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posted by janrinok on Sunday April 15 2018, @04:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-can't dept.

The Whois public database of domain name registration details is dead.

In a letter [PDF] sent this week to DNS overseer ICANN, Europe's data protection authorities have effectively killed off the current service, noting that it breaks the law and so will be illegal come 25 May, when GDPR comes into force.

The letter also has harsh words for ICANN's proposed interim solution, criticizing its vagueness and noting it needs to include explicit wording about what can be done with registrant data, as well as introduce auditing and compliance functions to make sure the data isn't being abused.

ICANN now has a little over a month to come up with a replacement to the decades-old service that covers millions of domain names and lists the personal contact details of domain registrants, including their name, email and telephone number.

ICANN has already acknowledged it has no chance of doing so: a blog post by the company in response to the letter warns that without being granted a special temporary exemption from the law, the system will fracture.

[...] Critics point out that ICANN has largely brought these problems on itself, having ignored official warnings from the Article 29 Working Party for nearly a decade, and only taking the GDPR requirements seriously six months ago when there has been a clear two-year lead time.

One company that is caught in the middle of the dispute is sanguine about the possible death of the service. "Is this the end of public Whois? Yes, in its current form," CEO of Irish registrar Blacknight, Michele Neylon told us. "But is it going to go completely dark? No."

Neylon has long complained about ICANN's refusal to acknowledge European law when it comes to the Whois service: back in 2013, he refused to sign an updated version of the contract that domain name sellers have with ICANN until it gave him a legal waiver over its data retention requirements.

"That decision probably cost us money, but if we have to choose between operating legally or illegally our path is clear," he wrote in a blog post this week.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:15AM (15 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:15AM (#667163)

    What exactly is Europe shutting down and why are we letting them?? This is more censorship on steroids. How in the world are we going to overcome the tyrants??

    • (Score: 4, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:31AM (7 children)

      by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:31AM (#667166) Homepage Journal

      Obama turned over our Internet to foreigners. To the global special interests. Time to TAKE IT BACK!

      • (Score: 5, Interesting) by janrinok on Sunday April 15 2018, @08:33AM (6 children)

        by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Sunday April 15 2018, @08:33AM (#667207) Journal

        Obama turned over our Internet to foreigners.

        Well, we would like our jet engines [wikipedia.org] back too. And you remember all those trains that you used to conquer the west and provide your vital communications, well guess what [wikipedia.org]? And those nice radar systems that you use all over the place - they were also invented in Europe [wikipedia.org]. I could go on, but I think you get my drift.

        And while you might have invented the internet, the bit that most people know and (incorrectly) refer to as the internet was actually the result of the work of Tim Berners Lee [wikipedia.org].

        You might own the infrastructure inside America, but the rest of the world has paid for - and owns - the infrastructure that they contribute. If the USA was disconnected from the internet, then the only content we would probably notice was no longer available would be a lot of porn. Yep, I'll give you that, you do create a lot of porn.

        Just because some of the key infrastructure still resides in the USA doesn't make it your internet, nor could those elements not be reconstructed outside the USA.

        So, realDonaldTrump, if you are going to be an idiot at least be a factually correct idiot.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @08:51AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @08:51AM (#667209)

          "if you are going to be an idiot"

          That is what he does here, and he does it well. #parody

          • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday April 15 2018, @09:02AM

            by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Sunday April 15 2018, @09:02AM (#667210) Journal

            I know, and he used to funny too.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @10:02AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @10:02AM (#667219)

          Epic! *ROFL*

        • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @10:55AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @10:55AM (#667225)

          > So, realDonaldTrump, if you are going to be an idiot at least be a factually correct idiot.

          Wouldn't that kind of defeat the entire point of that account's existence?

        • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @06:15PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @06:15PM (#667344)

          Well, since all of Europe's data has to go through Utah, it wouldn't be very difficult to kill their internet completely, and probably most of their phone service too!

