[At-Large] 9th Circuit Court ruling on ICANN Contract.

[John R. Levine]

>> Sigh.  In what fantasy world do you imagine that there is a process to
>> implement this?
>
> It could be done with an automated system that requires a credit card
> for posting the bond and a couple of web forms to collect the
> information from the person making the inquiry -

Ah, that fantasy world.  Here in the real world, bad guys have an 
unlimited supply of stolen credit cards.  Good guys outside of the G20 
have no credit cards at all, but of course who cares about them when our 
goal is to protect our vanity domain registrants from getting spam.

> If those who are penetrating people's privacy are allowed are excused on
> the grounds that "it is just too troublesome" then I don't have much
> concern if domain name registrants similarly find it just too
> troublesome to make up registration information or hid it behind layers
> of impenetrable corporate structures.

Given that the vast majority of new domain names are registered for 
malicious purposes, and ICANN and the registration community is much more 
interested in maximizing their revenue stream than doing anything related 
to the public good, I expect that we'll be moving toward a whitelisted 
DNS, in which the resolvers that people use only return answers for 
domains that are vetted by some third party.  (If you think I'm kidding, 
look at some of the recent proposals from the Internet Software Consortium 
that maintains BIND, the most widely used DNS software.)

Be careful what you ask for, and all that.

R's,
John