Third Party Svcs.

 

Submission #: 1155 (commercial)

Having an agent register a domain name is an interesting option, but I would be concerned about my personal interest in and ownership of the name. A big problem concerning the internet is money, of course. Most internet activity happens in California, and California is rich. Elsewhere, people can't afford the computers and lines of communication necessary. So in the interests of making computers more people and world-friendly to more depressed economies, this issue of a publicly available database is unsettling. Basically, the only people that can shield themselves from the vices of the public are rich and employed people who can afford various telephone lines and extra mail box addresses. For the regular person, who manages to have only one phone and one address, the idea that having a simple artsy website, say, could attract mass murderers is scary. There should be a way of protecting registants' privacy AND a way of tracking internet criminals. I'm all for an internet police that has access to files without the whole world having access. There should, however, be a mandatory bulletin board that flashes on internet sites if many people have registered complaints against the site or if the site is associated with illegal activity...a kind of Big Brother Better Business Bureau, if you will. It'll make criminals think twice about continuing their activities and warn innocent newcomers.

 

Submission #: 1433 (individual)

Q. 9. I: Publication of e-mail address, phone and fax number of the admin-c is not desirable. Publication of the postal address is not necessary (opt-out option). General comments: Widespread publication of personal data (such as in the Whois database) may lead to a variety of side uses, some of them beneficial, some not. If a publicly accessible database is (partly) restricted because of privacy concerns, some of the side uses may be restricted too. However, these side uses cannot justify negligent treatment of privacy issues.
If the Whois database contains data which is superfluous for the technical operation of the Internet, this data should be suppressed. It is not ICANN's responsibility to request the publication of data which is not needed to guarantee the stability of the Internet. The com/net/org Whois currently publishes personal data which is not published in the Whois for the .de ccTLD. If the data is obviously not needed for one of the largest ccTLDs in the world, there should be no need for it in a gTLD either.
Many domain name holders nowadays are not technical experts running Web and e-mail services from their own server connected to the Internet. Instead, they are customers of Web hosting companies running the servers for them and can consequently not help resolving technical issues such as tracing the source of DoS attacks. Nonetheless, their personal data is published by default. It is therefore comprehensible that some domain name holders use wrong phone or fax numbers to prevent misuse of their personal data; requiring superfluous data raises the probability for inaccurate data.
Using third party contact details in lieu of personal data is more complicated and more expensive for the registrant, if he is aware of the publication of his personal data at all: The registrant has to enter into two contracts, as major domain registrars are not offering any such service.
The .de ccTLD registry DeNIC has set up its Whois service in a two-level system which might be interesting for other Whois services, too: On the first Web page, the registrant is only identified with a handle. The registrant's personal data (but not his phone or fax number) is displayed only after clicking on a button on the first Web page. A built-in delay may also be used to prevent predatory use of personal Whois data.
The search capabilities of the Whois database should not be extended unless a technical need for the extension can be proven.

 

Submission #: 1528 (individual)

The whois database is most important as a tool for locating available or similar domains, and for seeing who has registered a domain.It should not be used as a mass marketing tool. As an individual, I would want others to see my name associated with domains that I have registered. However, if I thought that using my name and address in the whois database would subject me to marketing campaigns, then I would want to use the 3rd party registration option mentioned above. Especially now with the new .name gtld coming online there will be many more individuals registering domains, and having the name and postal address in the whois database is useful/informative, and if an attempt is made to use that information for unsolicited marketing or too much personal information (email and phone are too much) then people are likely to supply less, or turn to other options like that 3rd party registration which would reduce the usefulness of the whois database.

 

Submission #: 1558 (commercial)

allowing registration through agents with diclosure on demand of beneficial domain name owner would bypass most privacy issues. Registrants could choose whether they want to "safeguard" privacy through extra payment to agent. This, of course, depends on such services being made available at competitive prices for such customers

 

Submission #: 1563 (non-commercial)

a/b sale/rental, etc of data to third parties, including other divisions of the same organization. The hiding of indentities under the guise of "privacy" is an abuse, not a virtue. Never in the history of the world has anyone acted through a "strawman" for honorable purposes. It is done strickly because the perpetrator has something to hide.

 

Submission #: 170 (commercial)

Accurate information is critical to the protection of intellectual property rights. The ability to register behind someone else's name would inhibit the ability to accurately identify cybersquatters and those infringing on intellectual property rights. I believe that for those individuals concerned with privacy, they can take steps to protect their privacy without masking their identity.

