[governance] Re: [WSIS CS-Plenary] ICANN/ITU "legitimacy"

[Tom Vest]

On Apr 10, 2005, at 2:02 PM, Milton Mueller wrote:

> Second, ICANN's WHOIS data requirements are designed to sacrifice
> legitimate privacy rights regarding personal contact data in order to
> make it possible for law enforcement, trademark and copyright lawyers 
> to
> engage in surveillance. This is mostly a violation of privacy, but as 
> we
> know privacy violations can have a chilling effect on speech.

Hi Milton,

This doesn't strike me as a defensible analogy. WHOIS requirements 
don't apply to Internet users; they apply to Internet *producers*, 
i.e., entities that wish to participate in and add to the Internet's 
physical and logical architecture. The fact that some producers are 
sole proprietors (many of whom outsource all of the actual 
infrastructure requirements to a third party) shouldn't earn them a 
complete pass, and shouldn't obscure this basic functional distinction.

It seems to that linking speech to identity is only problematic in 
jurisdictions where speech is not valued AND means of expression are 
strictly controlled. Where freedom of speech is valued, speaking "for 
attribution" should be taken as the main case, and anonymous speech the 
exception. Absent tight controls on means, there are ample mechanisms 
for speaking "without attribution"  that don't require the wholesale 
anonymization of the Internet.

I'm not a lawyer, but my cursory reading of US legal precedents 
suggests that sole proprietorships don't enjoy privacy rights that 
trump requirements to originate legal documents. Why should the 
Internet be different?

Regards,

Tom Vest, PCH