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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.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday April 15 2018, @06:56AM (5 children)
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)
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)
Whois without information is what exactly?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Dr Spin on Sunday April 15 2018, @05:29PM
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)
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
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.