> Il 29 maggio 2018 alle 22.00 "Ronald F. Guilmette" <r...@tristatelogic.com> 
> ha scritto:
> As I understand it, the binding contractual obligations which all individual
> domain name registrants have committed to include the requirment to provide
> accurate WHOIS data, with the understanding that this information will be
> published.

It is illegal to require people in a contract to agree to supply or publish 
their data if they want to receive a service, unless you can prove that it 
would not be in any way practically possible to supply the service without 
receiving and/or publishing those data (and I stress: practically, not by 
policy). In this case, you can argue that it is necessary for the users to 
supply their information, for example to be able to pay and get an invoice, but 
publishing it is another matter: there is really no argument to support the 
idea that the DNS cannot technically work without Whois.

So, at this point in time, any contractual clause by anyone (ICANN, registry, 
registrar...) requiring a EU citizen to agree to publish data in Whois is (very 
likely to be) void in Europe.

> Also and similarly, as I understand it, domain name registrars and registries
> (with the exception of the ccTLDs) have all contractually committed themselves
> (to ICANN) to actually publish this data.

And similarly, those provisions are now void in Europe.

> Could someone please explain to me then how these pre-existing contractual
> obligations somehow fall outside of the exception stated in GDPR Art 6 I c?
> 
> In what sense are these pre-existing contractual obligations not "legal
> obligations", as defined, presumably, within the GDPR framework?

Because a "legal obligation" can only be imposed by a law-making body, i.e. the 
European or national parliament. Contracts are not laws, and private parties 
cannot make, change, ignore, grant exemptions from, or enforce laws. Whenever 
you have a public registry in Europe, you have a national or European law that 
creates it, and thus bypasses the privacy laws. So what you should actually do 
is to lobby the European Parliament to pass a regulation that institutes a 
public registry of domain name owners - then it would work.

Regards,
-- 

Vittorio Bertola | Head of Policy & Innovation, Open-Xchange
vittorio.bert...@open-xchange.com
Office @ Via Treviso 12, 10144 Torino, Italy

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