[IP] Domain Owners Lose Privacy

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk@gsp.org>
Date: Fri, 04 Mar 2005 13:36:42 -0500
To: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Subject: Re: [IP] Domain Owners Lose Privacy


They never had any.  Spammers have been acquiring and selling much
of this information for quite some time.

> The Electronic Privacy Information Center said the move violates First
> Amendment rights to anonymous free speech.

Nonsense, for three reasons:

First, nobody actually NEEDS a domain name to engage in free speech,
anonymous or otherwise, on the Internet.  (Doesn't EPIC know this?)

Second, nobody who truly wants to be anonymous should even WANT a domain
name: after all, registering it creates a record, directly traceable
to them, at their registrar.  It also -- if they, let's say, contract for
web
hosting someplace -- creates a record there.  Those records are available
to personnel at those companies, to anyone who can access them via legal
discovery processes, to anyone who can penetrate registrar/host security,
and to anyone with enough cash-in-hand to either cut a backroom deal
with registrar/host or just bribe their personnel.  (Have the latter
happened?
I have no idea.  But I think it's a legitimate question to ask how all the
spammers that are selling CDs full of this information got their hands on
it.)
Bottom line: registering a domain name is a dumb move if you really want to
remain anonymous.

(Oh, and let me not forget to mention: some registrars ARE spammers.
Pop quiz: how long will "private" information entrusted to their care
stay that way?)

(Oh, one more thing, just one word: ChoicePoint.)

Third, domain names are Internet operational resources.  The Internet,
as a whole, cannot afford to permit those controlling operational resources
to be anonymous -- because, as we've seen thousands and thousands of times,
it's an open invitation for abuse.  Lots and lots of abuse.

Is this a pity?  Yes, it is.  But unfortunately, the failure of the
NON-abusive anonymous holders of Internet operational resources to
demand that this situation be rectified (by the only people in position
to rectify it: the registrars) has allowed things to deteriorate so
badly that "anonymously registered domain" is becoming more and
more synonymous with "probable spam/abuse source domain".

By the way: an excellent rule-of-thumb is that any domain registered in
the .us TLD which is _not_ part of a geographic hierarchy (e.g. k12.pa.us)
is suspect.  Oh, I've found a few such domains that are legitimate:
I've also found over 1200 belonging to well-known, prolific spammer
Steve Goudreault.

---Rsk


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