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posted by martyb on Friday June 01 2018, @09:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the yes,-that-means-you,-too dept.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180531/06500839947/icanns-pre-emptive-attack-gdpr-thrown-out-court-germany.shtml

The EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has only just started to be enforced, but it is already creating some seriously big waves in the online world, as Techdirt has reported. Most of those are playing out in obvious ways, such as Max Schrems's formal GDPR complaints against Google and Facebook over "forced consent" (pdf). That hardly came as a shock -- he's been flagging up the move on Twitter for some time. But there's another saga underway that may have escaped people's notice. It involves ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), which runs the Internet's namespace. Back in 2015, Mike memorably described the organization as "a total freaking mess", in an article about ICANN's "war against basic privacy". Given that history, it's perhaps no surprise that ICANN is having trouble coming to terms with the GDPR. The bone of contention is the information that is collected by the world's registrars for the Whois system, run by ICANN. EPAG, a Tucows-owned registrar based in Bonn, Germany, is concerned that this personal data might fall foul of the GDPR, and thus expose it to massive fines. As it wrote in a recent blog post:

We realized that the domain name registration process, as outlined in ICANN's 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement, not only required us to collect and share information we didn't need, it also required us to collect and share people's information where we may not have a legal basis to do so. What's more, it required us to process personal information belonging to people with whom we may not even have a direct relationship, namely the Admin and Tech contacts [for each domain name].

All of those activities are potentially illegal under the GDPR. EPAG therefore built a new domain registration system with "consent management processes", and a data flow "aligned with the GDPR's principles". ICANN was not happy with this minimalist approach, and sought an injunction in Germany in order to "preserve Whois data" -- that is, to force EPAG to collect those administrative and technical contacts.


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  • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @10:59PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01 2018, @10:59PM (#687497)

    Make The Internet Great Again, is that it? Yes, we'll gladly allow you to take your ball and go home.

    The EU isn't setting internet policy for the world, just for the EU. It's ICANN that is insisting on keeping their global policy intact without even bothering to address the GDPR concerns (hint: the GDPR does allow for data processing and even publishing, as long as you document the legitimate purpose you're doing it for).

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  • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday June 02 2018, @09:44PM

    by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Saturday June 02 2018, @09:44PM (#687817) Homepage Journal

    My grandfather left Germany at age 16. Because he didn't want to serve in their military. And he went somewhere very special. To America. And he was very successful. He did many things -- barbering, hotels, restaurants, whorehouses. And made a lot of money. Then he said, I'm very rich, I'm gonna get hitched. Went back to Germany and married a nice -- and very sexy -- German girl. My wonderful grandmother. But the German government said, not so fast. They called him a draft dodger, they kicked him out. Deported him and took away his citizenship. Well, guess where he went? New York City. And had a very nice life there. Until he died of the flu!!

    ICANN got its start in America. And became great in America. When the Internet was American. And now they're trying to make it in Germany, it's very hard. The GDPR craziness is causing so many problems for the websites. The EU, like China and Russia, has a long track record of trying to impose online censorship. And it may be that websites will be something you don't see in Europe anymore. And that's OK. We're taking back our Internet. We're making the Internet American again. Obama turned over our Internet to foreigners. To the global special interests. No more.

    You have a great idea, you said something very smart. ICANN can come back to America. And be VERY SUCCESSFUL again. Very rich. Like my grandfather. Like Apple, they're investing $350 billion in America. So many companies, so many factories, so many JOBS coming back. Because of me.