WHOIS Report Punts on Privacy

For once, I agree with the final report from the GNSO's Whois Task Force. If you own a domain name, you are leasing a piece of *public* property for your own personal or commercial interests. In order to ensure that you do not abuse this privilege [of owning a domain name], you should be *required* to provide accurate and reliable contact information. I am a big supporter of privacy rights, but this is one area where I believe privacy is not a right. As far as spamming goes, that's just a fact of life. Use an e-mail forwarding service such as MyPrivacy.ca (http://www.myprivacy.ca/). Regarding solicitations by telephone or facsimile, let's face it -- you would still get those even if your contact information was private. So, instead of whining about WHOIS information, support a national "do-not-call" or "do-not-spam" registry. In my view, that's the *real* way of stopping that type of smut.

Best,
Doug
Doug Mehus http://doug.mehus.info/ [mehus.info]

[ Reply to This | Parent ]

Re:As it always was by dmehus

Re:As it always was
by ldg on Monday February 17 2003, @04:12PM (#11177)
User #2935 Info | http://example.com/

I have commented in several areas regarding privacy as a right, so I won't go into it here. However, having been harrassed and stalked due to the WHOIS, I can say that I think you're way off base.

Secondly, there is legislation regarding telephone solicitation and "junk fax" - at least in the US, so your argument that you would get it anyway doesn't fit here. You can't get an unlisted fax number that easily either. Disallowing bulk access would, however, go a long way to preventing that kind of abuse based on the WHOIS.

As for "public property" use, you can't simply obtain information from many public agencies, including driver's license, social security numbers, etc. unless you have credentials and make a specific request.

When you register a domain name, you provide inforamtion that is necessary to maintain that record and should not be used for any other purpose. Even small businesses located in homes should have their information held private.

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