Previous Politech message: http://www.politechbot.com/2005/03/30/known-us-law/ There's also this relevant op-ed from GoDaddy's Bob Parsons: http://www.circleid.com/article/986_0_1_0_C And see this petition: http://www.thedangerofnoprivacy.com/ http://epic.org/privacy/whois/ -Declan -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] Little-known U.S. law penalizes fake info on domain name registrations [priv] Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 12:34:26 +0530 From: Suresh Ramasubramanian <suresh@private> Organization: -ENOENT To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> References: <424A46B9.8060001@private> Declan McCullagh wrote: > Called the Fraudulent Online Identity Sanctions Act, the measure would > increase prison sentences by up to seven years in criminal cases if > someone provided "material and misleading false contact information to a > domain name registrar, domain name registry, or other domain name > registration authority." That's a reference to the Whois database that > lists information about who owns each domain name. [...] > Jesus. If people want privacy, and dont want their home addresses and phone numbers exposed in the whois data, most registrars like verisign, godaddy etc offer a whois privacy service (like domainsbyproxy.com) The context of this act does say "criminal case". So, with a tip of the tinfoil hat to various libertarians with objections, I might just point out that this seems targeted more at spammers / phishers / other net abusers who signup domains with names like M.Mouse and D.Duck, and bogus addresses / phone information .. and then they would have to perform a criminal act, referencing that domain .. like say break into servers to send out spam, release viruses into the wild etc. [A clarification -- the law also boosts penalties for civil copyright cases, not just criminal matters. --Declan] -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] Little-known U.S. law penalizes fake info on domain name registrations [priv] Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 01:08:01 -0600 (CST) From: Thomas Leavitt <thomas@private> To: <declan@private> References: <424A46B9.8060001@private> So, how does this affect the business of a company like Domains By Proxy, Inc., whose whole premise is to provide anonymity in domain name registration? http://www.domainsbyproxy.com/ I think I might have written you about this before, with this question: is the effect of this to force people to pay a third party for the right to semi-anonymous domain name ownership? Regards, Thomas Leavitt -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] Little-known U.S. law penalizes fake info on domain name registrations [priv] Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 01:58:16 -0800 From: Hal Murray <hmurray@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>, Tom Cross <tom@private> CC: Hal Murray <hmurray@private> > Criminals usually don't need domain names, and its doubtful that this > law is going to influence them to be forthcoming with contact > information when they do use them. Bank robbers may not need domain names, but there is a lot of criminal activity on the net. Phishing is obviously illegal. They often use look-alike domain names. CAN-SPAM makes some spamming illegal. Most of the spam I get involves a web site. That takes a domain name. Spammers often supply bogus info. It makes it harder to track them down and take legal action. On the other hand, there are several registrars in the business of protecting/hiding the owner's personal info. For example, Domains By Proxy, http://www.domainsbyproxy.com/ That's obviously good for personal web sites. Spammers think it's good too. -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] Little-known U.S. law penalizes fake info on domain name registrations [priv] Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 06:11:53 -0800 From: todd glassey <todd.glassey@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> References: <424A46B9.8060001@private> This is stupid Declan. If you want to own Domain Names and not register them as private, then go and get a Mail Drop Service and an Answering Service. The way the Law is written the only time the contact information has to be valid is yearly when the ISP tries to get to you, and realistically, if you changed service during the year, unless there is special language in the FOISA such that ALL WHOIS INFORMATION must be kept up to date, this process still gives one privacy. The real issue is not those of us that want privacy in our legit domains, but the fraud crowd that needs to have resolvable domains which they can manipulate. And for those Law Enforcement has real concerns. On the other hand... Todd -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] Little-known U.S. law penalizes fake info on domain name registrations [priv] Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 09:43:42 -0500 From: Tom Cross <tom@private> To: Hal Murray <hmurray@private> CC: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> References: <20050330095817.7907CBCF8@ip-64-139-1-69.sjc.megapath.net> Not to open a protracted debate, but there really is no reason that any of the people you're listing *need* domain names. I've certainly gotten phishing scams and spam that include IP based URLs. They do not *have to* have a domain name. As such, a complete solution which prevents any incorrect information from being posted in a whois record would not make everyone engaged in the activities you're talking about convenient to sue. (Not withstanding the question of whether or not "convenient to sue" is really want we're looking for from the internet.) Ultimately, you are going to need to track some people down by IP address and not by domain name. If we focused on IP address whois instead we could build a system which actually enables service providers to be contacted about a host in every case. It also respects privacy, in that the information is only made available when an independent decision maker (a court) agrees that the person asking has a legitimate reason. Not every plaintiff is a good guy. _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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