        • (Score: 5, Insightful) by realDonaldTrump on Monday April 16 2018, @01:40AM

          by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Monday April 16 2018, @01:40AM (#667452) Homepage Journal

          People don't read the articles. I read the articles sometimes. When I'm not too busy with documents. You must be very busy. Because the article isn't about jets or trains. And it isn't about the Tim Berners-Lee Internet, the websites. It's about the part that does the numbers & addresses. The ICANN DNS. Which used to be ours. America's. But my predecessors -- Bill Clinton, Bush Jr. & Obama -- did a number on us. They put Internet freedom at risk with the intent to cede control to international interests, including countries like China and Russia, which have a long track record of trying to impose online censorship. Congress needs to act, or Internet freedom will be lost for good, since there will be no way to make it great again once it is lost!!!!

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by janrinok on Sunday April 15 2018, @08:16AM (6 children)

      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Sunday April 15 2018, @08:16AM (#667204) Journal

      Europe is not shutting anything down per se, but outside the USA there are usually some rules on what private information can be disclosed publicly and what must be protected. In Europe, there is new legislation shortly coming into force that protects an individuals private information. I own several domains but I do not like the fact that my name, home address, telephone number and other information is being made public without my consent. My telephone number is ex-directory but I still receive unwanted advertising, telephone sales calls et al because my contact details are there for everyone to see.

      The outcome of this legislation is that, in Europe, Whois will be breaking the law by publicising my personal details and domain managers in Europe will be guilty of an offence if they disclose my information to Whois in the first place.

      ... and why are we letting them??

      Because the rest of the world is not ruled by the USA. Your laws might be great for you, but we in Europe have our own laws. There is currently an outcry regarding the misuse of personal information by Facebook because US law places very weak and/or unenforceable restrictions on how it can be used. Your government is now beginning to catch on and are realising just what can be done with such information. Europe is ahead of the game in this regard. Whois can continues to operate but they will have to comply with European laws when they do so in Europe. Whois without the information is not worth a damn. They have had 2 years to prepare for this and they have only just realised what is about to happen.

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by TheRaven on Sunday April 15 2018, @09:28AM (3 children)

        by TheRaven (270) on Sunday April 15 2018, @09:28AM (#667217) Journal

        I own several domains but I do not like the fact that my name, home address, telephone number and other information is being made public without my consent

        It isn't, unless you use a registrar that sucks. My domains are registered with Gandi.net (which provides a discount to FreeBSD developers, yay!) and the only bit of personal information in the WHOIS registry is my name. Everything else is Gandi's public contact information. Enabling this is a single checkbox in the configuration UI. My previous registrar (123reg) charged a fee for this service, which I was singularly unimpressed with.

        --
        sudo mod me up
        • (Score: 5, Touché) by fritsd on Sunday April 15 2018, @10:29AM (1 child)

          by fritsd (4586) on Sunday April 15 2018, @10:29AM (#667222) Journal

          That could be because Gandi is based in Paris, and France is in the EU.

          • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @12:00AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @12:00AM (#667414)

            Tucows/Hover has been doing the "Name: Contact Privacy Inc. Customer XYZ" & "Contact: domain-name@contactprivacy.com" for a lot of years, if not forever. They have my data on their own DB, and even asked a couple of times to recheck. ICANN wants (wanted?) information to be correct and real owner be contactable, but doesn't require information to be public, redirection is (was?) fine for them (I got no news about changes). So it's puzzling that they say they can't do it, because it's the registrars task and choice.

            So no, it's not about EU, it's about business that care about customers. Maybe you can find some of those in places like USA too (maybe not, I looked it up, and Godaddy announced months ago that they were masking things in the port 43 version, but still public in the captchaed web one... OTOH, maybe Godaddy assholinesh as always). OTOH, some ccTLD in Europe don't offer port 43 or just crap version, and force everyone into their web based service (with all the "great" things about modern web, accessibility and other crap, when you are just trying to report an abuse to the owner).

            All this fuss sounds like companies are inept, and late (but that is included in inept), and prefer to throw everything in the air instead of getting the damn job done. How much does it cost to replace all public whois data with things like "customerXYZ@registrar"? Why can't ICANN tell registrars they have to comply with laws and wash their hands?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @05:10PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @05:10PM (#667707)

          namesilo.com has free whois privacy. fuck whois. It's just surveillance.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:00PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:00PM (#667310)

        It doesn't matter who "rules" the universe. I only want to see the technology developed to bypass/disable the the censorship, to ensure unhindered communications. That's all that matters. Then we don't have to argue about the law and who writes it.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @07:51PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @07:51PM (#667369)

        Your laws might be great for you

        They aren't. Believe me, they aren't.

