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WHOIS privacy
- To: comments-ppsai-initial-05may15@xxxxxxxxx
- Subject: WHOIS privacy
- From: Deborah Taylor-Pearce <dtp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2015 14:16:07 -0700
Dear ICANN --
Regarding the proposed rules governing companies that provide WHOIS
privacy services (as set forth in the Privacy and Policy Services
Accreditation Issues Policy document):
I am an independent scholar who has registered several dot-com
websites, the first of which launched in 2004. All are experimental
scholarly hybrids which embrace what has been called the "emerging
Wild West in academic publishing."
As a pioneering content creator in this Wild-West netscape, I am
always on the lookout for new business models that might help defray
the exorbitant costs of doing and publishing post-doctoral, archival
research.
In order to avoid potential conflicts of interest, protect the
integrity of my scholarship, and maintain creative control over my
intellectual property, I do not accept advertising or seek
crowdfunding or other investors, but I *do* solicit donations, and may
one day sell swag to make ends meet. To this extent, my scholarly
websites are values-driven (rather than profit-driven) commercial
enterprises -- in many ways, "more NON-PROFIT than many
not-for-profits" (to quote one of my favorite arts organizations, yet
another struggling social business).
Preferring to research, write, design, and code, I don't have time to
engage in aggressive marketing campaigns, and the few donations I
receive from appreciative vsitors to my websites don't even begin to
pay the bills.
And yet, because of this modest entrepreneurial activity, it is now
proposed that I -- a "sole proprietor," who gives away my intellectual
property -- be treated as though I were Wal-Mart or Citibank or part
of the thriving Big Commerce juggernaut on the Web. All of these
dot-com entities have corporate IT departments and employees who are
paid to be WHOIS registrants and interact with the public using
corporate addresses and phone numbers which shield them personally
from the threats of complainants.
I have no such protective bureaucracy in place.
My dot-com identity is inseparable from my personal identity, and
while I agree that both ought to be accountable to their publics, I
also believe that both should be able to control public access to
confidential information. But under the new rule for privacy providers
that ICANN is considering, the human person will end up with fewer
rights to privacy and due process than the corporate person.
I have been using a WHOIS privacy service since March 2006, when I was
first contacted by a stalker who accessed my personal contact data
from the WHOIS database. Clearly, no proxy registration service can
guarantee my online privacy 100%, but such a service is indispensable
in protecting website owners like me from harassment, intimidation and
identity theft. After so many years running widely-visited scholarly
websites with an international following, I have had to become a
zealous defender of my personal data. I not only rely on a WHOIS
protection service for this, but I also refuse to participate in
social media, in order that I can keep my private life private and,
for the most part, off-line. This frees me to speak out on
controversial issues -- such as gun rights, having recently produced a
digital edition of the first debate over gun control in America,
printed in 1684, for one of my dot-com websites -- which make me a
target for all manner of disgruntled individuals trolling the Internet.
After years of prudently practicing safe computing, I am alarmed to
learn that special interests, seeking unrestricted access to domain
holders of websites even vaguely associated with "commercial
activity," want to out me to the world ... and damn the consequences.
This should not be allowed.
I urge you to maintain the *status quo*, whereby my confidential
information is protected by a WHOIS privacy service and can not be
revealed to others, whatever their interests in me, without a court order.
Thank you.
Deborah Taylor-Pearce, PhD
Independent Scholar and Communications Research & Design Consultant
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