Whois, in or out?

by Claudia Sonea

The Internet will eventually lead to the trespassing the frail terrain of human privacy. If there isn't created a global law for the Internet and its limits, people lives will be completely exposed to anyone who has the right programs. Such a program is Whois, a database with information such as names and phone numbers on the owners of millions of ".com" and other Internet addresses. The opinions on the matter are different, some- those that benefit by giving domain name owners more options when they register, such as designating third-party agents- plead for keeping it. Among them are the law-enforcement officials, trademark lawyers, journalists and spammers. Tech industry lawyer Mark Bohannon says it helps them to discover the responsible for theft and fraud. Marilyn Cade, a former AT&T executive stands up for keeping the database and do further study on it, in order to assure that the purpose of those registering is not professional, but rather personal. At the opposite pole are the privacy advocates like Ross Rader, a member of ICANN's generic names council and the sunset proposal's chief sponsor. ICANN stands for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and fulfills the role of an Internet watchdog, while sunset is a project that involves the scrapping of the program with the motivation that people shouldn't share personal information only to have a web site. In fact, Whois was created by researchers from government and universities with the purpose of sharing personal details in order to help at solving technical issues. Nowadays it is used differently, by different persons: preventing fraud and hacking by law-enforcement officials and Internet service providers; to chase those who don't respect trademark and copyright; journalist to find Web sites owners, while spammers simply get email addresses for sending advertise or different stupid things. Meanwhile, the ones without any mean of protection are still the users, the regular ones that expect more privacy and anonymity. Somehow this program contradicts the European privacy laws that are stricter than in US. Vint Cerf, ICANN's chairman says that the main questions remain on who will be allowed to see the information and also how can privacy be maintained in the same time with the accuracy of it. All in all, the sunset project seems far away from being accepted and more and more people are in favor of keeping it, of course with the mention that changes have to take place. Surf on, but carefully to where you apply and what information you release.

by Claudia Sonea for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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Posted by: Jana Kalicka