  • (Score: 2) by captain normal on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:36AM (24 children)

    by captain normal (2205) on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:36AM (#667168)

    The only thing that's dead is Whois. "The Whois public database of domain name registration details" seems to about to be a causality of the EU's GDPR.
      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/14/whois_icann_gdpr_europe/ [theregister.co.uk]

    --
    When life isn't going right, go left.
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by tftp on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:57AM (23 children)

      by tftp (806) on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:57AM (#667170) Homepage
      I consider it a good development. There is absolutely no reason to disclose personal information via WHOIS. It made some sense in the first years of the Internet, when only universities and large businesses had Internet servers and domains. Today everyone has a domain, even I do. Things changed. The names and numbers that would just ring a telephone on a desk of a company worker now can be used to cause harm to individuals. If the WHOIS remains, it can return just the registrar. If someone has authority to investigate, they can learn the details from the registrar directly, after showing them the court order.
      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by jmorris on Sunday April 15 2018, @06:19AM (16 children)

        by jmorris (4844) on Sunday April 15 2018, @06:19AM (#667172)

        It isn't supposed to just be court orders. The technical contact is supposed to contactable by any other admin on the Internet in case of network problems. The Internet was supposed to be a decentralized network without a few huge overlords.

        Didn't some of us, the ones with a friggin' clue, warn everyone that handing the Internet over to the corrupt and insane U.N. would end badly?

        • (Score: 4, Informative) by tftp on Sunday April 15 2018, @06:34AM

          by tftp (806) on Sunday April 15 2018, @06:34AM (#667177) Homepage

          Can't say much about the UN, but for the decade that I own/manage a dozen domains not a single soul wanted to contact me. The reason for such inattention is that I do not manage an AS, do not own routers... you get the drift. If the Internet is broken, it's not because of me. Call Comcast. With regard to contacting a domain owner in the future, a simple web form on the site of the registrar will do.

        • (Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday April 15 2018, @06:56AM (5 children)

          by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday April 15 2018, @06:56AM (#667186) Journal

          Didn't some of us, the ones with a friggin' clue, warn everyone that handing the Internet over to the corrupt and insane U.N. would end badly?

          This is about EU data privacy laws. The U.N. have exactly zero relevance in that.

          --
          The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
          • (Score: 3, Troll) by jmorris on Sunday April 15 2018, @08:03AM (4 children)

            by jmorris (4844) on Sunday April 15 2018, @08:03AM (#667202)

            If control of the Internet remained in U.S. custody, E.U. laws would mean what exactly? It would mean, at most, a funny tweet from Trump when some EU minion huffed and puffed about ICANN not respecting their "authoritah." Transferring it to U.N. control means every nation state and abonination like the E.U. gets a say in Internet governance. Just wait until Saudi Arabia gets around to some mandating.

            • (Score: 3, Interesting) by janrinok on Sunday April 15 2018, @08:37AM (1 child)

              by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Sunday April 15 2018, @08:37AM (#667208) Journal

              https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=25092&page=1&cid=667204

              Whois without information is what exactly?

              • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Dr Spin on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:29PM

                by Dr Spin (5239) on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:29PM (#667324)

                Whois will be unable tp publish personal information. Corporate information is still permitted to be published,
                so if the domain is controlled by a business, then it is business as usual (not sure its a pun, but definitely intended).

                If they are someone's personal details, then the are personal (duh), and in any reasonable scenario, said
                person is entitled to keep his/her personal details private.

                Keeping them private does not in anyway imply that message can not be passed to the owner of the private details. The
                sender of said swatting^H^H^H^H^H^H^H message does not need the personal details of the person. The registry
                can forward them - if they cannot write the necessary code t automate this, they could hire someone on Fivr to write
                a Perl script (might need 10 more to debug it, so other methods could be superior, and I am willing to offer advice for a
                (not particularly modest) fee.

                You Americans need to keep calm, The world is not about to end just because you cannot control the entire world.
                However, if you don't stop trying, you are going to alienate a lot of people.

