comments on IPC proposal for Verisign's management of .Net domains

[Jon <jfmcconnell@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

To whom it may concern,

I would like to voice my concern, as an internet user and citizen of the
United States, with the proposals being put forth by the Intellectual
Property Constituency (IPC); these recommendations put undue burden on the
managing company, and have the potential to stifle the free speech of .Net
address owners.

The following is a copy-paste of two points which I believe bear repeating.

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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.

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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?

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For these reasons, I would suggest that these proposals be summarily
rejected, and all further proposals from the IPC to be given great scrutiny
prior to serious consideration.

Thank you,
Jon McConnell