[At-Large] Impressions from the Whois-Review

Karl Auerbach karl at cavebear.com
Tue Feb 1 01:05:33 UTC 2011


On 01/31/2011 04:34 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:

> There is a distinction -- that most people and governments seem perfectly
> capable of making -- between the rights of individuals and the rights of
> disembodied entities.
> This distinction appears to be totally lost on advocates of registrant
> privacy.

OK, if it is so obvious, then I need an education - so please give me a 
pointer to this distinction.  I'll even accept a wikipedia article 
explaining why corporate privacy is OK while human privacy is not, and 
why due process procedures to penetrate corporate privacy are acceptable 
but similar procedures are unacceptable when the data subject is a human 
being.

I claim that such a distinction does not exist - particularly in light 
of the recent "Citizens United" supreme court case - or that it is the 
inverse of the direction that you claim, i.e. that fictional persons are 
less deserving of privacy protection than corporate entities.

And, if we look at the US foundation of constitutional (as opposed to 
legislative) privacy - Griswold v Connecticut - we would see that 
privacy ought to be greater for humans than for corporations.


> Just as any business, trademark or non-profit can be casually and easily
> traced its owners/stakeholders -- even in jurisdictions that put huge value
> on the privacy of individuals -- so should domains.

"casually and easily"?  When was the last time you tried to penetrate a 
corporate entity that wanted to hide its ownership or control?  Or even 
one, particularly a closely held [i.e. small number of owners] 
corporation, that does just the routine registrations with no intent to 
try to hide?

It can be nearly impossible, even given governmental and law enforcement 
powers of access.  And in the US some states (such as Delaware) attract 
corporate registrations by making corporate penetration difficult.  It 
gets more fun with layers of corporations especially if some of 'em are 
in other countries.

And it can be 100% legal in all jurisdictions involved.

	--karl--



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