I agree, but the flipside for me is the various shitheels who use domain privacy to avoid accountability for bad behavior. Spammers, squatters, criminals, network abusers.

Is there some sort of middle ground where somebody like Amnesty International is one of the domain privacy providers? And another is, say, the Society of Professional Journalists? I would totally trust well-established organizations like that to make reasonable decisions about when to keep information private.

You're going to have to get used to equality between people you do like and people you don't like, if you want people you do like to have rights and privacy.

That's a bold claim. But a) criminality and abuse go beyond "things wpietri does't like". And b), you haven't supported the claim, so I suspect it's bold and wrong.

But wouldn't spammers and scammers simply use bogus WHOIS information anyway?

Yep, it's not like they care about having the domain a year later after they already used it for spam and it is banned everywhere.

Not only that, by the time the authorities catch up to the lawbreakers they'll have seized the domain regardless of whether it has accurate whois data. You can't threaten wrongdoers with something they're already subject to. The penalty is only a penalty to innocent people.

Depends on the spammers and the scammers, and the strictness of the verification policy. It's relatively easy to verify physical addresses and phone numbers, and quite a number of criminals are not particularly sharp.

No measure eliminates crime, but some do reduce it.

I just wrote to ICANN with their basically arguing that, although I used minorities in the US as an example.

There has got to be a few radfems who have top level domains too. Say what you want about their politics but they are excellent at wiping up a shit storm.

Is "wiping" really the verb you intended there? I would have thought "whipping" with "up a... storm" but maybe "storm" should be "stain" instead?

You obviously can't count on people to 'do the right thing', ICANN in this case, so what basis for litigation is there here? I would think some case could be brought, espcially in demanding providers to turn over domain owner information without a court order (if that's what they are asking), they seem to certainly be overreaching.

"Not as bad as Facebook regarding privacy" is not a badge of honor.