 

Submission #: 1729 (commercial)

That the physical addresses of registrants and administrative/technical contactscan be hidden if they so choose, as long as valid and current contact information is available.
That a consumer can positively identify who the registrant of a domain is, as well as valid and current contact information for the registrant and administrative and technical contacts.
Where any of the registrant, administrative, or technical contacts are found to be repeatedly unavailable to legitimate attempts to contact by consumers or others, that domain should be suspended from internet access until such time as the hosting company, registrant, etc can correct Whois records until such people are available through valid records. These contacts should not be at the mercy of anyone wanting to idly contact them. However, I can not count the number of times I have attempted to contact a domain that was the source of spam, attacks, etc., and have had no response to repeated attempts to contact any of these people in attempts to resolve the problem. I tend to think of such domains as "outlaw domains"; once established, they seem to pretty much do and allow whatever they feel like. They are a minority, but they need to be dealt with.

 

Submission #: 1791 (commercial)

Sounds to me like Internic is trying to say that if they were the only company to handle registering domain names, that they could do a better job of maintaining, reporting, and verifying of data. That would make you a monopoly again and make you happy. I don't like that idea, but I do think whoever else is ICANN certified or whatever should have to work closely with Internic and you should all work closely and well together. The database has to be up to date and accurate, that is what a database is for. Charge the cost to the people registering the domain name. Keep track of them, don't let 3rd parties register domain names for someone else. I want someone stealing information, sending unsolicited bulk e-mail, and child pornographers to be found and stopped. If Internic and other ICANN companies could work together You could accomplish these goals.

 

Submission #: 186 (commercial)

The current WHOIS database clearly provides a valuable resource of information in many circumstances - from intellectual property protection to network operation. Provided registrants have the option to use a third-party agent - and that option is made clear to them, as it is often not at present, and that agent cannot use their status restrain the free use of that name by the registrant (for example, by insisting on the use of their own web hosting services) - I am not concerned with contact data being made publicly available through the WHOIS.
I am concerned by the wholesale sale of that information for marketing and other purposes. Registrars should make their profits from name registration, not from abusing data which they require from customers using their services. At minimum, a positive 'opt in' step should be required for their data to be used in this way

 

Submission #: 1902 (individual)

The whois database must be public and open and must have accurate principal information. This serves to prevent abuse and spam by not allowing them to hide behind third parties.

 

Submission #: 237 (individual)

privacy issues are paramount; perhaps a third-party organization ( an independent,disinterested one) should be designated by ICANN to provide for oversight and continuous review of all policies, with privacy the number one priority;

 

Submission #: 2604 (other Webmaster for several non-profit organisations)

In the case of domains used by an organisation or individual there is an obvious need to: a) publicly declare the organisation/individual (by name only, without further identification) as the owner of the domain. This is necessary to prevent ransomware clauses where the third party might try to claim rights to the domain name.
b) declare a third party (eg the current server host) as the contact person, who should in confidence forward only legitimate complaints, and should be strictly forbidden from disclosing personal information unless specifically required to do so by law.
c) An *absolute* prohibition on using personal information for marketing purposes, whether or not the person disclosing it has an Unfair Contract Term pretending to allow it.

 

Submission #: 2675 (individual)

As an ordinary individual I just want to use my computer without being under constant attack from people with dubious intentions and selling pornography.

 

Submission #: 2852 (other Web site development/consulting/domain resales/internet commerce)

The registered owner should have the option of either providinghis/her personal details or hold them private. But there should be a method to voice complaints through a third party.

 

Submission #: 285 (commercial)

Privacy is nice but a technical contact nut be reachable. often the thhisrd party (hosting service etc) will not act on a boxes content. this makes third parties a screen for irrisponsible operators

 

Submission #: 2888 (other Attorney for commercial business users)

I do not believe that any registrant other than an individual should be permitted to hide behind a "third party" agent.

 

Submission #: 2907 (commercial)

There should be a reasonable right ofprivacy, a reasonable way to get private information to proceed with abuse and illegal activities investigations, and some form of protection against harassment and investigational abuse.
I expect this will be an extremely difficult balance to achieve.

