[At-Large] Impressions from the Whois-Review

[Karl Auerbach]

On 02/02/2011 01:46 PM, Bill Silverstein wrote:

>    ...Third, you
> ignore the commercial aspect, of you running your little (or big) online
> store and your customer has a problem.

We have perfectly viable pre-existing systems for that.

I operate some of my domains in conjunction with a state (or city, an 
arm of the state) business license, which is a public record.

And I have also published fictitious name statements, as required by law.

There is no need to burden the domain name system with mechanisms that 
are well established and in current use.

You might complain that people on the net are not following those laws. 
  That would be a valid complaint.  But the answer to that is to enforce 
those laws, not create new ones and cause wholesale privacy violations 
as a side effect.

I am perfectly happy with a requirement, whether from national, 
regional, or local governments that a publicly accessible business 
license be required of anyone engaging in commerce on the internet. 
(Spamming I consider to be "in commerce".)

>    You also ignore that when you register a domain name, you voluntarily
> agree to 3.7.7.1, 3.7.7.2 of the ICANN contract

I'd suggest that the word "voluntarily" is not particularly accurate. 
ICANN controls a monopoly marketplace.  When the choice is to agree or 
to not be able to participate as a fully voiced member of the internet 
community then the choice is more of a compulsion than a voluntary act.

I would also remind everyone that those contracts were created without 
any valid public participation in the process.

Moreover, as I have mentioned, corporate entities are free under the 
lex-ICANNia to use intermediate shell corporations in which the actual 
hands of control are deeply shrouded and protected.   Unless we accept 
the proposition that corporations are more important than humans we 
ought to allow humans to act with the same degree of self-protection as 
we allow to corporations.

	--karl--