domain Clinton used for her private email service—clintonemail.com—is owned by a Florida company called "Perfect Privacy, LLC" and registered to another private company called Network Solutions. The relationship between the two companies is unclear since some details have been masked." -- Gizmodo
If I ran a site about tennis and one of my users Insulted one of the various touchy members of crap country royalty around the world, I could find myself detained as I cross some border. Minimally, I could see some country like that holding me until I handed the keys over to my servers so that they could sift through them to see if they could identify the person who did the insults. Or they could just charge me.
Then there are the legions of US lawyers. I could use a link to another site and they sue me for IP theft as I linked to their site. Or defamation, or whatever shitbrained law that a US lawyer thinks they can exploit to ruin my life for a few bucks.
These are two problems that took me two seconds to think of. I suspect if you think this all the way through it won't just be sort of a bad idea, but the sort of idea that only bad people come up with.
If you think it's a good idea, consider this, would you put all your information up on a billboard? Because that is what you are asking domain owners to do.
Odds are you hate giving out your phone number to people, but you expect domain owners to give out everything. This leads to tons of spam, phone calls, you name it.
Then there is the safety aspect.
It doesn't matter if what you post is controversial or not, some people simply refuse to take no for an answer. I've had people show up at my house.
"We avoid voter fraud by requiring verification of ones name, age and address."
No we freaking don't...... I've never once had anyone ask me any more than my name. Not once has anyone tried to verify anything about me. In fact I once went to produce my ID just to show them who I was and they practically had a heart attack and went into damage control mode assuring me that I didn't need any sort of ID.
I say my name, I sign my name and that's that.
So I don't know where all of this false verification news is coming from because it doesn't happen....
In today's environment those with alternative views face vicious personal attacks, doxing to spread their personal details and their address on the Internet, along with death threats. Let people have anonymity so they may speak their minds without the chilling fear of retaliation:
U.S. Supreme Court decision in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission (1995) case: "Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority...It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation—and their ideas from suppression—at the hand of an intolerant society" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymity#United_States
I have been thinking about this lately. its easy to get a domain name, anything you want, and go to town posting whatever information you want to from it. Overall, this is a good thing. Many people have them, so do many businesses. But there's no way to verify who owns the website, because you have firms like Domains By Proxy, or people simply lie on the application to get the domain name. What if, two things were done. First, ban services like Domain by Proxy, but as a 2nd factor step, the domain registrar, sends a paper form (yes I know) to the applicant, who "reserved" the domain name online, so they can fill out any additional information, sign and send it back to the registrar to become a legal URL on the internet. Now I realize that you can still put any name in you want, however someone is going to have to get the paperwork, sign it, and send it back. And if you don't have a name or valid address on there it makes it somewhat hard for the post office to deliver. Now i'm sure a niche market will open up where one person, "buys" the domain names and rents them out to others, or PO boxes are opened, and quickly closed for the purposes of buying a domain name, but making this a yearly process can alleviate some of that as well making sure there is a valid contact on file. If some of these factious news sites had to register a DNS administrator via mail, they may think twice about wanting to form a website. alternatively they would start to use sub domains, which are even more suspicious looking. on a worldwide scale this may keep some viruses, and virus/malware peddlers from actively deploying their wares, unless they have a dedicated IP to use.
Gee, I don't know. Should we allow anonymous speech? There are so many issues to balance. For example, what about the possibility that threat of retaliation will improve the quality of discourse? Since this has recently become interesting because of an election, I wonder if there is any precedent to this in American politics?
http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=Does+the+first+amendment+protect+anonymous+speech%3F
No, jackass! No! You can not forbid people from speaking, or no-platform them, unless they provide a real name, you short-sighted cowardly commie scum. Next question.
Just like .edu, .gov all require valid certification (to a degree) for ownership, they could simply institute a new TLD where the registry requires ID validation, and prohibits all privacy services for WHOIS information. Enforce a strict contact availability policy, and you have as good of a system as you can pragmatically setup. As an opt-in TLD, no one would be forced to sacrifice their privacy for their current TLDs, and the sites that want to be legitimate sources of information can host their content on their verified domains.
