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from the privacy-fading-away-like-a-sunset dept.
ICANN is currently considering [pdf] new rules that will affect Privacy & Proxy services. Opponents claim this to be yet another effort by big business to bypass due process, as ICANN is being lobbied to make private registrations unlawful for "commercial" use. As it has been argued effectively in the courts that any website with advertisements is commercial in nature, opponents say this can strip private registrations from any personal website or blog that funds itself by ads. Proponents of new rule complain that P/P services are too often slow to respond, to respond at all, and determining the proper entity for legal action is too difficult. Proponents ask that personally identifiable information be disclosed upon written demand to ICANN, without a court order required, with only ICANN ostensibly determining if the written demand is correct, lawful for all parties, and suitable grounds for bypassing due process in the domain holder's country.
Namecheap.com, the EFF, and Fight For The Future currently have a campaign going to call and write into ICANN before the deadline for public comments, on July 7, 2015. Of course, you can call them directly (busy signal all day) at their LA offices - +1-310-301-5800 to make a comment, or email them directly at comments-ppsai-initial-05may15@icann.org and policy-staff@icann.org
ICANN is currently only seeking comment, and is unable to come to a consensus on this issue yet. Assuming ICANN does eliminate P/P for everyone, we are left with the Distortion part of Avoid-Distort-Block-Break.
How would Soylentils respond to the lack of private registrations?
Original Submission
(Score: 5, Interesting) by MrGuy on Friday June 26 2015, @02:28PM
The original idea was that there should be some way to contact owners of registered domains. This is a useful concept for a number of reasons. There's a way to report misconfigurations, possible bad users/actors, report possible intrusions that you've noticed that may impact other domains, report security issues the owner might not be aware of, etc.
Then people realized you could mine that information for contact details for sending spam, or making vague extortionate copyright threats, or just griefing.
So, the registrars realized there was a business opportunity - you can list US as your domain contact, so technically you have info on file, but you're not actually contactable. This solved the spam problem, but was kind of a terrible solution to the problem. Because it completely broke the original intent of "give me a way to contact the domain owner," but didn't remove the requirement of "have contact info on file."
So today, almost every site has domain contact info, but it's almost always inoperable - the e-mail address basically throws away all incoming e-mail.
The proposal here ("require the information to be real in some cases and not others") doesn't fix the problem. IMO it makes it worse, because the class that "needs" good info isn't nearly as well defined as it sounds, and also there's no enforcement mechanism that makes sense (e.g. I register foo.com as a purely informational website with anonymous info, then later start doing e-commerce on foo.com. When/how/by whom do I become required to provide good info?)
Either make a system where domain owners are contactable, or remove the requirement entirely. I don't object to having the ability for a registrant to be hidden behind a third-party anonymizing proxy (e.g. their domain registrar), but the contact info needs to WORK. For EVERYONE. If a registrar wants to offer anonymizing service, fine. But they have to deliver legitimate mail sent to the owner contact. If there's a phone number, someone needs to answer it, and that person needs to be capable of delivering messages to the owner. If there's a physical mailing address, they need to accept and forward mail to the actual owner.
This is a bad patch on a bad system. Fix the system, or get rid of it.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2015, @03:24PM
The original idea was that there should be some way to contact owners of registered domains.
If the owners wanted that, they could just put that on their websites. And you don't need their full names merely to contact them. This will be garbage, and copyright thugs will love this.
I say get rid of the requirement to provide contact details entirely.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday June 27 2015, @12:32AM
And the website could be down so you need to contact them by other means.
(Score: 1) by Nollij on Saturday June 27 2015, @07:45AM
Not all domains are used for a public website. Some are strictly used for e-mail, or other (non-HTTP) services.
There are many companies that buy domain names, exclusively for internal use (used only by employees, to access internal resources, completely separate from a public-facing website)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by curunir_wolf on Friday June 26 2015, @05:31PM
also there's no enforcement mechanism that makes sense (e.g. I register foo.com as a purely informational website with anonymous info, then later start doing e-commerce on foo.com. When/how/by whom do I become required to provide good info?)
They want support for this proposal, and that is why they are using the phrase "which are used for online financial transactions" as a place to start, and put the system in place. Camel's nose in the tent, as it were. More people will be okay with it. Once the system is in place, it will expand to cover everyone (except, of course, governments, politicians, and large corporations).
Right now, I can pay my ISP an extra $10 - 20 to anonymize my information on Whois. I still have to provide it to my ISP - that has already been made a legal requirement. But with the crackpot stuff I sometimes tend to put on the Intarwebs, I don't want to become a victim of doxing or swatting by some butt-hurt "hactivist". So it's worth it. But when they expand this system, or decide that fee needs to be $1000 or more, well, it just won't be available to me any more.
So, in the long run, this is an effort to end anonymous speech, to scrub unpopular opinions from the Web, and coerce small players into leaving the website business or, worse, further centralizing distribution of content. There are currently only six media companies in the US that control 90% of all media. There are plenty of elitists that would love to see all of the content on the Internet controlled by those six companies. It would make it so much easier to drown out any dissenting voices, wouldn't it?
I am a crackpot
(Score: 1) by strato on Saturday June 27 2015, @02:33PM
If you use the "anonymous" feature for your registration, make sure you understand the legal status of your hostname.
When I looked at this a few years ago, the ISP wanted to transfer ownership of the hostname to themselves i.e. I wouldn't actually be the registered owner. That was unacceptable to me.