[At-Large] Open letter to ICANN

[Vittorio Bertola]

Derek Smythe ha scritto:
> Hi
> 
> Re: Open letter to ICANN
> 
> http://www.badwhois.info/wp/?p=256
> 
> Well worth a read to see what devastating effect registrars who ignore
> reports of fake whois are having, also the general internet user
> perception of ICANN.

I think you are making a fundamental mistake here - you want a frauding
website taken down by ICANN because it has incorrect Whois information.
What you should want is rather that a frauding website is taken down by
its country's police because it violates its country's laws.

I would be very, very, very concerned if ICANN staff started to take
decisions on whether a website is "criminal" or not, possibly just by
having a quick look at its home page or because of blanket assumptions
like those made in the complaint, such as "Site gathers personal
information on insecure form. Legitimate businesses do not gather this
type of information without security precautions".

I would also be very concerned if ICANN started to disable domain names
on the grounds that "the postal code entered is incorrect".

However, I concur with the letter that the WDPRS is a useless service
that appears to have been deployed more as a token effort than for real.
I think it should just be dropped - if people suspect that a website is
doing fraud, they should call the police, not ICANN. If there is the
need for cross-national cooperation, the various polices should just do
their job and get organized to cooperate quickly and effectively. If
there are countries that do not cooperate, then this is definitely a
matter for national diplomacies to sort out - the US was able to impose
its flavour of intellectual property regulation to the whole world
through TRIPs and bilateral agreements, don't tell me that it is not
strong enough to get cooperation on cybercrime.

ICANN, in any case, should care more about Internet fraud and be more
cooperative - but possibly by referring these (very valid and important)
complaints to the appropriate law enforcement agencies depending on the
countries involved. It could act as an information clearinghouse that
could be very useful.

Finally - about the "general internet user perception of ICANN":

The "general internet user perception of ICANN" is non-existing - users
don't know that ICANN exists.

If you refer to "active users" and user groups, however, the perception
is then much different according to the part of the world. For example,
in Europe ICANN is usually perceived as an instrument to further the
U.S. control over the Internet, for example by removing from the
Internet the privacy that is guaranteed to European citizens by their
national laws. And please don't be upset about this - it is not
advocacy, it is just a fact that derives from cultural differences.

Ciao,
-- 
vb.                   Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu   <--------
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