P/P for commercial entities

[Michael Giagnocavo <mgg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

ICANN:
It seems rather overreaching to look into how a name is used to determine if 
it's eligible for privacy and proxy services. But for argument, let's assume 
there's some sort of abuse problem with organizations using DNS to facilitate 
financial transactions. How does banning P/P services help? For real abuse, LE 
can already get involved and get a court order to compel the P/P service to 
provide the contact info. If P/P services are banned, entities seeking privacy 
will just provide misleading contact and payment info. Now when LE gets their 
court order, they have less info to fight such "abuse". Who wins by forcing all 
"commercial" entities to avoid P/P services? Why should I suddenly loose 
capabilities because I engage in "commercial" activity?

In general, ICANN and registrars should not be getting involved in determining 
illegal activity. Focus on making DNS strong and robust, and let governments 
sort it out at a higher level (they already do so, and will continue to do so). 
The trademark issues are complex enough, without starting to throw in other 
"illegal" activity such as virus hosting.

Registrars should have no additional compulsion to assist LEAs at all beyond 
whatever local laws apply to them, and this does not need to be explicitly 
written into the registrar's agreement. If a LEA requests non-notification to a 
customer, the registrar should be allowed to do whatever they wish, and let LE 
sort it out with them. ICANN shouldn't be in the business of making registrars 
make LE jobs generally easier - LE and governments do enough of that already.

We should be happy if a registrar stands up to a bad-acting LEA and wins. If a 
registrar wants to even publicly say they'll illegally resist all LEAs, hey, 
great for them, ICANN should allow them to do so. (The registrar might lose, 
but that's their own problem.) We should not automatically assume LEAs are in 
the right; ICANN should remain neutral.

Slightly thoughtfully,
-Michael