FW: [ncsg-policy] Proposed NCUC Comments on the WHOIS Review Team Discussion Paper

[Milton L Mueller]

Timothe, thanks for weighing in. That's why we submit proposed comments to the membership. You are somewhat new to this space so many of the issues you raise have been discussed and debated quite a bit before, but it's a good sign to re-hash some of these debates as the membership does constantly change. Still, in this kind of a diverse, collective space you need to accept the fact that minority opinions, (in this case a very small minority within NCUC), may not prevail. 

Let me go through some of your arguments.

> -----Original Message-----
> 
> Like driving, a network presence, including a domain name, is a 
> privilege and not an absolute right.

[Milton L Mueller] I don't mean to sound sarcastic, but what legal, constitutional or other authority are you citing here? The answer is none, isn't it? There is a license for driving, based on state and federal law in the US, national laws elsewhere. There is not an internet license. No offense, but you lack the authority to invent or declare what is and is not a right and what is a privilege. So you will have to discuss this on the merits, not by unilateral declarations which purport to invent or erase specific rights. 

> On the roads, there are standards of behavior that are enforced for 
> the safety and convenience of all.  And vehicles must have tags that 
> identify the owner/operator.  An unidentified vehicle strewing sharp 
> objects (or explosives) down the road is a problem for everyone.

Your driving license analogy actually works against the point you are making. In most states and most jurisdictions, there is no publicly accessible database that allows anyone in the world, no matter who they are and what their intention, to type in a drivers' license number and find out who owns the car and where they live. Indeed, most people understand that that would be a privacy disaster.

Instead we put limits on who can access this database (the police, LEAs) and the uses to which the data can be put. That is basically what the OPOC proposal tried to translate. There would be conditions attached to the release of the data. You haven't made a single convincing argument as to why that shouldn't happen. 

We have had this argument for years within ICANN. You believe that unrestricted access to Whois facilitates contacting network administrators to deal with "error, malfunction, malicious intent," etc. At the same time, you admit that you get spammed and possibly exposed to other bad stuff because of the openness of the data. 

Most of us agree with that some kind of contact mechanism should exist and that some data (e.g., the registrar, the name servers, etc.) should be public. It is really not that hard to reconcile the twin needs of personal privacy/security and contact-ability, especially when the contact-ability is for technical or abuse purposes. 

For some reason there is a small group which insists that any deviation from current Whois arrangements are unthinkable. I'd ask you to think about this a bit more flexibly and get out of the old rut.  


Milton L. Mueller
Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies Internet Governance Project http://blog.internetgovernance.org