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Confessions of an Ex-Opponent of Whois Privacy

• oldmanjay 11y ago
  Essentially, the opposition was based on optimizing the handling of pathological cases - how to deal with abusers was considered more important than how to provide customers with the tools they wanted. This shows up all over society, from terrorism to 'think of the children', and any positive effects are nearly always swamped by the deleterious ones brought about by the perverse incentives created. Shame that people don't see this ahead of time.
  • JoshTriplett 11y ago
    People do, but those people are ignored. The voice of reason is almost always drowned out by the voice of panic and outrage. Not least of which because the panic and outrage describes consequences that sound applicable to the person hearing them (or their family), while the voice of reason explains problems that sound like they affect other people. ("if you have nothing to hide" is one of many instances of this pattern; having something to hide sounds like something that only affects other people.)
  • Spivak 11y ago
    If you read this in a different context you could be supporting the exact opposite view. Both sides are concerned with abusers and protecting customers but they have opposite views about who the customers and abusers are.
• vitd 11y ago
  I'm glad someone wrote this up. I would love to be able to control who has access to my WhoIS record and to know when it's been queried and for what purpose. The enormous amount of spam and even physical junk mail that comes from having a WhoIs entry is ridiculous. I once got a credit card offer addressed to me (male) and the woman at my ISP who was the admin contact. Luckily my wife thought it was amusing, but it could have been a huge fight if she hadn't understood.