Re: [ga] Privacy and Whois databases

["Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law" <froomkin@law.miami.edu>]

I think that the whois terms of service in ICANN's agreement with
NSI violate EU data protection law.

And I think that ICANN's imosition of them is abuse of a dominant position
under EU competition law.   Similarly the imposition of the UDP on all
registrars even those who would like to compete on terms of service.

But I am most certainly not an expert in EU law.  Do you have an expert
around who has an opinion on these issues?

On Sat, 16 Oct 1999, Eva Frölich wrote:

> 
> I can just refer to the situation in my country - Sweden. I represent 
> NIC-SE, the registry of the TLD .se. NIC-SE is a company based in Sweden 
> and therefore needs to fulfill the laws established in Sweden.  Sweden is a 
> member of EU and within EU there are  different socalled directives about 
> dataprotection and protection for private persons. Sweden are forced to 
> implement these directives due to the membership. There is especially one 
> about protections of individuals that causes a lot of trouble all over 
> Europe because if its rigidity.
> 
> The fact though is, that we as a swedish company, has to follow the 
> protection laws in Sweden and they don´t allow us to make everything 
> public. Though there are other (older) laws which regulates what 
> information about a company is public or not. The main question then (for 
> me) is not for companies but for private persons holding domainnames. On 
> top of that there are several domainname holders asking us to keep their 
> data secret, not publicly available (both companies(!) and individuals).
> 
> As the protection laws are different around the globe, we have different 
> views on this. And all the registries though, has to follow the laws in the 
> country where they are situated.
> 
> 
> / Eva
> 
> 
> 
> At 11:32 1999-10-15 -0700, Karl Auerbach wrote:
> 
> > > What does the rest of the DNSO think?
> >
> >At the first IFWP meeting there was a lot of support, in fact, I would
> >characterize it as "overwhelming consensus", that whois data be protected
> >per the European privacy guidelines.
> >
> >As for the whois database and the US government, we ought not to forget
> >that there is this thing called 5 USC 552a, the Privacy Act of 1974, which
> >seems to have been conveniently overlooked.
> >
> >                 --karl--
> >
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________________________________
> Eva Frölich
> e-mail:	eva@nic-se.se
> NIC-SE, Box 5774, 114 87 Stockholm
> 
> http://www.nic-se.se
> 

-- 
A. Michael Froomkin   |    Professor of Law    |   froomkin@law.tm
U. Miami School of Law, P.O. Box 248087, Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA
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