 

Submission #: 2959 (registrar-registry)

The most important personal privacy and consumer protection interest is to avoid unauthorized data mining of and marketing to WHOIS contact information. This can be achieved by developing stronger restrictions against data mining. Because we have seen great abuses of the WHOIS data through both data mining and illegal, misleading marketing, we believe that registrars should be able to restrict access to online WHOIS data and that the Bulk WHOIS requirements should be thoroughly reviewed to ensure that consumer protection needs are being met. Personal privacy protections can be realized without causing IP, law enforcement, and consumer interests to suffer. The most important IP interest is to ensure that trademark holders are able to locate domain name holders to resolve TM infringement and other IP concerns as quickly as possible. Changes to online and Bulk WHOIS policies shold take these concerns into account while providing opportunity to restrict WHOIS access in the interests of consumers.
Finally, it is important that any changes to current policy do not place restrictions on a registrar's activities in regard to its own customers.

 

Submission #: 2967 (commercial)

The most important interest is a standardized bulk access to the information.

 

Submission #: 3024 (individual)

WHOIS should only be used as a means of identifying registrars individually. In this regard, the information should be public; persons who don't want to be known can use a third party (which should be a live person and not a dead end).Spam of any sort, however, is not welcome.

 

Submission #: 432 (commercial)

Whois should be an open directory of who actually owns a particular domain name with full contact info. Owners should not be able to hide behind a 3rd party.

 

Submission #: 474 (individual)

I think it is very important that the whois database be publicly accessible in its complete form. If you which to have a machine name and have personal privacy as well, then you can use a service such as dyndns.org or have someone else buy the domain name for you.
Consumer protection is not very applicable to whois database; the protection of minors is also irrelevant.
Economic and competitive issues are best handled by making the enitre database public.
"Intellectual Property" with regards to the whois database consists mainly of the issue of trademarked domainnames. The current administrators have proved completely inept at handling this. The first-come first-serve method of domain name assignments, for all its obvious faults and exploitation by squaters, is preferable to the current system of favoritism towards interests attempting to remove parody and critical domainnames.

 

Submission #: 502 (individual)

Thank you for asking for comments. It would be nice to see the whois database under non-centralized control, but with a centralized portal for lookups. Privacy is important, but so is responsibility for one's actions. Individuals can register domains as oranizations or find a third party to do so if they are concerned about privacy, but there must be accountability at some point, the registrant information should remain available.

 

Submission #: 564 (isp)

The most vital use of whois is for up-to-date contact information for solving operational problems, whether connectivity, services (e.g. email) or attacks. Most of your assorted questions numebr 20x are phrased in ways making them meaningless to the above concern.
Intellectual Property issues are completely independent of WHOIS. Having existing mechaisms to pursure such disputes, have no place in the WHOIS architecture.
It is an interesting double standard to propose allowing someone to register under an intermediary's name, but also allow harvesting of marketing information of the database. If such harvesting were unconditionally disallowed, it would greatly reduce the desire for such concealment of identity.
It *is* valuable for a registrant to be able to search for entries in which they are cited. For example, to see if another party has listed Registrant's DNS server as authoritative for another domain.

 

Submission #: 611 (individual)

Question 19 requires much more detail for a sensible answer. For example, how would this third-party registration affect the 'real' registrants rights to the name or the mechanics of defending a challenge to those rights?[Questions 20a through 20h look like they should each have a separate text area for an answer, but don't--so I'm answering a few of them here.] Question 20e: That there be a quick and accurate way to determine who to contact to resolve any problems with the operation or users of a domain. Question 20g: The DNS is not a directory; there are far fewer intellectual-property issues here than various large corporations would like people to believe.

 

Submission #: 647 (commercial)


20a. For non-commercial, personal domains, it can be used maliciously by individuals to stalk or otherwise harass. Therefore, for non-commercial domains, anonymous registrations (or rather masked and private records) MUST be allowed. But then again, this would require ICANN to actually ENFORCE the way the TLD's were originally intended, PREVENTING The CocaCola Company from registering "coke.org" or Disney from registering "disney.org". Gee, enforcement, what a concept.
20b. If the data was accurate and up to date, it provides a valuable resource for consumers to find out more information about a merchant.

20c. Look, there isn't a law-enforcement interest applicable to whois, with the exception of ARIN's whois. Web addresses are comprised of domains, domains map to ip addresses. IP addresses map to ISPs who have records on who owns a given IP at a given time.

20d. Since minors shouldn't be using the internet unsupervised by their parents, I don't see any interest that whois provides for the protection of minors.

20e. Valuable means to track down offending network and companies who may be causing network problems.

