New domain rules are a BAD idea

[alan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

The idea that everyone who has a "commercial" domain should not be able to
keep registration information private is an incredibly bad idea.

The current state of the web is that anyone who is not a white male
conservative who expresses an unpopular opinion is subject to attack.
Making their registration information public is just asking for them to be
abused at their home or office. (I have friends who have been SWATed at
home because they dared be female and have an opinion.)

Having a public address also gets you on every mailing list from anyone
sleazy enough to add mailing addresses to their bulk mail campaigns. I get
plenty of crap directed to me through my domain registrations that are in
the clear. This will only intensify this as marketers figure out that
there will be many more e-mail addresses for them to harvest.

The people (and I use that term loosely) that proposed this idea for you
are known for issuing bogus take down requests and specious legal threats.
They are backed by media companies who believe that the right to protest
$10 movies outweighs the rights of EVERYONE else. Markmonitor is trying to
make their job easier by making everyone else's life less secure.

I know you want to deal with the problem of bogus registration
information, but this is not a good way to do it. You will endanger
people, both legally and physically, to appease copyright trolls.

"Something must be done. This is something, therefore we must do it." is a
bad way to run public policy.