We are strong believers in the right to privacy. It’s not an afterthought and as I’ve said in the past, privacy and security go hand in hand.
For more than a year I’ve been involved in an ICANN working group which is tasked with examining whois privacy and proxy services and coming up with an accreditation system. A few weeks ago that group published its initial report.
While some aspects of the report aren’t problematic, there are other areas which do concern me deeply. And there are some proposals still on the table that are, for lack of a better word, plain nuts.
In common with other registrars and service providers Blacknight does not want to be tasked with judging our clients or exposing their personal details or putting any of them at risk. Just because a person or entity chooses to use whois privacy does not mean they are “criminal”. It’s more to do with the current failings of “whois” within the ICANN controlled gTLD space. ICANN has a fundamental issue with privacy and simply does not understand it. More often than not ICANN policies and contracts cater more for intellectual property interests or law enforcement than they do for the average user. And yes, the people pushing IP and LEA interests will happily tell us all that they’re doing so in the “consumer interest”.
So several weeks ago we joined with other players in the space to setup a campaign to raise awareness about the current ICANN policy proposals and to encourage those impacted by them to get involved.
Today we issued a press release with more details.
If you’d like to find out more please visit the campaign site.