Summary [LWN.net]

Summary

Posted Oct 25, 2007 16:56 UTC (Thu) by stevenj (guest, #421)
Parent article: Maybe UCANN school ICANN on whois (Linux Journal)

The ICANN is considering rule changes to what information is published in the whois database regarding domain-name owners.

Privacy advocates, including Doc Searls, would like whois to publish only an "operational point of contact" (OPoC): an administrative contact in case of technical problems, while hiding the address and other sensitive information about the actual owner of the domain.

Companies who are interested in enforcing their trademarks (and, to some extent copyright enforcement, it looks like) would prefer that whois publish the name and address of the owner, or alternatively to impose some legal responsibility on the OPoC to relay communications to the owner in a timely fashion.

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Summary

Posted Oct 25, 2007 17:31 UTC (Thu) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

Fortunately, we don't have DMCA for trademarks. Even if somebody alleges that my domain name is in violation of their trademark, I'm not required to surrender my domain before the court ruling. Surely, it's bad to be sued for having a domain name someone else wants to have, but that's a problem with the judicial system, not with whois.

On the other hand, not having sufficient information about the domain may impede efforts to locate spammers and especially phishers. That needs to be done quickly to limit the damage.

Summary

Posted Oct 25, 2007 18:10 UTC (Thu) by tetromino (subscriber, #33846) [Link]

The funny thing is, the new rules won't do anything to stop domain-name squatters or phony
whois data. I mean, what's stopping a small company in, say, Russia, from registering domain
names on behalf of squatter clients? The Russian company would use its true contact info in
the whois entry (and would tell anyone trying to use that contact info to go to hell), while
the owners of the content pointed to by the domain name would remain anonymous.

Summary

Posted Oct 28, 2007 17:23 UTC (Sun) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link]

...or in America, and register/host/whatever Caucasian pro-Islamic propaganda.  It'd be so
much politically correct, *yeah*.

Anyways, trying to solve organization problems in technological plane is usually
counter-productive.