[WSIS CS-Plenary] ICANN is [not exactly] doing somethingright to fight fraud

[Milton Mueller]

>>> webmaster at nilebasin.com 10/17/04 08:49AM >>>
>We have a duty towards the end-user of the Internet, who is most
commonly
>not as savvy as either the content provider or the hosting company.
>The question here is much broader, individual vs. common good. Though
my
>argument may portray me as a pro-control (with its potential abuses),
I
>believe the right degree of control is needed with guarantees that
whoever
>is the controlling power would not abuse such powers.

It's pretty easy to solve any tension between individual rights and 
common good. You can easily implement "tiered access," where the
private 
contact data is shielded unless a request for it is made in response to

a legitimate purpose by a legitimate requester. You don't make that
information globally available to anyone, for any reason - _that_
is inviting disaster. 

We do indeed have a duty to the end user. In the future, many
of them will have their own domains and as noncommercial entities
have a legitimate need to have their privacy respected. 

I would also point out that all other media respect this norm.
Telephone
line contact data can be withdrawn from public circulation when
individual households are involved. The openness of whois data
evolved as a historical accident. We need to fix that problem. 

--MM