If ICANN believed "web surfers have a right to see who owns the domain" it would ban DNS privacy services rather than enacting this bullshit.

I actually think the rights of web surfers are far more infringed upon by being unable to access a website because the contact at the organisation that built and paid for it was on holiday or ignored an email (or possibly didn't even see it because the spam filter thought it looked like a phishing attempt)

I cannot believe you are defending this.

And for the record, as a domain owner I actually don't think you necessarily have a right to email me or the non-technical administrative contacts to try to sell us similar domains or persuade me to switch to your dodgy registrar. Even if I don't provide an email address there's always the option of taking it up with the registrar if there's a genuine legal issue with the domain or what it points to.

Notahacker, I actually wasn't defending it at all. Just offering another perspective for argument's sake. ;)

If we even allow anyone to view a whois record, then should it be accurate? So, why not just get rid of whois entirely if it's going to either contain false information or no information at all?

I totally agree with you that people shouldn't ben able to email you at-will, just trying to sell you something, sell you a similar domain, or try to switch you into moving to another registrar. (Generally those would fall under email spam, anyway?)

There are other reasons why people need to contact site owners, though. Like because of DMCA requests, or maybe even their site is broken, contact form on site broken, or something similar.

But again, if the whois data is going to be inaccurate, missing, or just false then why even have it in the first place?

As someone who owns a personal website/domain -- not a business one -- I have never been legitimately contacted by visitors via the whois info; but now that I switched away from whois-privacy service I get several letters a week, 2-3 robocalls a day, and hundreds of spam emails a week from bots that spam legitimate whois contacts.

I never understood why the .com (.net, .org etc.) domains provide the registrant information via port 43. Denic for example only provides information about Tech-C und Zone-C. The other information are behind a Captcha.

I don't think there are any generic rights of a web surfer: most of the web is private property, and the rights set by some EULA.

I also don't see any obvious reason for why this particular technical problem would count as violating the users rights by denying access and others would not. So for instance you can claim that broken dns records violates the users rights by denying access, but then you also must agree that a broken device driver is violating the users rights of access. Have fun with that.

For the avoidance of doubt I'm not suggesting web surfers actually have or should have any legally valid right to browse a particular piece of content.

But if you asked me to choose between a 'right' to access a website the owner had intended to make available to me or a 'right' to reach the owner's administrative contact, I think I'd consider the former more important. Then again, I'm not a lawyer, a phisher or a spammer, so ICANN's policy change isn't really meant for me.

> Should web surfers have to right to see who owns a domain (via whois) even if the domain owner doesn't publish that info on the site?

By "who owns", this means, "give out their name, address, phone number and e-mail address."

So in that context, that depends. If they are a business, then yes. There should be corporate contact information there.

If they are a non-commercial hobbyist site, then no. Absolutely not. Think about the incredible harm this would have on stalking victims. Or how about enabling more swatters?

Like domain registrars and certificate authorities; domain proxy services are just another tax on citizens wanting to participate on the web.

The problem is the WAP doesn't even achieve this goal, it is easily circumvented..

Precisely. The only thing it verifies the "accuracy" of is an email address, which is in no way tied to identity.

There is an upside to it, but what about the value of anonymity, for example for a whistle-blower or for political speech?

I think the issue is that ICANN belives it has the right to contact information to the people it has granted a licence of a domain. I believe Whois information isn't really intended for the end users, but rather the administrators of the DNS system.