VeriSign’s renewal of the .net contract

[Stephan Scott <tagscott78@xxxxxxxxx>]

To whom it may concern:

I am a concerned citizen of the US and the internet who would like to voice
my objections to the comments filed by the Intellectual Property
Constituency, available here:

http://forum.icann.org/lists/net-agreement-renewal/pdfTeYfTqqAOg.pdf

==

1. DOMAIN SEIZURES DON'T WORK AND ARE DISPROPORTIONATE

The past year has seen ample evidence that domain seizures don't work. The
extrajudicial, streamlined rough justice that the IPC and its members
advocate resulted in the erroneous seizure of 80,000 websites and their
replacement with an incorrect warning that they had previously hosted child
pornography.

http://boingboing.net/2011/02/17/dhs-erroneously-seiz.html

Meanwhile, practically every site seized went back up immediately. Of
course, some of the seized sites had been found legal in their local courts,
so it's not surprising:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/do-domain-seizures-keep-streaming-sites-down.ars

Site operators accused of copyright infringement should be sued in the
appropriate courts, which can issue injunctions during or after the
proceeding, on the basis of evidence. It is not appropriate to ask Verisign
to adjudicate technically complex copyright claims. The outcome will be
similar to what we've seen already: overreaching claims, seizures of
legitimate sites, and a shoot-first, ask-questions-later approach
characteristic of the IPC's members.

==

2. PRIVATE DOMAIN REGISTRATION IS A FEATURE, NOT A BUG

Unlike Happy Mutants or the IPC, many domain registrants are private
individuals, lacking a commercial office, PO box or other address for use in
domain registration. Compelling registrars to publish their customers' home
addresses on the public Internet isn't a "best practice" -- it's a privacy
disaster in the making, a gift to identity thieves and stalkers, and
anything but common sense. We don't publish our home addresses on the
Internet, and neither do the people who pay the bills at the IPC. Why should
everyone else be required to, just to save the IPC's members the trouble of
securing a court order when they believe their rights are being infringed?

==

For these reasons, I ask that you disregard the comments of the IPC in their
entirety.

Thank you,

Stephan Scott


PS. thanks to Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing for the body of this message.