20f. None.

20g. None. "CocaColaSucks.org" should not violate The CocaCola Company's IP rights to begin with. This whole IP suit mess is balderdash.

20h. Stop mucking around trying to change things that aren't broken and get back to enforcing what things are supposed to be to begin with.

 

Submission #: 694 (other Individual Domain Name Holder)


20a. Personal contact data is not necessary and should not be published. The agent solution is one fix. Another is for the registrars to provide a contact inbox so that identification is possible without personal info being disseminated.

 

Submission #: 713 (individual)

One of the most important things to remember about the WHOIS database is that there is absolutely no notion of a reasonable expectation of privacy as relates to registering a domain. The registrar of a domain _should_ be listed in the WHOIS databases, for the reasons stated above. A trusted third party can be used by those wishing to remain anonymous. Similarly, there should be no prior prohibition on using registrant information for commercial purposes. A registrar specifically offering privacy by not selling marketing information would be able to serve those who wish to be kept off of mailing lists, etc. This should remain a contractual question between the registrar and the registrant.
There are no interests with respect to the protection of minors applicable to the WHOIS database. Similarly, there should be no specific consumer protection interests applicable to the WHOIS database (consumer protection can be acheived as stated above, via private contract between the registrant and the registrar).
Law enforcement interest in the WHOIS database is similar to technical / network operational interest---the information can and should be used as necessary in investigating illegal activity, network problems (distributed denial of service, open relays being used for spam, et cetera). This extends to intellectual property rights as well.
The primary competitive / economic interest is regulating as little as possible the operation of individual registrars, instead maintaining only rules necessary for the operational integrity of the DNS. All other issues (consumer protection, privacy, et cetera) should be handled by private contract between registrar and registrant.

 

Submission #: 715 (individual)

Privacy: Avoid harrassment by spammers (no bulk dataaccess), stalkers (use third party, PO box).
Consumer protection: Avoid harrassment, verify company identities, provide contact info in case company takes money and ignores email.
Law enforcement: Must be able to get accurate contact info, even if it's a registrar or other third-party or PO box; going beyond that may require court order to get data, but that's nothing to do with whois service.
Network ops: Technical contacts should be easily reachable via whois info if online means fail.
Competitive/economic: Value of bulk data to mass-marketing market.

 

Submission #: 717 (commercial)

The whois database's first concernt should be the interest of the public a) in obtaining domain names, and b) identifying persons responsible of technical harm and illegal activity. The internet has become a critical, national-interest resource. It should not be polluted by the need for artificially created, no-value-adding entities to create a profit. The fees payed by millions of people and organizations should be enough to maintain the system without need to sell us out. Allowing the marketing of that information, then invoking privacy to allow third-party agents to mask the identity of domain owners, not only annoys everybody, and raises registration and tort-reparation costs, but also limits the system's ability to protect the public. In my view, this is a classic example of what should have been a publicly controlled monopoly service. If it works for birth, death and vehicle registration, why not internet domain names?

 

Submission #: 730 (isp)

The whois database for gTLDs must be public because they are international--This makes enforcement against registrants difficult enough in any jurisdiction without adding to the problems. ccTLD policy should not be ICANN's concern--The local registries are in a better position to make such decisions.
The whois database must contain accurate information and this accuracy must be enforced by the threat of loss of domain name if the registrant is uncontactable (after a certain amount of time).
Users wishing to retain privacy should either ask a third party to register their domain or use another domain name. Similarly, if concern over children's domains is in question, then the contact details of an adult should be used.
Whois should only be used to do one-way searches for domain names. It should not provide any additional features.

 

Submission #: 863 (isp)

I would not use a third party to act as my agent for domain registration because it would undoubtedly slow down problem resolution. Plus, I don't have a trust relationship with any third party organization like that.

 

Submission #: 89 (commercial)

re question 19: I chose "no" because I don't agree that it is necessary to have a third party actually own the domain name in order to protect the privacy of individual domain name owners. Why couldn't the third party just be an agent or a mail collection point for the owner of the domain name? Why would the third party have to actually be the domain name owner? If the third party was an agent, not the domain name owner, communications could still be sent to the owner, but they'd be addressed to, for example, Mr. J. Doe, c/o Third Party/Agent. Why would any third party want to take on the liabilities associated with ownership of a domain name that would be used, for ill or good, by someone else? Who would want to do that, and how much money would they charge?