william(at)elan.net wrote:
It matters if we're talking about Tom, John or Susan working for some commercial company and contacting me as part of the activity of that
entity, in that case I'd like to know about the domain and don't want
to see its whois data hidden.
I find it somewhat amusing that the whois record for elan.net refers to a hostmaster role account and a P.O. Box. ;-)
I do agree that a "one size fits all" rule rarely fits all situations. Do I support anonymous registrations for non-commercial sites as long as they can still be contacted? Yes. Do I support them for large corporations? Not necessarily. Do I support the right of end users to filter their mail any way they choose? Sure. Do I support the right of a provider to filter their user's mail any way they choose? Not necessarily.
Unfortunately, there isn't a perfect way to tell if a site is commercial or not by it's domain name. To me, a false positive is worse than spam getting through. I realize other people have other opinions. I just don't want to see wide spread filtering of mail from anonymous (ala domainsbyproxy) whois records. I feel it damages an important part of the internet with little long term benefit.
