[ga] WHOIS, Accuracy & Censorship

[DannyYounger@cs.com]

The article "Hollywood's Chill Wind of Censorship" by Lisa S. is an 
interesting read.
http://frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=7723

SYNOPSIS:

The author of the article put up a website criticizing those Hollywood stars 
that chose to oppose the U.S. president's initiative in Iraq.  Because her 
contact details were publicly available through the WHOIS the author 
invariably came to receive a number of threats.  To deal with the problem, 
the author intentionally "masked" her domain's contact information so that 
unstable individuals would no longer have access to her home address and 
telephone number.  

However, because her contact details were now no longer "accurate", the 
William Morris Agency that represented many of these Hollywood stars -- and 
that apparently wished to have her critical website shut down -- finally had 
the means to take action against the author's freedom of speech.  They 
contacted her registrar Dotster, and Dotster (citing ICANN's language on 
accuracy of contact details) suspended her domain registration... 

... but to make matters worse (according to the author), "the person I spoke 
with at Dotster refused to allow me the ability to correct the information 
and maintain ownership of the domain".


COMMENT:

It is a sad day when language in ICANN contracts is used in an effort to 
censor the public voice.  Is this what the insistence on WHOIS accuracy is 
leading to?  
--
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