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ICANN Closes Comment Period for Proposed WHOIS Changes

Computer and Internet   Write Comment 11th July, 2015

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The comment period for proposed changes to ICANN’s WHOIS privacy and proxy service rules closed this week, with a huge public response that may force changes to the proposal. The comment period closed with 11,464 comments, just shy of the record 12,757 comments posted to the .xxx domain forum.

The rule changes would see any “commercial” website barred from proxy and privacy services, with “commercial” defined as any site that accepts money. This would in theory reveal the personal address and other information of small sites run from people’s homes, as well as lump fund-raising and charity sites in with for-profit businesses. They are opposed by advocacy websites Save Domain Privacy and Respect Our Privacy, as well as some service providers and, apparently, thousands of individuals. Supporters of the changes include Facebook, brand protection company MarkMonitor, and the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition, The Register reports.

Mark Jeftovic , easyDNS CEO, commented on his company’s blog, noting that easyDNS used to oppose domain privacy, and refuse to offer it to customers. Persistent customers won Jeftovic and easyDNS over, however, and he says that “once we did change directions and offer Whois Privacy, we found that doing so had absolutely no material effect on occurrences of net abuse, known cases of cybercrime or any other form of civil misdeed such as copyright violations or intellectual property infringement.”

Since the rules and oversight mechanisms around providing and confirming identity are not changing, privacy advocates argue, malicious registrants will simply provide fake information, rendering the “increased transparency” completely useless for enforcing intellectual property rights. Jeftovic also argues that individual registrants often do not even realize how the WHOIS listing works, further exposing them to privacy risks. This argument seems to be strengthened by the fact that the proposals sat largely unnoticed for over a month between the working group’s report dropping and the deluge of comments.

Delay of ICANN Authority Transfer Possible

The WHOIS privacy issue is one of several ICANN is hoping to resolve ahead of a transfer from US to international stewardship. The current ICANN contract with the US, which historically oversees and contracts out the domain system to ICANN, expires in September.

The head of the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, Larry Strickling, warned a congressional panel on Wednesday that the extension it gives to ICANN’s contract will have to run through July 2016 or longer.


ICANN President and CEO Fadi Chehadé expressed optimism in June that the transition would be complete by the US Presidential election in November 2016. Chehadé at the time admitted that an extension beyond September would be necessary, and that ICANN’s transition proposal may not be ready until the end of 2015.

In the meantime, the US House of Representatives passed the DOTCOM Act, which the Washington Post reports applies accountability requirements to the transition process.

Source:http://www.thewhir.com