[At-Large] I: [ALAC-Announce] ICANN News Alert -- Notice of Preliminary Determination To Grant Registrar Data Retention Waiver Request for Ascio Technologies, Inc. Danmark - filial af Ascio Technologies, Inc. USA

[Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond]

Dear John,

you'll find that the view of the majority of ALAC members will reflect
the views from the majority of the ALSes and they are pretty much
aligned with the points you have made in your email.
This, in fact, is one of the major differences in points of view that
the ALAC has had with some people in the GNSO's non commercial
stakeholder group. The ALAC is on record in several statements that for
domains that are used by commercial organisations, especially when it
comes to e-commerce, accurate WHOIS records are mandatory. The ALAC's
meetings with the ICANN Compliance department have often given rise to
complaints that ICANN Compliance was not doing enough.
The suggestion which you make, that "when they grant a waiver, it should
automatically apply to other registrars or registries in the same
jurisdiction." is something which is worth considering and I wonder if
this could be a suggestion made by the ALAC, should it wish to pursue
this topic.
Kindest regards,

Olivier
(my own views)

On 17/12/2015 17:44, John R. Levine wrote:
>> years to focus on what it is supposed to be doing. Yet it is still
>> fixated on imposing terms that are neither legally required in US and in
>> cases even illegal elsewhere.
>
> People with no experience with large networks, which includes pretty
> much everyone on the ALAC, often seem to believe that collecting less
> information about domain registrants always improves the privacy of
> Internet users.  The reality is much more subtle.
>
> The vast majority of users have never registered a domain and never
> will, so WHOIS doesn't affect them, while the vast majority of domains
> are registered for commercial purposes, and a dismaying number for
> criminal purposes.  A large registrar often turns off 10,000 domains a
> day for malware, phishing, and other malevolent behavior.
>
> The WHOIS information that most of the waivers concern is very useful
> for identifying and dealing with criminals.  That is so even though a
> lot of it is faked, since the crooks tend to have patterns when they
> fake stuff. I'm not guessing about this, I talk to people every day at
> network operators who are protecting their users and law enforcement
> who are protecting their citizens.
>
> Registrars should certainly comply with their national laws, and I
> agree that some of ICANN's rules are silly, e.g., when they grant a
> waiver, it should automatically apply to other registrars or
> registries in the same jurisdiction.  But when you make it harder to
> tell who's behind a domain, you're also making it easier for criminals
> to siphon the money out of your grandmother's bank account.  That may
> be a reasonable tradeoff, but it's a tradeoff and one that deserves
> better than the kneejerk reeactions we always see here.
>
> R's,
> John
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