I don't for a minute think this addresses the problem of the masses believing everything they read on traditional .com sites -- and also especially on social networks. But going this route could potentially improve the accessibility of credible information for those that can be bothered to source-check.
to vote in the US. We don't even require proof of eligibility to vote.
"We avoid voter fraud by requiring verification of ones name, age and address." Not true at all. If we had to provide proof of our identity, then that statement would be true. However, in the U.S. one can merely just know another person's name and some easy to know other information to vote in his or her place.
Beyond a shadow of a doubt. When attackers are using scripts to generate five and six digit domain lists for active attack infrastructures, this current system has failed.
Unless you're a private company, like Fakebook or Gargle.
That ship has sailed. ICANN realized a long time ago that the registrars make more money with a "don't ask, don't tell" approach to selling domains. Then on top of that the registrars all offer various registration obfuscation services, which makes them even more money. ICANN isn't willing to lift a finger to expose law breakers with domains, why would they do it for anything else?
The amusing part of this is where people pretend that citizens - or the government - of the US have any meaningful influence on ICANN.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
no. having a human readable identity (domain) on the intrrnet doesnt require your real name. however there should be an option that clearly shows that you ARE the real owner if you should chose to do so ... maybe becausd you consider yourself credible ...
For the past few years, all we've heard from Google, Facebook, et al., is how deanonymization is going to end trolling and make people Take The Internet Seriously. It hasn't worked. In fact, it has consistently failed spectacularly, and made every problem worse. Doxxing is easier than ever, and is a virtually standard part of arguing on the Internet. Privacy has gone to shit, and the demand for phenomenally unworkable "Right To Be Forgotten" laws has increased, without any concern for the fact that we wouldn't need to forget so many things if people were able to simply remain anonymous.
So no, we should not require real names for domains, or for Youtube accounts, or email, or whatever inane thing it's going to be next. I'm very skeptical that we should have a public WHOIS registry at all, because for many years it has been reduced to a useless racket for registrars to sell "domain privacy" services.
I don't think it should be public. That just provides a handle for people to harass the domain owner.
Next I suppose people will want IP packets to have unique machine identities attached, or for print shops to get ID before doing print runs.
Just as hordes of Democrats are rioting in the streets in a mass temper tantrum over losing the election; as new anti-Trump violence is getting documented just about every day; as new pro-Trump hoax-violence is exposed nearly every day - slashdot steps up to "ask" about the end of anonymity.
I wonder if Brendan Eich has an opinion on anonymity.
Individuals, businesses, attackers, nation states, and criminals use the current 'real name information' contained in the 'whois' records for social engineering calls, sales calls, phishing emails, 'drop by' visits and many other things. Best of all, this has been going on for 20 years. Best security practices is to avoid placing any identifiable information in the ‘whois’ record to avoid being a target.
stronghold crusader game download Just two days ago there was an article about a guy who put up what he thought were satirical stories, with the main actors all having HIS OWN NAME. And people still bought it. With as little fact-checking as we see today, do you really think a journalist is gonna do a thorough WHOIS lookup on the domain before rushing to post, let alone the average internet surfer?
All because Facebook cannot filter news? I guess it is true Facebook is killing the internet.
You shouldn't have to register with a real name if you don't want to because there are authors that don't use their real names. Does that make their content any less meaningful? If we could of ran a WHOIS on huckleberryfin.com in the late 1800's, would the owner "Mark Twain" make the website less significant? No. This is just another anti privacy ploy governments want to make getting a warrant easier, if needing one at all (probable cause). Rather than a sever seized, grab the person off the street.
Not in this era of crazy paranoid surveillance.
Anonymity is a key to free expression, especially when those saying unpopular things fear reprisal for expressing their thoughts. In fact, that is the whole purpose of free speech, to protect unpopular speech, as no one ever has a problem with a person who adheres to the status quo.
No matter how you look at it, this whole thing is about CONTROL and CENSORSHIP for the purposes of furthering an IDEOLOGICAL AGENDA. People want to leverage fear to ensure obedience!
