RE: [nc-whois] RE: some links of interest

[Sarah <andrews@epic.org>]

Hi everybody.

In response to Marilyn's suggestion I am posting links to two letter we
(the Electronic Privacy Information Center) sent to Congress in 2001.
http://www.epic.org/privacy/internet/whois_0701.html
http://www.epic.org/privacy/internet/ICANN_privacy.html

The basic recommendations we made were that there should be restrictions on
the secondary use and sale of this data; personal information, beyond that
necessary for contacting systems administrators about network or security
problems, such as home addresses, fax and phone numbers, should not be
included; there should be ways for individuals/ non commercial website
owners to anonymously register domain names.

Jason Catlett of Junkbusters, another privacy group, testified to similar
effect in July 2001. His testimony is at:
http://www.junkbusters.com/testimony.html#whois

Needless to say, the views represented in these submissions are those of
EPIC and Junkbusters alone and do not represent formal recommendations of
the non commercial constituency as a whole.

Best regards,
Sarah.


>Dear WHOIS Colleagues
>
>Thanks, Steve, and Troy, for your postings regarding the recent U.S.
>Congressional
>Hearings on WHOIS/Accuracy; and Steve, for the additional postings.  They
>are both
>very useful to the TF and I urge all to read them. There may be other
>relevant
>similar postings which members are aware of and should post. For instance,
>I asked
>Sarah to post an earlier document related to privacy issues in WHOIS to
>the TF list.
>
>I wish to call the TF members attention to the WIPO Best Practices and
>to suggest that you take 20 minutes and at least scan the comments. You will
>see several comments on accuracy, as well as other comments; however, to me,
>the data accuracy issue stands out...
>
>Regards, Marilyn
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Steve Metalitz [mailto:metalitz@iipa.com]
>Sent: Friday, May 31, 2002 4:34 PM
>To: NC-WHOIS (E-mail)
>Subject: [nc-whois] RE: some links of interest
>
>
>As discussed toward the end of our conference call, here are some links that
>may be worth reviewing as we prepare the conclusions of our Task Force's
>work:
>
>(1)  Written testimony from last week's Congressional subcommittee hearing
>on Whois.  Howard Beales is the top consumer protection official of the US
>Federal Trade Commission.  You can see from the statements of Reps. Berman
>and Coble what two leading US policymakers are thinking.  Cameron Powell of
>SnapNames and Michael Palage of the Registrar Constituency were the other
>witnesses, along with myself.  See http://www.house.gov/judiciary/courts.htm
>
>(2)  The Best Practices document created by the World Intellectual Property
>Organization has some good general recommendations re Whois in the ccTLDs.
>See http://ecommerce.wipo.int/domains/cctlds/bestpractices/index.html
>
>(3)  An interesting case study regarding "Large-Scale Intentional Invalid
>WHOIS Data" may be found at
>http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/edelman/invalid-whois/
>
>Steve Metalitz