[Gnso-ppsai-pdp-wg] PPSAI Work Plan

[Bob Bruen]

Hi Kathy,

Okay, if you want to go down this path...

              --bob

On Thu, 6 Feb 2014, Kathy Kleiman wrote:

> Bob,
> You know the response on this. We've talked about it many times. This is a speech/free expression/communication issue.
> There is no legal obligation in the marketplace of ideas to wave a flag and tell people where you are located when you are
> sharing minority speech, dissenting speech, unpopular speech or even speech critical of a product, service or company.
> There is no license for speech and expression.

I am much stronger believer in free speech than you seem to ackowledge :)

This is not a free speech issue. This is an issue concenerning ICANN 
accredited registrars, who have the license to sell domain names. The 
domain name holders have some rights to anonimity and privacy, but there 
is also the existing requirement of  the RAA to have way to contact the 
registrant. It is an issue of making money, however.

I have put my own limits on what I include in my list of whom this 
concerns, for example, not ccTLDs and not individuals, except those taking 
in money for what they sell. This leads us to other issues, of course.

The "wave a flag" is hyberbolic. Just because you can be found, does not 
mean you waved a flag.

This is also not so much about legalities in the marketplace of ideas. 
It's about domain name holders, both good and bad intentioned.

> Further, an entire GNSO study set out to prove exactly what you have submitted below. The National Physical Laboratory in
> its Study of Whois Privacy and Proxy Service Abuse set out to test the thesis that:  "A significant percentage of the
> domain names used to conduct illegal or harmful Internet
> activities are registered via privacy or proxy services to obscure the perpetrator's identity".
> 
> They couldn't do it!  They found that a significant percentage of legal activities and business, including banks, use
> proxy privacy services.

Just because a legitimate service is used by legitimate people, you 
cannot conclude that all users are legitimate. The folks who did that 
study did not contact KnujOn for input, otherwise we would have helped 
them out. And, since it was not 100%, then they also found there were 
abuses.

> 
> Further, the Carnegie Mellon Study - confusingly called The Study on Whois Misuse - found us that a lot of legitimate
> domain name registrants ARE in danger because there IS "a statistically significant occurrence of WHOIS misuse affecting
> Registrants’ email addresses, postal addresses, and phone numbers, published in WHOIS when registering domains in these
> gTLDs. Overall, we find that 44% of Registrants experience one or more of these types of WHOIS misuse."

Sorry you brought this up. This study seemed to be more of a student 
project, rather than a professional job - and I am not the only one who 
saw that. The authors were clueless about the topic.

> 
> So let's not generalize anymore. We have findings.  Further, we have a proven market of proxy/privacy services that
> responded to a legitimate, good faith need of organizations, individuals, and yes, businesses for proxy/privacy
> registrations. The Whois Review Team found that all three groups of registrants claimed legitimate use of them. 

Unfortunately, you do not have findings. For example, in 2008 at the ICANN 
meeting in Brussels, a study of ICANN's released some data, which 
supported much of what KnujOn had been saying. The head of compliance 
tried to do something about it and was fired.

Please don't make me list a bunch of services one can get paid for because 
there is a marketplace for it, the ones that are not allowed by civilized 
societies. Just because there is a market, does not mean it should be 
filled.

Yes, I know there are legitimate uses of p/p but I also know (not 
guessing) there already exists a large abuse of it. And yes, I could get a 
list of such domains.

> Overall, we're not the bad guys - we're just domain name registrants and proxy/privacy customers.

Never said you were the bad guys, just that other people who are bad guys 
are using these services to hide out and I don't want them protected.

> 
> Best,
> Kathy

-- 
Dr. Robert Bruen
Cold Rain Labs
http://coldrain.net/bruen
+1.802.579.6288