Re: [ga] Privacy and Whois databases

[Eva Frölich <eva@nic-se.se>]

I think you are correct. As to my understanding (although I am not an 
expert) the EU data protection law and the US legislation is different. 
Which naturally causes clashes :)

The real experts on EU directives and the interpretation of them should be 
EU itself. (My experience is that the members states in EU interpretes the 
directives somewhat different and in a way that suits the already existing 
laws in the country).


/ Eva



At 22:52 1999-10-16 -0400, Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law wrote:
>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
>+1 (305) 284-4285  |  +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax)  |  http://www.law.tm
>              -->   We are having a hurricane today.   <--





_______________________________________________________________________
Eva Frölich
e-mail:	eva@nic-se.se
NIC-SE, Box 5774, 114 87 Stockholm

http://www.nic-se.se