On Fri, 2021-09-24 at 12:36 -0400, Bill Cole via mailop wrote: > Owning an operational domain name makes you a public person. [...] > In many places (including the US and at least some European > countries) you can only own land if your 'title' to that land is > registered with the government in an open public record.
In principle, YES! However, there are limitations and safeguards in place, some of which historical and unintentional, that prevent abuse of that open and public record. First, "open." Here in Ontario, where I have write-privilege on the Land Registry (I register deeds, mortgages, and all sorts of other instruments for my clients), the cost of accessing the record is substantial enough to dissuade the equivalent of a spammer accessing the WHOIS record. Historically, the openness of the record was limited because it had to be physically consulted at the local registry office. With the migration to electronic records and remote access, an unintentional and steep (approximately $40/record) paywall has been introduced. The government has given a way too generous contract to the IT company that developed and operates the database (and cash most of that paywall revenue). I would argue that read-access should be completely free of charge and with a public API, much like the WHOIS record, however, see the third point below why it is not a good idea. Second, even in the Land Registry I can obfuscate the name of the ultimate individual in control/ownership with a few legal tools: I can register land in the name of a trust or a corporation. In those cases, the contact details that can be found publicly are for some proxy trustees or directors, but the names of the beneficiaries / shareholders remain private, like the many privacy services offered with domain name registration. In recent years (since 2017) I must disclose beneficial ownership to the Ministry of Finance, but that is solely for taxation purpose and the information is not public. Third, purpose. The purpose of the land registry, and of the WHOIS database, are matching owners with their responsibility. If it was possible to restrict usage of the WHOIS data for the sole purpose of making the owner responsible for the land/domain, I would be against the obfuscation of the ultimate owners behind privacy services. However, because it is not possible, having a proxy service that forwards legitimate messages to the owner while blocking out spammers and scammers of all sorts is a welcome element in the system. I do not miss the snailmail spam from the nineties, addressed to my WHOIS contact details, selling directory entries or trying to fool me into migrating my domains to their registry. We all recognize a spammer when we see one, and yet it is so difficult to root them out! -- Yuval Levy, JD, MBA, CFA Ontario-licensed lawyer _______________________________________________ mailop mailing list mailop@mailop.org https://list.mailop.org/listinfo/mailop