                --
                Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
            • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @09:28AM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @09:28AM (#667216)

              It would still mean the European registrars couldn't provide customer data to ICANN.
              With the following outcomes
              1) ICANN just accepts fake data (as it already does, even if it's not official). Which will just make things worse for everyone as you would know even less which data is real and which isn't in whois
              2) ICANN cracks down on it an shuts down all European registrars. In that case the dreaded split of the Internet will happen, with a non-0 risk of the US losing the fight and a lot of costs
              3) ICANN needs to do something about finally and properly instead of pretending the problem does not exist

              In the end, it unless ICANNs goal suddenly became to fuck up the internet, it doesn't matter who controls it, we'd still be in exactly this situation.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @06:44PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @06:44PM (#667355)

                If ICANN insists on the data, and EU law prohibits it, then the result of that interaction is obvious: no personal domains in Europe.

                It's not going to affect any full-fledged corporation in Europe. If you have stuff like CEO/president/shareholders, you just put down your corporate identity and all is fine.

        • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @07:21AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @07:21AM (#667190)

          The solution isn't eliminating whois. The solution is getting rid of the allowance/requirement for detailed personal information to be in it. The only things that whois really needs today are: 'Registrar', 'Country of Origin', 'Email Address' and if further information is needed: 'Business Identification Number or the word Personal for a non-business site.'. Those provide all needed details for standardized means of contact, including law enforcement needs without revealing anything too private. Since the business ID number has to be registered with the local government anyway they can act as the barrier (or lack thereof) for lookup of the business. Handling of personal site lookups would be more difficult and likely better left to local governments who can subpoena the records from the registrar or pressure ICANN if the registrar refuses to provide contact information.

          The added benefit to this solution is it eliminates 'rent-seeking' behavior from registrars who originally started putting that information in public not out of legal necessity, but rather so they could sell 'privacy services' to people already paying registration fees for a domain. Prior to the change, email and maybe administrator or organization name were the only mandatory fields in most whois entries.

          • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:58PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:58PM (#667330)

            No, the solution is to eliminate the need for 'registrars'. We shouldn't have to 'register' with anybody to put up a web site. Domain names can be cached locally, like your contacts list, and it can work perfectly alongside a public DNS (you could even demand that your government operate one) where people can voluntarily register for the convenience of their business or whatever. With a minimum of effort we could do this now, and completely change the nature of domain registrars.

            Oh, and IP addressing will have to be restricted to five sets of three numbers (base 10), and static (for the life of the connection), but changeable upon demand. That's not too hard to remember for enough time to put it in your little address book.

            So, as you can see, the entire wide area network really needs a complete redesign, comprised only of switches and cables. The content is determined solely at the endpoints. Not only will it be more private, it will be a bit more personal. If you keep a white list, you keep out the riff-raff.

        • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @07:44AM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @07:44AM (#667195)

          Didn't some of us, the ones with a friggin' clue, warn everyone that handing the Internet over to the corrupt and insane U.N. would end badly?

          It's called 3 R's. Reading is part of that. Also, reading *comprehension* is important part of reading.

          You have so much bullshit in your one sentence it's quite unbelievable. First, you assume "Internet is run by UN". Secondly, you assume diplomats at UN are "insane". Then you accuse the entire body of UN of being corrupt. All without any proof. Then you assume that it is *you* that has any idea and that you are in the poor, minority of people that actually has an idea of how things should be for everyone because you are the only one with a "clue". Well, Mr. jmorris, you actually have no clue which means your statement is quite irrelevant.

          1. UN has nothing to do with internet
          2. The law is EU data privacy law
          3. UN is not "insane" - it's actually a very sane way of different nations to meet and talk to each other. Would you rather they don't talk at all?
          4. UN, the institution, is far less corrupt than many of its members. This is mainly because UN has no power and it's composed of nations that do not look past corruption that easily.
          5. ICANN doesn't want to test Europe's privacy laws.
          6. This is about Whois service.... which is kind of stupid these days. All you get is spam.

          So please, get a "clue". Read the RFCs,

          https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2142.txt [ietf.org]

          and then you can contact the people you want in case of problems with their domains.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @09:55AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @09:55AM (#667218)

            Damn!

          • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @03:06AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @03:06AM (#667475)

            Compliance to RFC 2142 is voluntary. Major operators including [archive.org] Google [zork.net] and Comcast [archive.org] flout it, or flouted it.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by pTamok on Sunday April 15 2018, @10:39AM

          by pTamok (3042) on Sunday April 15 2018, @10:39AM (#667224)

          The technical contact is supposed to contactable by any other admin on the Internet in case of network problems. The Internet was supposed to be a decentralized network without a few huge overlords.

          There is nothing in this that stops the technical contact from being contactable - you just send an email to the listed pseudonymous redirection address.

          What this stops is organisations harvesting contact information for profit. If you want to know who the technical contact is, rather than their role, then that's when you'll need a reason that stands up in (ultimately) a court of law.

          If you don't like it, you don't have to use the domains that enforce this. You can choose to use only domains that make people's private information available to all for free.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @07:02PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @07:02PM (#667362)

          because biz interests in the US are less corrupt, more humane to consumers? jesus, wtf is wrong with you.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @07:36AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @07:36AM (#667543)

          That would be fine for IP networks - i.e. anyone with a BGP AS number. Those have admins who (should)know what they doing.

          A domain, on the other hand, has gone from something that points to a network to something that points to a page, many of which are owned by individuals with no administrators.

          Additionally, mis-configured traffic will be coming from an IP network, not from a domain. Even if you look up the PTR record of the source IP, that server may have thousands of domains.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @05:13PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @05:13PM (#667708)

          a tech email is one thing. that could even be forwarded to me by my registrar. whois wants your goddamned home address and wants to publish that shit on the internet.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @06:30AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @06:30AM (#667175)

        You are wrong. There is no reason to give the authorities any advantage. They are too corrupt.

        now can be used to cause harm to individuals

        More tyrannical fascist pro-censorship bullshit, but it's not worth arguing. All energies need to completely redirect towards circumvention, tear down all walls. Like Goldwater said, *Extremism in the defense of liberty is not a vice...* I couldn't agree more. Time to end this stupid circle-jerk and take our rights.

        The only proper solution to your dilemma is to create ad hoc networks that need no DNS, but in the meantime we must allow no secrets.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @11:02AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @11:02AM (#667227)

          > There is no reason to give the authorities any advantage. They are too corrupt.

          And from that you get to "ICAAN must have the power to demand the name and address of everyone who wants an internet presence and make it available for everyone to scrape"?
          Or is ICANN for you somehow not part of "the authorities" because whatever? I mean (in practice) it used to be under the department of commerce, so you couldn't even claim that it's not part of the government...

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:18PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:18PM (#667319)

        Neither you or anybody else has a right to restrict what a person can post on the internet. We must keep it totally open, and I am always hoping for a technology to make it indelible and invincible against all tyrants. Little by little we must tear down all borders. We could do it the easy way and live and let live, but I'm all for using whatever force is needed to keep the lines open. Censorship must die! Just don't give your info to the registrars, or build a service that *routes around the problem*... DNS is fucked anyway, and wide area networks shouldn't be using the 'client/server' model. Instead of crippling what we have with capricious, arbitrary regulations, look for better tech. The entire network should only be cables and switches, creating a dumb pipe. The only limit should be the applied voltage and current. As for content, BUTT OUT! That simple

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @08:09PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @08:09PM (#667371)

          Neither you or anybody else has a right to restrict what a person can post on the internet.

          Oh, yes, it's going to harm you so much that ICANN can't force people who own domain names to make their personal details available for all to see. This is tyranny!

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @08:47PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @08:47PM (#667385)

            Sorry, if enough people resisted, you wouldn't have this problem. You'll just have to create another system. Whatever, we should not let Europe, or anybody else decide what we can post on the internet. We have to circumvent all censorship without further discussion. If you don't want to help that's okay. But don't piss and moan with your obstructions are pushed aside. Or you can piss and moan all you want, but you still shall be pushed aside if you stand in the way.

      • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @06:57PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @06:57PM (#667361)

        We used to require the latitude, longitude, and altitude. This meant we could shut down a badly behaving site with an ICBM. We should go back to that, especially for the EU.

  • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Sunday April 15 2018, @06:47AM

    by bradley13 (3053) on Sunday April 15 2018, @06:47AM (#667183) Homepage Journal

    On the one hand, I support Europe's privacy laws - we live in a time where this is a real problem. On the other hand, Whois should be providing nothing more (and nothing less) than a public property registry. It makes sense to know who owns what.

    That said, I do not understand the letter. IANAL, but: I would expect specific objections. However, the letter seems incredibly vague. Just two examples:

    - "WP29 has clarified that purposes specified by the controller must be detailed enough to determine what kind of processing is and is not included within the specified purpose, and to allow that compliance with the law can be assessed and data protection safeguards applied. Not all of the purposes enumerated in the Final Interim Model satisfy these requirements." They then provide one (vague) example. If they object to terms in a legal document, they need to specifically list the terms they object to. How else are you supposed to either revise the document or answer their objections?

    - "ICANN should take care in defining purposes in a manner which corresponds to its own organisational mission and mandate, which is to coordinate the stable operation of the Internet's unique identifier systems. Purposes pursued by other interested third parties should not determine the purposes pursued by ICANN. The WP29 cautions ICANN not to conflate its own purposes with the interests of third parties." They give zero indication as to where they see conflation with third party interests.

    ICANN may indeed be late, addressing European privacy legislation. However, this letter looks more like public posturing (with what goal?) than any attempt to actually move things along.

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday April 15 2018, @07:23AM

    by Rosco P. Coltrane (4757) on Sunday April 15 2018, @07:23AM (#667191)

    I've never liked my name, address and phone number plastered all over the internet just because I happen to own domain names, even before the age of ubiquitous googlesque data collection and privacy invasion. Now with Google and the likes, it's even more important to abstain from providing such information so damn easily!

    Good riddance whois. May you die a slow, painful death.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @07:36AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @07:36AM (#667193)

    Give domain owners the option to choose if, and which, fields are shown. Add the flags, set them all to 'off' by default and then notify domain admins of the change and how they can modify the settings.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @07:49AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @07:49AM (#667197)

      Give domain owners the option to choose if, and which, fields are shown. Add the flags, set them all to 'off' by default and then notify domain admins of the change and how they can modify the settings.

      That option already is there, except you "buy" privacy protection from registrar for $50/year or whatever they charge. Then they have redirectors in whois database instead. The problem is that this information should not be visible to public by default. Buy ICANN's policy was "verify your info or we delete your domain!" for years.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @06:03PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @06:03PM (#667336)

        That option already is there, except you "buy" privacy protection from registrar for $50/year or whatever they charge.

        NameSilo.com [namesilo.com] offers free privacy services.

    • (Score: 2) by jasassin on Monday April 16 2018, @04:31AM

      by jasassin (3566) <jasassin@gmail.com> on Monday April 16 2018, @04:31AM (#667506) Homepage Journal

      Give domain owners the option to choose if, and which, fields are shown. Add the flags, set them all to 'off' by default and then notify domain admins of the change and how they can modify the settings.

      I think you watched too much of that Zuckerberg inquiry.

      --
      jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @09:07AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @09:07AM (#667211)

    Everyone and their dog don't need to know my address and other data simply because I have a homepage with 1,5 visitors.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @10:58AM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @10:58AM (#667226)

      And may I ask why are you cutting your visitors in half?

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @11:48AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @11:48AM (#667240)

        Saves on those high bandwidth costs.

      • (Score: 2) by theluggage on Sunday April 15 2018, @02:12PM (1 child)

        by theluggage (1797) on Sunday April 15 2018, @02:12PM (#667268)

        As the classic exam answer goes, "The average family has 2.4 children - the .4 is usually a dog."

        • (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday April 15 2018, @08:54PM

          by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Sunday April 15 2018, @08:54PM (#667387)

          As the classic exam answer goes, "The average family has 2.4 children - the .4 is usually a dog."

          So .5 must be a dog and a gerbil or such?

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @10:43PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 15 2018, @10:43PM (#667406)

        "Полтора землекопа" (one and a half digger) is a phraseme in Russian which means a small number of people or an obviously absurd result. It stems from 1965 cartoon "В стране невыученных уроков".

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