security The Whois Privacy Hypocrisy

[News]

Brands owners benefit from whois privacy, even though they’d prefer their adversaries not be able to use it.

There’s a common myth in intellectual property circles that, if it weren’t for whois privacy and proxy services, there would be a lot less bad stuff on the internet.

When ISIS (the payments company) started registering domains for a brand change, it used whois privacy.

So while IP interests and corporations bemoan the existence of whois privacy services, they should consider how they are already take advantage of its availability.

Full Article: http://domainnamewire.com/2014/12/04/whois-privacy-big-company/

 

[Eric Lyon]

I commented on this one with the following:

Looks a little hypocritical to me. Whilst I'm ok with people that feel the need to protect their identity in a political, famous actor, rock star, company secrets classified for internal use only, etc. type situation, I think that there are a lot of usages by companies and individuals that reach outside the logical norm of the service.

There's really no way to effectively manage who's using privacy authentically or unethically until it comes down the pike for resell and someone gets burned. There's always a chance that the guy/gal you are about to buy from is actually a famous actor hiding their fame (which is totally understandable). The odds of that are on the low end, but it could and has happened.

The privacy debate has always been a hard one due to both sides having legitimate facts and statistics to back them up. I'm not sure there is a fool proof way to offer any form of compromise when it comes to this topic without alienating someone elses rights to privacy for legitimate reasons.

What are your thoughts?

 

[alien51]

This issue with Whois Privacy, is like the issue on data Encryption.

Just like bad guys can hide under a Whois Privacy, the bad guys can also hide their stuff using the same encryption tools used by the good guys.

This is why the Chile Online Protection Act in America was ruled as unconstitutional. Although it was targeting the bad guys, the good guys were also getting affected.

Same with Whois Privacy. They are legitimately used by many good guys. You cannot destroy the service, just because you believe it is also being used by the bad guys.

And besides, Whois verification on many domain extensions, is not very strict. All that is required is just a valid email address. You are not required to submit a government-authenticated identity papers to prove your Whois information.

And even if someone will challenge you about your allegedly "false" Whois data, the Registrar (and even a UDRP panelist) will not automatically seize your domain. They will simply ask you to update your Whois info to the current one to fix the false data.

And for the really bad guys who would like to look authentic, there's always the Third Party address providers.

Kim Dotcom was operating his Megaupload file sharing business using just a P.O. Box in Hong Kong as indicated in his domain's Whois info. He was not using any Whois Privacy service, and he actually lives in New Zealand.

 

[godot2147]

This issue with Whois Privacy, is like the issue on data Encryption.
Just like bad guys can hide under a Whois Privacy, the bad guys can also hide their stuff using the same encryption tools used by the good guys.
+1