NEVER!
By all means, require a verified real name for domain name registration and opening an email while we're at it. Also for a Twitter, Snapchat or Facebook account.
I have posted satirical responses in blogs and have them picked and reported in other blogs as factual, and had those blogs read by news agencies who actually in one case reported them over the air (nothing to do with the elections). I have had satirical comments I made be edited into wikipedia articles by others. And edited them back out when I found them. (I have had one edit rejected which was to remove content I was the satirical source for) ... We have in America free speech, the right to make parody or satirical commentary and there should not be excessive restriction on them ... When something is traced backwards as news is verified it should be obvious when it cites something non existent, or all the citations trace to one article.
I actually love when RT.com runs as factual, or bases an article upon, an Onion article. Of course anything traced back to RT.com or Sputnik news is fairly suspect in the first place. Maybe instead we should have certain trust individually in valid news organizations and generally mistrust random articles posted on social media. Remember if you say gullible very very slowly, it rhymes with orange.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
They shouldn't make verifiable real names mandatory. They could however issue a sort of certificate for registrations that are done under real names. The real name certificate would allow a third party to place higher priority on such domains, or even completely ignore the ones that don't have such certificates.
For example, in China, there are millions of people that will be written same way in alphabets with someone else.
To a lesser extent, even in US, there has to be thousands of people with sharing generic names like "John Brown", "Jose Fernandez", etc.
Verifiable real names are only useful if they can be tracked down.
I know this particularly well since I have a ridiculously unique family name with less than 50 people using it.
So my family and relatives constantly joke that "don't ever commit a crime so the entire world don't start googling out who we are!"
A little more than a week ago,a guy opposed by all the Wall Street bankers managed to win the White House spending only a fraction of the money his opponent spent. Hillary ran over a hundred million dollars of TV ads that were un-answered by Trump, she had a number of super-PACs dumping all the dirt they could on Trump, including that "grab 'em by the pussy" tape, the stolen tax documents, endless recordings of Trump saying the worst things he has ever said... she dumped her entire war chest on him which was supposed to have been twice the size of Obama's (which was the first to ever spend $1Billion+).
Citizens United is just a left-wing mantra, a progressive talking point. The "money buys the White House" claim is now a PROVEN false meme.
It turns out that voters still matter more than the money of wealthy special interests.
stuff, like buying beer or checking out library books.
Yeah, it's a real shame that African Americans and Hispanics are unable to get photo ID and therefore are suffering from the obviously racially-driven limitation on the right to buy beer - which explains why you never see African Americans or Hispanic Americans drinking beer or other alcoholic beverages, right?
News is rarely true. Look at the BBC website "hate crime" it's Newspeak it's not a criminal offence it is a hate crime. Anything can be a hate crime if you decide it is a hate crime but it is not a criminal offence. In the U.S. the media have created the phrase "hate speech" and hate crimes.
U.S. news media says hate crimes have gone up since Donald Trump, was elected president. Donald Trump, is an idiot who does not deserve to be president. If he's an idiot how did he become a billionaire? and why are not the news readers who are calling him an idiot not themselves billionaires.
Donald Trump, is the elite and doesn't represent the common people. Hillary Clinton, not only represents the common people she represents all of the people all of the time. It doesn't matter that she is a criminal it doesn't matter that she has accepted millions from donators in the Middle East. It doesn't matter that her husband is a rapist. She represents the common people she represents all of the U.S..
The U.S. bombs civilians it is collateral damage. Another country does it and it is a war crime.
BBC News 24 is running a 24 hour campaign against Donald Trump, he is everything from a Nazi to a Mafia gangster. And black people are downtrodden honest beautiful trustworthy but downtrodden by those repulsive murdering stealing white people.
The BBC are constantly telling you that the BBC is noble and the most trusted news media in the world. They broadcast that message at least once every day.
They demand money with threatening letters which they post randomly threatening people with imprisonment if they don't pay for this BBC television licence even if they don't watch the BBC and even if they don't have a television set as long as they have a computer and they can possibly see a a television programme.
