[At-Large] R: 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

[John R. Levine]

> I am not sure that it is of any help to
> keep personal information of the registrant for years after he/she has lost
> ownership of the domain, and therefore the ability to do any harm with it.

It definitely is.  People I know pay quite a lot for "whowas" services 
that keep historical snapshots of WHOIS info.

> Another point of disagreement that you and I have, assuming neither of 
> us has changed opinion lately, is how public the information sites for 
> personal use should be (the issue related to commercial sites being 
> totally different).

Actually, I think we disagree here less than you might think.  For domains 
really used only by a natural person for non-commercial reasons, I think 
it's entirely reasonable to make it hard to get to his or her PII.  The 
problem is that the number of purported personal domains vastly exceeds 
the number of actual ones.

R's,
John