Ruling on '.us' Domain Raises Privacy Issues

stevo · Mar 4, 2005

Just read on Yahoo

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm.../washpost/20050304/tc_washpost/a7251_2005mar4

mark · Mar 4, 2005

interesting development. wonder how many of those with private registrations are going to end up losing them for failure to make their registrations public?

darrenl · Mar 5, 2005

Look at the good side, all people who are not US citizens or businesses will lose their .US and it will go to the proper American citizen.

Mr Webname · Mar 5, 2005

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers -- the nonprofit body responsible for worldwide generic domains like .com, .net and .org -- has been debating a change to public-listing rules for several years. General counsel John Jeffrey said ICANN (news - web sites) takes no official position on the .us policy change, and had no comment on whether a similar ruling could be forthcoming on generic domains.

Why doesn't that surprise me.

stevo · Mar 6, 2005

Darren06 said:
Look at the good side, all people who are not US citizens or businesses will lose their .US and it will go to the proper American citizen.

I volunteer to "hold" any excellent .us domains which may be in jeopardy.

Dave Zan · Mar 8, 2005

Network Solutions and GoDaddy said they make customer information available to official parties, but keep it hidden from casual seekers. "It's not intended to be Switzerland. It's just intended to give law-abiding citizens a right to privacy," Parsons said.

GoDaddy has provided proxy services for 23,000 of the 311,000 .us addresses it has sold, according to the company. Network Solutions, based in Herndon, Va., has sold roughly 78,000 .us addresses and acts as a proxy for 2,500 of them, according to chief executive Champ Mitchell.

Mitchell said that although .us addresses are a "minuscule" part of the company's business, Network Solutions will "do everything in its power" to protect the privacy of its hundreds of thousands of proxy customers in all domains.

Neither company would make any of its proxy customers available for immediate comment. Parsons said he has been discussing the policy on his blog at www.bobparsons.com and that some users have e-mailed him expressing fear that their personal data will be made public.

Mitchell and Parsons said they will appeal to the Commerce Department and to Congress to overturn the decision before it takes full effect in January.