For some it is a learning curve, they're new to the industry and make a mistake. For others, like Alantron, it's more complex. Many wonder if it is intentional, a long term gaming of the system.

...that's all

I disagree with your arguments on whois privacy. Privacy functions serve a useful and beneficial purpose for registrants with a variety of legitimate interest of not having their private and personal information publicly available to any nutjob. Just as any private individual is entitled to a secret telephone number, they should be able to request a hidden whois for their registrations. Private whois is in fact consumer protection. In fact, more and more registries are moving to or have already implemented a model that allows the registrant data to be partially or completely hidden, including many European ccTLDs and gTLDs. As long as the privacy services are regulated and hold to certain rules of service, privacy does not function as a cover for illegal purposes as the data is still available for legitimate requests.

>Private whois is in fact consumer protection. Many I've spoken to have said the same thing. I'll not impose my views on others. However, if privacy it the most important issue, and I agree that most registrars are moving to privacy whois, then such articles as this become meaningless and whois provides little useful info. So a "broken" whois server really means nothing. In fact I tend to pull "whois" info from Internic as it's backend is off the registries database itself. It provides dates and DNS, less names etc. As for my justification of privacy whois, I think through FaceBook, Twitter, etc, many people have totally rejected the very notion of privacy. And that is a huge mistake. In the case of domain names, use of a POB or Lawyer's office easily satisfies "valid" whois with privacy and yet insure the registrant can be contacted. Of course, as a registrar, I see a lot of evil things going on that most are not aware of simply because they don't spend their day's looking at this stuff like I do. And thus we all become the colateral damage of those acts, for example SOPA. Yes it's all a tradeoff. But from where I'm standing I see an ALL TOO STRONG connection between privacy / fake whois, and legistlative actions that are destroying a free internet. Removal of privacy whois is the best answer I've been able to come up with. And cynic that I am regarding these matters, I can see why there would be support for privacy whois ... It's just creates more and more "need" of special interests, and their fees, to come in and help us out with more rules and policies. The snake eating it's tail .... >nutjobs Bring'm on! Good people have many ways of dealing with nut jobs .... Especially when good people FEARLESSLY work together .... FEAR IS NOT AN OPTION! There are many effective ways to deal with nut jobs .....

Not sure if I follow you here. You are saying a stalking victim can either no longer own a domain name, or should be prepared to meet their stalker fearlessly? You are saying a dissident should fearlessly face the shooting squad of the dictators police force? You are saying anyone interested in publishing controversial content should fearlessly be prepared to continue any tread in real life when those of opposing views come a-knocking? I much rather give them the opportunity to hide their identity or personal details. I can always remove the privacy function if my customer abuses it...

Please read what I said, and I've had this discussion over many years: "use of a POB or Lawyer's office easily satisfies "valid" whois with privacy and yet insure the registrant can be contacted." Other than that my answer is: Yes I am saying that. >You are saying a dissident should fearlessly face >the shooting squad of the dictators police force? And if privacy whois solves this problem, it's only because the dictator wasn't much of a dictator not making use of a packet sniffer on their ISP to see where the content is coming from, and who are consuming that content. The dictator needs to hire more competent people ... And in the case of a ccTLD, DNS server logs provide pretty good localization (ISP identification at a minimum) of traffic to sites which can then be zeroed in on via ISP logs ... Assuming you don't just start with the ISP logs to begin with and look at who it generating the DNS queries for the domain(s) being targeted. In fact this is another of my pet peeves of these debates, people ASSuME that there is security (their packets are "private") within the network (ISP and peers). Which is a very foolish assumption. The idea that privacy whois denies governments observability is ridiculous. This is in fact a foundation that makes SOPA possible, the network IS highly observable and lacks privacy. >I can always remove the privacy function if my customer abuses it… Right, you decide. Got it, thank you for making my point. :) I would also point out, since you suggest you to are a registrar, that the $1 to $2 of revenue generated by each registration and renewal event tends to result in the underlying whois being provided when said registrar faces legal costs regarding a given domain name. This is why (if memory serves) GoDaddy's TOS, for example, allows them to charge the registrant $30 when legal issues arise over their registration. Translation: The "Privacy" in Privacy Whois is too often an illusion. What is it that Chris rock said? "A man is only as loyal as his options." Well, I suggest registrars are only as loyal as an individual registrants profitability .... And the case history for this is extensive. So "fearlessly" also includes the idea that the registrant really knows how the system works, when they need it to work as they expect. And that is not the case .... At least if privacy whois is not an option, the illusions are far less because people then KNOW privacy is PURELY their responsibity and not that of a third party ... Whois decides one minute to the next how "abuse" will be defined ....

Actually let me make this even more simple: You are responsible for you. Problems begin the moment people ignore this rule and expect others to be responsible for them, say in the case of whois "privacy". That is what creates the fear, as I we all KNOW others will NEVER be responsible for us.

I think it requires a level of technical monitoring which ICANN has shown it can't handle. They're not even monitoring at the basic level.