The American media is constantly showing you that you have to be a homosexual a transsexual a lesbian or a black person to be a real free loving "American". A lesbian talk show host a black talk show host different strokes for different folks..
the rascals have controlled the majorities for such a long time that they cannot come to terms with the fact that the majorities are having their say.
The say populism is a bad thing. Populism "a person who supports or seeks to appeal to the interest of ordinary people. Representing or appealing to the interests of opinions of ordinary people". = Democracy. Democracy has no place in their new World order. They cannot except and will not accept that the majority rule.
It wasn't long ago they were saying Facebook won the election for Donald Trump. They now all desperately want to control the Internet. In the U.K. they monitor your telephone calls and monitor all your Internet activities they can break into your Internet accounts and break into your computer all lawfully.
In the U.S. the authorities simply don't care you would think that the NSA run the U.S..
The English-speaking media make the Chinese media look respectable.
I think I speak for Turkey when I say YES.
It will be much easier to find and jail all the dissidents who make fun of the beloved leader.
Top CDU folks here in Germany (I am living in Munster) now talk about censoring Facebook. If that really materalizes, what YOU can do is:
+ use USENET. No central censorship possible !
+ use Vkontakte.ru. The Russians do apparently not censor so heavily.
+ use RT.COM Comments. Much freer place for comments than any German mainstream outlet. We still have the same media tycoons controlling media here as we had between 33 and 45. They still do whatever the Chancellor wants them to do.
There exist legal Mafia orgs like SPD, IG Metall, AFL CIO or Bosch Corporation, who have their own covert army of operatives. They will exert pressure on whoever they deem a problem.
THAT is why we need anonymity.
We're looking at this within the scope of the provision of news. While it would be nice to hold someone accountable for what they write and try to pass off as truth, the slippery slope gets awful steep when you create a rule *over here* that can then be applied broadly *over there*.
Anonymity, generally, serves a very valuable purpose in society, and people are constantly hounded that only criminals and perverts want it. Ask anyone living under an authoritarian regime if they're willing to put their name to their criticisms of their regime? Ask them what they think happens to their family if they do. That's not even a contrived example, but one that people live with *daily*.
People want to get rid of anonymity for the sake of honest reporting, but that's not how it'll work: people will continue to operate within their own echo chambers because, by and large, people aren't taught to think critically about what they read. THAT is the bigger problem, not whether someone writes about XYZ while remaining anonymous. The other dimension is that the state wants to take away your anonymity to make law enforcement's job easier. I'm sorry the police have a hard time doing their job, but the cost to my personal liberty that has to be paid in order for the state to pretend it can keep me safer is too steep.
If you work at Bosch you will soon have to submit yourself to "gender", "diversity" and "LGBT" brainwashing sessions. Mandated by corporate management.
The red letters of Bosch are no coincidence. Boycott the products of these Marxist internationalists !
It is the internationlist banksters and corporations (Goldmann Sachs, HP, Bosch, Daimler) who were behind Clinton and her Marxist stormtroopers. Of course they will need further disciplining by ALL OF US.
Only according to the Bankster Media like NYTIMES. Don't repeat their lies !
Have false information being openly published by 1% controlled media like NYTIMES, ARD,, CNN, ECONOMIST and so on. There now exist millions of presstitudes who are bribed by the corporations and the Sand Nazis from Riad.
Much fake news comes from state actors, who can create as many fake people that will verify fully as they require.
How much money do globalist corporations spend on highly overpriced advertisements in the whore media outlets like NYTIMES ?
You betcha that this is the biggest scam ongoing. And it nicely explains why these folks are synchronized as during the Nazi Reich. Because the corporations pay the nice wages of these folks. They demand the same message from 20 outlets and they also find a way to bribe Reuters, AFP, DPA and the like.
You, the subscriber, are the cattle to be "guided". Your subscription money counts 0.
