A Plea for Privacy

[Mc Kiernan Daniel Kian <Mc_Kiernan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sirs and mesdames—

I wish to discourage strongly any changes to the rules concerning 
domain registration that would require personal information to be 
revealed without a court order.
I am registered holder of several Internet domains; none has been nor 
is presently being used for "commercial" services; none was acquired 
for resale; none is intended to divert traffic by resemblance to 
another domain name. (And my domain names that most resemble those of 
others are not register using a proxy service!)
When the use of proxy services began, I had mixed feelings about it. 
But that was years ago, and our use of the Internet has evolved in the 
context of proxies being permitted.  Many people would face 
significant costs if proxies were now effectively disallowed.
The vast majority of those who would bear those costs are not 
violators of trademarks nor of other intellectual property.  Those who 
are _willful_ violators would be unlikely to have qualms about using 
proxies that did not admit to being proxies, or aliases that did not 
admit to being aliases.
Innocent third parties should simply not be made to bear any increased 
costs of protecting intellectual property; and, in this case, those 
whose costs of defending their property were lowered would not find 
them _much_ lowered!
(To illustrate an example of someone who could be significantly 
victimized by a change, consider a woman operating a small business 
from her home, on a shoe-string budget.)