[At-Large] Withdraw the gun database
Karl Auerbach
karl at cavebear.com
Fri Jan 25 02:22:43 UTC 2013
On 01/24/2013 03:46 PM, Derek Smythe wrote:
> * Domain WHOIS details are being likened to gun registration details
> and the assertion made that guns are dangerous, domains are not.
Not quite. The discussion has been on the fact that in a lot of places
gun registrations are being made private. And because guns are orders
of magnitude higher on the relative scale of capacity to cause injury or
death than are domain names that it makes sense to give the public more
access to gun registration data than to domain registration data.
Sure, one can brew up intricate cases where a domain name is used as one
element in a scheme that leads to human injury. But the sequence of
causative events between domain name and injury in such schemes is
rather greater than is for the typical gun related injury.
The phrase typically used in law is "proximate cause" - use of a domain
names are rarely the proximate cause of violent damage to a human body.
The same can not be said for guns.
The proponents of the current wide-open whois seem to be suggesting that
the entry of a spam email into a person's mailbox is an injury equal to,
or even greater, than that of a bullet entering a human body. I hope
that the error is on my side, that I am mis-reading their positions.
In the situations you cited in which domain names were an element of an
unlawful action there appear to have been plenty of unlawful things
going on: you use words like "fraudulent" and "defrauded" - these acts
are themselves actionable with or without use of a domain name. My
suggestion is that you attack the root cause of specific events - such
as the misrepresentation of material facts to someone who relies upon
those facts to their detriment - rather than discarding the privacy of
innocent domain owners everywhere.
Yes, the systems of investigation and of enforcement that we have today
are slow, cumbersome, and expensive.
But rather than throwing all that to the dogs, which seems to the goal
of some, we should try to create improved procedures. And to that end I
have suggested some concrete processes.
It does seem that among those who are on the "open whois" side that
there are many who are unwilling to disclose their own identities while
trying to obtain the identity of another, to make implicit accusations
of wrong doing without making those accusations explicit or backing them
with evidence, or to enter into a binding up front terms of service
agreement that imposes enforceable obligations on their use of data that
is obtained. Such an imbalance is contrary to my sense of justice and
due process.
--karl--
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