Feedback on PPSAI Working Group report

[José Duarte <jlduarte@xxxxxxx>]

​
Hello ICANN and the GNSO council in particular:

I'd like to register my feedback regarding the initial report of the
Privacy & Proxy Services Accreditation Issues Working Group.

First, I must say that the report is extraordinarily well-written and
clearly articulates the issues is was tasked with addressing. I rarely see
reports of such quality, and would love to work with professionals of such
caliber on any project.

My feedback centers on the four Category C questions that
​were ​
solicited for feedback (pages 47-50). My answer to each question is No. I
do not believe it would be just to
​discriminate against commercial efforts and websites with respect to
privacy protections.​

The report notes that a minority of Working Group members argued that
commercial enterprises should be denied the option of private domain
registration. Those members cited existing legal regimes that require
various information about commercial enterprises to be publicly registered
– e.g. a corporate registry.

The inference seemed to be: Real world businesses are required to register
certain details about their identity or stockholders, ergo internet domain
registration of commercial websites should also require such details.

I invite you to contemplate the differences in purpose, context, and legal
nature between (1) the legal registration of business entities, and (2) the
registration of a domain name.

An ethical-political doctrine of *commercial exceptionalism* treats
commercial activity as distinct from everything else humans do. Such
attitudes often treat commerce as having lower moral standing that
religion, government, and non-profit efforts, and view merchants as
deserving less legal protection as the aforementioned domains.

This doctrine has no apparent place in ICANN's purposes with respect to
domain registration and rights of privacy. Further, ICANN is not a
legislative body, and should refrain from doing the work of legislators.
Governments should be free to decide what information commercial entities
are required to disclose, and to whom. In fact, ICANN may feel flattered in
a few years if government corporate registries begin to model the domain
name registration system that ICANN fostered, which seems likely.

In closing, there are many risks in losing privacy protection in the WHOIS
system. I have known people who were stalked across several states. The
internet is a dangerous place. Humans are much more willing to harm people
they can't see than people who are standing in front of them. Stripping
people of privacy people they're selling flowers will impose needless risks
of harm.

Yours,

José L. Duarte
Doctoral Candidate in Social Psychology
Arizona State University

e-mail: jose.duarte@xxxxxxx

Department: http://psychology.clas.asu.edu/