whois privacy protection

[Ed Seaford <ed.seaford@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear GNSO,

I am the Commercial Director for a Corporate Domain Name Management company 
called Web IP.  We represent the interests of many of Australia's largest 
corporate brands, including the likes of News limited, Toshiba, Mercedes-Benz 
to name a few.  One of the biggest challenges our clients face is 
cyber-squatting through gTLD domain names.   We make exhaustive attempts to 
identify cybersquatters but whenever we come up against privacy protection it 
is almost impossible to get their details unless we get a subpoena through the 
courts, which is totally unreasonable when our client's IP is obviously being 
compromised.  This precludes any avenue to amicably resolve an issue, and only 
leaves us with one option - going through the courts, at our expense.

Our experience is that people use the privacy service to hide their details 
because of the questionable nature of the registration.  Of the hundreds of 
corporate brands we have on our books (and tens of thousands of domain names), 
we have around a dozen domain names on privacy protection (for merger 
purposes).  However, when we conduct brand audits across the gTLD space we will 
see hundreds of cyber squatters flagrantly sitting on our client's brands, and 
using privacy protection to avoid being identified.    We see it as a tool that 
is predominantly being used for dubious purposes.

 From our experience, privacy protection is a tool that be used for the 
following activity:


-          Cybersquatting;

-          Typosquatting;

-          Phishing domain name platforms;

-          Domain names that host sites that sale counterfeit goods; and

-          Domain names that host sites that defame or damage reputation 
through slanderous or provocative content.

We can provide examples of such activity (on approval from our clients) if 
requested.

We also don't understand why we have a whois policy on gTLD domain names, if 
they can simply be hidden on request.  It makes the policy redundant in many 
ways and we do question the rationale.

For domainers and people within the industry - they love privacy protection, 
and are the biggest voices in keeping this mechanism.... but I feel the victims 
of this policy are the legitimate brands who are more freely targeted as a 
result of privacy protection.  As they are not a part of the domain name 
industry, and do not participate in these forums, their voices are not heard.  
Having a big portfolio of corporate clients, we see this problem on a broader 
scale across multiple brands and businesses.  It (privacy protection) is a real 
problem, is being misused and should be retired.

Regards,

Edward Seaford
Commercial Team
T: (03) 9820 0466 | F: (03) 9820 5834 | M: 0405 301 250
Suite 107, 434 St Kilda Rd, Melbourne, VIC 3004

W: www.webip.com.au<http://www.webip.com.au/> E: 
ed.seaford@xxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:ed.seaford@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

[cid:345D626B-F704-474F-939D-9A4A146C6745@BoB]<http://www.webip.com.au/>        
   [cid:60E20E23-2D81-4971-B1D8-6B7A36AD1836@BoB] 
<https://twitter.com/WebIPAustralia> 
[cid:CA59E408-E240-4E71-8D16-6255930783EE@BoB] 
<http://www.facebook.com/WebIPAustralia> 
[cid:BDB2DBB2-F982-4646-B95C-EC28CA48CA9D@BoB] 
<http://www.linkedin.com/company/web-ip> 
[cid:FF0A3E57-D70C-4ABB-B330-F0863684C782@BoB] 
<http://www.youtube.com/user/webipvideos> 
[cid:243D09F4-0F9E-4D51-8A6B-EA429AC63794@BoB]
<http://www.webip.com.au/blog/>
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