Domain Privacy is a right and a requirement

[Eric Newcomb <eric.newcomb@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear ICANN

I am writing as a private citizen concerned that your consideration of the
removal of protections against online abuse and harassment end now.

Requiring all commercial domains to publish the domain owner's private
information is a violation of the trust we have put in your organization,
and serves no practical purpose. The claims form the entertainment industry
that it will make prosecution of copyright offenders is ludicrous at best,
as that industry already has viable tools at its disposal, both  legal and
quasi-legal, that it uses with impunity, even to the point of suing people
who don't even own computers for digital distribution of copyrighted
materials, and suing entire blocks of IP addresses. This industry has shown
itself willing to go after innocent people to collect money it is not owed
and has no right to, using its vast team of attorneys to force innocent
people into legal battles that normal people cannot afford. This causes
people to settle just to avoid bankruptcy, whether these people have ever
touched a computer in their lives. The industry then touts each of these
settlements as proof that piracy is rampant, which is not borne out by the
facts.

Given these unfair and aggressive and dishonest tactics, you are destroying
online freedom in enacting these new rules. Consider that if I own a
domain, and on that domain I quote an interview with Jack Kerouac or Linus
Torvalds, the publisher of that original article can make accusations of
copyright infringement, and it falls on me to pay the legal costs to prove
fair use. If that domain so much as asks for donations to help defray
hosting costs, it is considered commercial under US law, and subject to
these new regulations. So if I quote an article of interest in a blog post,
and if I ask for donations, I am immediately subject to lawsuits under your
new rules that I cannot afford, *even though under the law I am committing
no crime or copyright violation under fair use laws*. But asking for
donations does not equate to receiving donations, and in fact I ask for
donations on all my blogs, but have yet to receive a single dime from those
blogs. They are a labor of love. I rely on the requirement of a court order
or subpoena to protect me from copyright abuse.

If you enact these new regulations, I will be forced to protect myself by
simply not publishing my blogs, as they often quote other works in
referencing my sources or demonstrating critical points. And I am only one
of many, many thousands of honest people relying on protections in place to
keep us from being bankrupted by the overzealous and unscrupulous conduct
of an industry that has historically violated national laws (ie flooding
file sharing sites with viruses, 1999-2001, sued entire blocks of IP
addresses forcing innocent people into bankruptcy, and other less honorable
actions) to enrich its own coffers.

I implore you on behalf of all private citizens trying to just spend a
little less doing what they love, to keep the current rules in place. You
do not serve the Internet by changing these rules, only the richest of its
users.

Eric Newcomb
eric.newcomb@xxxxxxxxx