Draft Legislation Would Weaken Whois Privacy, Georgia Tech's Mueller Says
Special interests are pushing legislation to weaken Whois registrants’ privacy rights in favor of maximizing the monetization of personal information, Georgia Tech scholar Milton Mueller blogged Wednesday. Congress' draft legislation apparently would supplant ICANN’s expedited policy development process (see 1807110041).…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
ICANN is gathering stakeholder input through the process to develop a framework that would let third-parties access nonpublic domain registry data. Companies like Domain Tools stand to benefit from the draft legislation, which would allow them to harvest raw data for free, Mueller said: “By negating domain registrants’ privacy rights, they are able to monetize the sale of their personal information -- and unlike Google, Facebook and others who monetize personal information, there is no service offered in exchange, no contract, no ability to opt out.” Domain Tools didn’t comment.