Circle ID has a post that refers to a Wall Street Journal article on Whois privacy. ICAAN and CIRA are now trying to figure out how to deal with this issue.

Now, one can do a whois inquiry and find out the name and contact information for the owner of any domain name. That has raised privacy concerns. Some feel that information should not be made public.

Even though I support privacy principles in general, and advise clients on privacy issues, I disagree with a total ban on the ability to find that information.

First, privacy concepts apply to individuals, not corporations or other other non-human entities. So at the most any publication ban should be only for individuals that own domains.

Second, I have a real problem if I as a lawyer can’t look up the owners of domain names. It is often necessary to know who a site owner is to deal with situations where a site has, for example, violated trade-mark or copyright or has defamed a client. Or a client may simply want to contact a domain owner to see if they are interested in selling a site.

The Wall Street Journal article mentions how the Red Cross used whois information to shut down sites that were fraudulently trying to collect money for Katrina victims.

Read the CircleID post