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<div>As confirmed at the BC meeting in Buenos Aires last week, we filed comments on ICANN’s latest study of Whois Privacy/Proxy abuse.</div>
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<div>See <a href="http://forum.icann.org/lists/comments-whois-pp-abuse-study-24sep13/msg00013.html">
link</a> and below.</div>
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<div>Thanks to Elisa Cooper and Susan Kawaguchi for drafting. </div>
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<div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><font face="Calibri,sans-serif">The Business Constituency (BC) supports the conclusions of the study as being consistent with our long-held belief that a significant portion of bad actors are using privacy
and proxy services to facilitate abuse that harms business and consumer interests. </font></div>
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<div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><font face="Calibri,sans-serif">The BC encourages the ICANN community to move forward with accreditation of privacy and proxy services in order to help the business community address abuse through increased
access to accurate registrant information. </font></div>
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<div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><font face="Calibri,sans-serif">The study examined and supported the hypothesis that “a significant percentage of the domain names used to conduct illegal or harmful Internet activities are registered via
privacy and proxy services to obscure the perpetrator’s identity.” It provides important information for the ICANN community, as Whois accuracy and completeness is a primary goal at this time. The conclusions clearly demonstrate that an overhaul of the system
is not only warranted, but necessary. </font></div>
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<div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><font face="Calibri,sans-serif">The BC recognizes that there are legitimate uses for privacy and proxy services, such as shielding the identity of those engaged in non-commercial free speech, or the launch
of a new product and/or service in the business community. However, the information contained in the study, which illustrates widespread abuse detrimental to consumers and businesses alike, clearly demonstrates the need to proactively restrict the use of
privacy and proxy services to organizations and individuals that are using them for legitimate purposes. </font></div>
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<div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><font face="Calibri,sans-serif">The BC also recognizes that stopping privacy and proxy service abuse is not the only way to stop abusive behavior online. When domain names are registered with the intent
of conducting illegal or harmful Internet activities, a range of different methods are used to avoid providing viable contact information.</font></div>
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<div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><font face="Calibri,sans-serif">The BC looks forward to addressing all of these issues in the community-led development stage of the Aggregated Registration Directory Service. In the meantime, the BC encourages
the ICANN to give attention to the issues that can be addressed immediately. </font></div>
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<div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">We note that although this study covered 5 TLDs, .com names dominated the datasets — only 10% were from the other 4 gTLDs. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Given
that, one possible approach may be for the .com registry to implement privacy and proxy services guidelines as an interim measure. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">This could be much faster than having ICANN make rules for all gTLDs.
We would still want the proxy/privacy vendors accredited, but there may be an interim solution with the registry itself. </span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><font face="Calibri,sans-serif">The BC looks forward to participating in the GNSO RAA Remaining Issues Policy Development Process on Privacy and Proxy Services, to develop an accreditation system which restricts
the shielding of registrant data to legitimate, non-commercial, non-abusive websites. </font></div>
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<div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><font face="Calibri,sans-serif">The BC thanks ICANN and the NPL for this comprehensive study. </font></div>
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<div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;"><font face="Calibri,sans-serif">These comments were drafted by Elisa Cooper and Susan Kawaguchi, and were approved in accord with our charter. </font></div>
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<div>Steve DelBianco</div>
<div>Vice chair for policy coordination</div>
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<div style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: medium;">ICANN Business Constituency</div>
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