Fergie's Tech Blog

WHOIS Privacy Stalemate... Again

Milton Mueller writes on The Internet Governance Project Blog:

The ICANN Working Group that was trying to reconcile data protection and privacy principles with the domain name system’s legacy Whois directory, which publishes the name and full contact details of all domain name registrants, was finished today.

“Finished off” might be a better term. Despite flirting with the kind of compromises and reforms that might actually reconcile privacy rights with identification needs, in the final weeks of the process trust and agreement among the parties broke down completely. The WG report [.pdf] has zero chance of gaining the 2/3 majority required to become an approved policy of the GNSO Council in its current form. It is unclear what the Board will make of it.

The battle between human rights advocates, who want to shield certain kinds of data from indiscriminate public access, and corporate and law enforcement interests, who want to use the Whois service as a free, open-access method for identification and surveillance of Internet users, has been going on for seven years now.

More here.

Also: A comprehensive timeline of the WHOIS service and the controversy over WHOIS and privacy, with links to relevant documents.

posted by Fergie @ 8/22/2007 10:53:00 AM