Re: [ga] Bulk WHOIS Data Issue

[Sotiris Sotiropoulos <sotiris@worldatlarge.org>]

George Kirikos wrote:

><big snip> :-)
>
>
>Reading through even more posts, people seem to be struggling for
>metaphors. The telephone example tends to be overused. If we look at
>the example in trademark registries, there's sufficient "whois" data
>for a trademark to be able to serve someone. Individuals, companies,
>and other entities register trademarks, without some of the personal
>safety issues that freaks out some individuals. Trademarks represent
>division of a public resource/namespace, like domain names. 
>
Not quite.  I agree with much of what you wrote in your "audacious 
post", but trademarks are not "like domain names" as you say here. 
Trademark interests have been granted a de facto formal [and dare I say 
"moral"] precedence of claim over mere "registrants" or "cybersquatters" 
[as registrants sometimes get _libeled_].  The trademark interests' 
abuse of process is staggering to consider when viewed through a wider 
lense.  

You want an economic argument (leaving aside the privacy issue for a 
moment), let us consider the very nature of ICANN's heretofore technical 
coordination role, its benefits and costs.  What have they coordinated, 
what has it cost, and who has benefited?   As we all know, the scarcity 
of domain names is artificial.    Their "coordination" has not had 
anything to do with anything of a strictly "technical" nature unless we 
mean the artifical scarcity of dn suffixes.  The ICANN's entire role 
to-date has been on the policy side of "technically coordinating" the 
DNS. Through the sheer technicality of their jargon most people can't be 
bothered to even attempt to understand what the true role of ICANN has 
been heretofore vis a vis the Internet as a whole.  What is the benefit 
in the artificial scarcity of domain name suffixes? Who benefits from 
this scarcity?  What is the cost of such protectionism?  Who pays for it 
all?  

The ICANN as regulator of this market has taken on a certain 
extra/supralegal dimension of nebulous unaccountability which imposes 
upon what should be a free and unfettered medium of information flow and 
exchange.  Can you estimate what their imposition has cost the Markets 
of the World?

>Similarly, 
>in the case of licensing of radio or TV stations -- it's made easy for
>the public to look up the owner of that frequency/station.
>Registrations of corporations, personal businesses, etc. are another
>metaphor. Some folks seemed to have attempted to make the domain itself
>a unique legal entity unto itself, and that argument is deeply flawed.
>One can't "serve" a domain or find it responsible for itself.
>
I, for one, agreed with your comments on the Technical Contact becoming 
the de facto legal contact and only required listing in the WHOIS.

Sincerely,

Sotiris Sotiropoulos
        Hermes Network, Inc.



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