Currently, a domain name can be registered with any name at all, and payments can be made in ways that are virtually anonymous. The fact is, that the "WhoIs" feature allows anyone who wants to can find the information that was used to register that website. Because spammers used that information to harvest lots of email addresses, new businesses cropped up to create a layer of identity security; you'll notice the registered name is changed to refer to the entity that holds the information outside the domain-name registration service, and many of us use that to avoid the spam and nuisance problems. You can reach the domain owner, but they have the freedom to not respond.
The difficulty comes when someone has used a domain name for illegal or nefarious purposes. Law enforcement needs the right to find out who owns a particular domain name, but, to protect free speech, they should require a court-ordered warrant for that information (and that should not be a SECRET court, like the certain governments and agencies have; every person, whether common citizen or crook, must have a legal right to defense and representation by a lawyer who argues FOR privacy on behalf of the unnamed defendant). So, the domain name system SHOULD allow ownership to be concealed, and any attempt to reveal that information should be publicly announced, so the owner has the legal right to challenge the legal proceeding through legal representation. That eliminates the "nuisance" suits (e.g., by spammers, from whom the courts could reject the requests), while allowing legitimate needs for access to that information (e.g., so the domain name owner can't engage in on-line crimes with anonynimity) under judicial overview. That would preserve privacy, and the party asking for the information would have to prove in court a legitimate and legal RIGHT to that information.
Further, the legal proceeding should have to take place in the legal domain (e.g., country, and/or state) where the registrant lives, so that the inconvenience of distance or jurisdiction can't be be used as a "dodge" to get that information without defense by the anonymous domain owner.
"We avoid voter fraud by requiring verification of ones name, age and address."
Certainly that's the CONCEPT behind voter ID, but the reality is that voter fraud is easy, substantial, and sometimes decisive. For any election decided by less than 1% of the vote, voter fraud could easily have flipped the election.
I run a clan that plays various games, and I registered a domain for our group. However, I don't want anyone to know my real life information due to harassment aimed at us by other groups or individuals who are jealous or angry. I use whois guard to protect my identity. The registrar does have my real information and billing so they're aware of who I am. But, the general public is not. This is a particularly important use case that isn't considered when people suggest unveiling whois registrations.
I don't see how this solves the concern. Identity and reputation are two different things. Cecil Adams may or may not be a real person, but still one tends to trust him to tell the truth. Trump, on the other hand is clearly a real person, but many more people would question his reputation for spreading only verifiable truth.
@damn_registrars - "That ship has sailed. ICANN realized a long time ago that the registrars make more money with a "don't ask, don't tell" approach to selling domains."
Was that before or after they came up with an extortion racket around selling .xxx domains for approximately 100000% the price of .com domains...
I have a new idea for a business, anyone want in? The business works like this:
wants to register domain while remaining anonymous.
contacts "Anonyregistrar" to register his/her domain.
"Anonyregistrar" then register the domain under the name of the company/agent of the company.
Would that work? Does owning a domain name currently solidify you as the owner of what runs on that domain (law-wise)? I suppose it's all speculation at this point, since there's no law on the books, but...
How does one make a PGP public key "verifiable" without spending loads of money to fly hundreds of miles to key signing parties?
Until ICANN requires those offering registrable subdomains of a domain registered in one of its gTLDs to pass the identity requirement through to their subscribers or risk getting kicked out of Mozilla's Public Suffix List and comparable lists within the ICANN-controlled .org gTLD. If your domain leaves the PSL, your subscribers won't have their cookies separated, nor will they be eligible for a healthy number of domain-validated TLS certificates from ACME CAs such as Let's Encrypt (source).
my single biggest concern is the amount of spam that I used to get before I registered my domain with an anonymizing service. Of course this was 15 years ago and maybe the spammers don't rely as heavily on the whois for domains to harvest emails to spam.
Absolutely "real identities" should be required. So that means that a person has to physically show up to some store or government agency to verify their identity before they get a domain, using absolute standards and registrars who will be prosecuted for taking bribes to allow fake identities?
Oh. Then you're not really securing shit, are you?
We avoid voter fraud by requiring verification of ones name, age and address.
Citation needed. Plus the internet is worth a hell of a lot more to the world than silly shit like political news.