The arbiter and overseer for the internet’s namespaces is stuck on a word. And how it decides to interpret that word could put your private information into the hands of far more parties than before, if you’ve ever registered a domain name for your website or make money in any way off your site or blog.
That word is “commercial.”
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The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is thinking of limiting the privacy of sites it considers “commercial,” potentially putting the contact information of benign site owners in the open. The decision could have huge ramifications for anyone online who values anonymity, as well as make bloggers, dissidents, and activists easier to target.
The corporation posted an initial report on May 5 discussing some policy changes it might have for people who register domains under proxy services. A little bit of background: ICANN requires that domain registrants file their full name, address and contact info into WHOIS, the internet’s de facto phonebook for websites, but there are services allowing them to mask that with a proxy’s contact info. There’s a myriad of reasons for wanting to do so, but it’s reasonable to believe that not everyone wants their full name, contact information and address to be searchable just because they own a website. That right might be taken away soon.
Last month, entertainment industry groups, acting under a group called the Coalition for Online Accountability, released a testimony stating that “Tens of millions of gTLD registrations… lurk in the shadows of the public Whois, through a completely unregulated proxy registration system that is the antithesis of transparency.” The proposed changes would make it easier for industry parties to go after alleged copyright infringers by limiting WHOIS privacy rights, but it would open the floodgates to a number of other privacy concerns.
For instance, it could put the private information for activists, bloggers, and generally good-intentioned writers in the open. The changes could make their private information searchable through WHOIS without a court order, making them easier to dox, harass and spam, generally rendering their lives more easily ruinable.
A community for trans authors might be hammered with hate mail and death threats. People can be swatted more easily. Anyone working for a cause that generates money can get harassed by opponents off the public sphere. If you thought internet harassment wasn’t easy enough, it might just get easier.
“Private information should be kept private.”
To compromise, ICANN is thinking of classify money-making domains into two categories: commercial and transactional. The former contains all revenue-generating sites including non-profits, and the latter addresses ecommerce-oriented sites and for-profit organizations. ICANN is thinking of severely limiting the latter’s access to domain privacy—why would corporations need that? But the proposal is vague enough in its current state such that if it goes through, any interested party can ask a registrar to disclose a domain owner’s private information without a court order.
ICANN put the issue up for public comment. Domain registrar Namecheap, along with the Electronic Frontier and Fight for the Future, two non-profits dedicated to advocating for privacy and personal freedoms, started a campaign calling for people get ICANN to reconsider their proposals and to add their own comments. Thousands of them have already been submitted, with many of them concerned that their private information would be available to unsavory groups. For instance:
Image: gouessej
Image: Sophia Chang
Comments will be closed by July 7, and they’ll be reviewed for a staff report come July 21. But until then, feel free to submit your comments to ICANN through email at comments-ppsai-initial-05may15@icann.org.
