[At-Large] privacy, was Impressions from the Whois-Review

[Karl Auerbach]

On 01/31/2011 01:12 PM, Franck Martin wrote:

> Why I agree the WHOIS needs to be accurate and may be non-obfuscated

There is a completely lawful domain name business model in which there 
is *no* record made of who acquired a domain name.

Rather control is vested into a digital certificate - much like a bearer 
bond - which can be issued without capturing identity and transferred 
entirely without knowledge of the registry (a non-repudiation database 
of transfers can be maintained by a third party.)

At least one of the 40 applicants of year 2000 - who are still waiting 
for ICANN - used such a model.

I do find it amusing that on one hand many of us whine when government 
bodies or industrial groups insist that ICANN create thus-and-so policy 
yet at the same time we say that it's just fine for us to insist that 
ICANN create this-and-that policy.

Impositions on lawful activities are impositions on lawful activity 
whether those impositions are advocated by governments, industrial 
actors, or ICANN's so-called "at large advisory" groups.

	--karl--