NCUC questions GAC Law Enforcement experts in Marrakech...

[Alan Levin]

Hi,

Many thanks to you all for all your commendable efforts in sustaining  
the NCUC. Great job, much appreciated!

On 02 Jul 2006, at 11:51 AM, KathrynKL at AOL.COM wrote:


> All: Just wanted to share an article that came out in the  
> Washington Internet Daily this week -- on the explosive GAC-GNSO  
> meeting.  It was a one-sided meeting arranged by the US Government  
> to deliver 3 law enforcement views that state the old premise:  law  
> enforcement will collapse if personal data is not completely open  
> and accessible (and accurate!).
>

The publication also included:....

> Officials and GAC members faced criticism from ICANN’s non- 
> commercial user constituency.  “How  do you protect us against spam  
> by publishing contact data for every spammer that could be  
> automatically harvested from the Whois database?” asked Milton  
> Mueller, prof., School of Information Studies, Syracuse U.   
> Leibowitz said an FTC study hadn't spelled out a relationship, but  
> several registry operators said Whois data are
> a major source for spammers.
>

Whilst this seems to be the NCUC position, I just wanted to post a  
reminder that not all members agree on this. There are registrars/ 
resellers that offer privacy as a service and whilst the owner  
information is correct, the registrar or reseller acts as the  
administrative contact on behalf of the domain owner. This is an  
opportunity for some registrars and on the whole, I feel it's an  
opportunity to keep the domain name industry competitive and  
economically/socially stimulating. I also suggest that the whois  
forms a useful tool for spam management and  as such generally does  
not increase the levels of spam.  Basically, as a member of the NCUC  
I somewhat disagree with the official NCUC position on the whois.

I don't mean this as a criticism at all, it's simply a clarification  
and an indication that we all agree most of time :)

hth,

Alan