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?

Comments

Re:SCOTUS: Anonymity necessary for free speech

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we need a half-way approach.

People who say you should use your real name on the internet, are of course legal-minded people who are looking for people to sue (ego libel, copyright, political embarrassment.) People who say you should be completely anonymous online, don't have to deal with the headaches of burner phones, burner "domains" used primarily for copyright, child porn, and "dark web" activities.

This is a completely grey issue, not a black or white one. So how do we solve it?
a) certain TLD's should require real names. eg .com .net. .org and .(two letter TLD's for countries) with clearly displayed registration information, and only these domains should be permitted to have SSL certificates, advertising, and e-commerce platforms. The owner of the these domains can flag the contact information as LEO-only to restrict spam and DOXXing efforts, but any LEO can get this information without a warrant and any attempts to get that information would be logged by the DNS registrar and sent to the DNS owner to give them a heads up on misuse. If a warrant is issued, then it's to take down the owner of the domain name itself.
b) certain TLD's should require anonymous registration only. These domains are not permitted to have SSL certificates, are not permitted to run advertisements on their domains, and not permitted to run e-commerce platforms. This narrows the scope of what is abuseable. So a bankofamerica.com.scumbag will not trigger a "green" SSL site, but either warn the user that it's not secure, or run unsecured. Bank Of America, looking to shutdown the phishing site will need only to send a DMCA notice to the DNS registrar claiming copyright/trademark infringement to nuke it. It doesn't matter if there is no contact information to sue. The ISP's that permit anonymous domain hosting do not get to claim safe harbor and thus systems like Cloudflare would not be permitted to have anonymous domains point to it without Cloudflare itself ejecting the DNS hosting when a complaint is sent. Cloudflare is the largest host of criminal activity on the internet.