NameCheap sent out an email about the same ICANN proposal a few days ago. Unfortunately, the NameCheap email focused almost exclusively on the lack of privacy for businesses. It merely glossed over the more important issues, such as ambiguity about what counts as a a business, as well as the requirement that privacy services disclose their customer's identities to anyone who asks.
This is bad. Very bad. The NameCheap email probably gave a lot of people the wrong first impression about what ICANN's proposal really means. Seriously, it sounded like they were just complaining about their bottom line. And since a lot more people use NameCheap than NearlyFreeSpeech, not many people are going to read the more thorough analysis and urgent call to action that the NearlyFreeSpeech article contains.
If anyone around you has read the NameCheap email, please tell them to forget about it. Tell them to read this article instead.
>"Commercial activity" casts a wide net, which means a vast number of domain holders will be affected. Your privacy provider could be forced to publish your contact data in WHOIS or give it out to anyone who complains about your website, without due process. Why should a small business owner have to publicize her home address just to have a website?
>We think your privacy should be protected, regardless of whether your website is personal or commercial, and your confidential info should not be revealed without due process.
I can't say that it "glosses over what counts as a business" or the requirement to disclose customer identities.
Sure, their bottom line is at stake, but it didn't feel to me that that's all this is about.
> Under new guidelines proposed by MarkMonitor and other organizations who represent the same industries that backed SOPA, domain holders with sites associated to "commercial activity" will no longer be able to protect their private information with WHOIS protection services.
Maybe it's just me, but this gives the impression that the remainder of the paragraph only applies to sites associated with commercial activity. This impression is reinforced by the last sentence, which again focuses only on commercial activity.
The email does mention "without due process", but that's pretty vague. The landing page of their petition site is slightly more informative, as it says:
> Let ICANN know that you object to any release of personal information without a court order.
But even this is misleading. The issue is NOT that ICANN will release your information without a court order. The issue is that ICANN wants to force third parties to have weak privacy policies. Now that sounds ridiculous, which it should, because it is indeed a ridiculous demand.
I haven't seen the NameCheap email, but I noticed that the savedomainprivacy.org petition contains:
That privacy providers should not be forced to reveal my private information without verifiable evidence of wrongdoing
Which sounds goods when you first read it. However, I think that wording might be interpreted by ICANN as an endorsement of privacy providers being the ones to decide what is "wrongdoing" and when registrant details get published or disclosed to requesters. Many people don't want information being published or disclosed unless there is a court order, subpoena, etc.
Perhaps the common point would be: pay close attention to what the different parties are proposing and make sure it is exactly what you want before you follow their lead.
This is bad. Very bad. The NameCheap email probably gave a lot of people the wrong first impression about what ICANN's proposal really means. Seriously, it sounded like they were just complaining about their bottom line. And since a lot more people use NameCheap than NearlyFreeSpeech, not many people are going to read the more thorough analysis and urgent call to action that the NearlyFreeSpeech article contains.
If anyone around you has read the NameCheap email, please tell them to forget about it. Tell them to read this article instead.