IP Holders Press For Access To WHOIS Data

Stony Stevenson writes to tell us that the battle for access to whois data remains at a stalemate this week. "In a blog post on the Internet Governance Project's (IGP) Web site, Milton Mueller, Professor and Director of the Telecommunications Network Management Program at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies and a partner in the IGP, details the Final Outcomes Report of the WHOIS Working Group, published on Tuesday, and inability of the various stakeholders to reach any kind of consensus."

Article Summary

[David Chappell]

The article summary is vague to the point that one is unsure what the subject of the article is. The "IP holders" of the title are trademark registrants of companies which help trademark registrants identify possible infringement. The Whois data referred to is not the public data to which we all have access. Rather it is the names and addresses of the actually domain name registrants in those cases where the domain registrar is acting as a proxy and has placed its own contact information in the public Whois database. The dispute is about who should have access to this secret data and under what circumstances.

I still oppose anonymous registration

[damn_registrars]

I've said this before, and I'll say it again. Registrars are a big part of the spam problem. And the fact that they will sell (or provide freely) registration obfuscation services to withhold meaningful registrant contact data shows that many registrars are still in bed with the criminal spammers.

Come on, if you really have some reason to keep your registration data private, there are better ways to do it than letting your registrar do it for you. You could just as well get a PO box and use a free email account somewhere, which would accomplish the same thing but still have some degree of accountability. As it is, registrars have been able to withhold the contact information for their clients and there's been no accountability anywhere.

Re:I still oppose anonymous registration

[IBBoard]

As I mentioned in another comment, I'm all for companies having their details published but not individuals. Companies have a need to be accountable. Individuals can be traced through their registrar for legal issues, but aren't accountable in the same way.

Profit is a bit of a bad example, though. Anything that is the face of a company or other such sales person is more reasonable. Something along those lines covers the spammed drugs sites and the like, but allows for bloggers and individuals to 'make a profit' through affiliate links and AdWords etc.

I doubt seeing details would help work out where spammers are, though. All they'll end up doing is providing false details. ICANN say they'll terminate domains where they can't contact the owner, but how many times do they actually try to contact them?