In message <9d061c1e-2d17-48b1-fc72-3c08026bbf2c@key-systems.net>, Volker Greimann <vgreimann@key-systems.net> wrote:
Even in those cases, whois is but one tool that helps identify bad actors by means of violating privacy rights of millions.
I am compelled to point out, once again, the fundamentally demented nature of this new-fangled "entitlement" insanity that has been invented, literally out of whole cloth, and within just the past few years by various self-appointed "privacy advocates" in Europe and elsewhere. When exactly did it become a part of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights that everyone on planet earth is entitled to -both- utter annonymity (and thus also utter un-accountability) -and- their own Internet domain nanmes? I guess that I wasn't paying attention that day. I didn't get the memo. I say again that the possession and use of an Internet domain name is -not- (and never has been) a "right" but rather a privilege... one that has been, traditionally, and for more than 35 years now, afforded only to those who were willing to contractually, and of their own free will, exchange a tiny bit of their anonymity for the distinct and clear privilege of registering a domain name. Now however, the brilliant bureaucrats of Brussels... who nobody, even in the EU voted for, and certainly no one in all of Asia and/or the entire Western Hemisphere... have unilaterally decided, in their infinite wisdom, to upend a system of accountability that was working reasonbly well for over 35 years just so that they could claim that they are "protecting" a miniscule population of shy transvestites from some imaginary modern day Stasi. No proof is or can be offered that this is either a sensible thing to do, or that it will protect these new, alleged, and entirely made up "rights" of anyone. Throwing out bits and pieces of longstanding and reasonable social contracts, based on nothing at all, leads to clearly ludicrous outcomes. You Europeans who are not yet beyond being educated may perhaps benefit from googling for "Michael Rotondo" and then start reading. This man's story illustrates, vividly, the final endpoint of the exact same "entitlement" insanity that has now apparently come to infect the entire global Internet. It must be stated also that nobody in their right mind would have ever even entertained the idea of killing off WHOIS, wholesale, except for the fact that these new GDPR edicts coming out of Brussels played right into the hands of the greedy oligarchs who these days run the Internet. The registries, the registrars, and their paid lackeys at ICANN had long wished to rid themselves of what they view as an unnecessary and unprofitable business expense, i.e. running the open WHOIS system. They were thus only too happy to bend over for Brussels and give up without even putting up a struggle at all, because they hoped to save themselves the expense of running WHOIS servers and/or, at the very least, making it more difficult for their competitors to identify and then poach their respective client bases (as actually happened, btw, in a notorious case several years ago involving Register.com). The arogant idiocy of Brussels, working in tandem with the greed of the registrars and registries has set back the causes of transparency and accountability on the Internet not merely by years but literally by decades. I, for one, sure do hope that there are in fact at least one or two shy transvestites out there somewhere who are celebrating this outcome, because for the rest of the planet it is tragedy of epic proportions, one which shall be recognized by all in the coming years.
And maybe it is time to ensure law enforcement is better equipped to deal with such issues earlier and faster. Up to now, governments have been afforded the luxury of being able to underfund such efforts as others were doing their jobs for them. Maybe this will lead to better law enforcement and international cooperation.
I cannot help but wonder which pharmaceutical substances, in particular, are capable of inducing this level of utopian daydreams. I would very much like to get ahold of some of that, so that I too could, at least on the weekends, also inhabit a world where police forces the world over are so well endowed that cybercrime as we have known it simply ceases to exist and fades into humankind's collective memory. It would certainly be enjoyable to be able to take a break from -this- reality, where police forces the world over, often even by their own admissions, are increasingly out-matched, out-funded, and out-thought by the ever increasing plethora of newly invented forms of both online crime and online political subterfuge. Regards, rfg P.S. The essential idiocy of applying GDPR to the gobal WHOIS system can most simply and elegantly be demonstrated by pointing out the non-existance of answers to the following simple question: Other than greedy registrars and registries, cybercriminals, and a select handful of Russian state-backed disinformation operatives, who exactly either has benefited or will benefit from the application of GDPR to the global domain name WHOIS system? For all of the hoopla and shouting about privacy "rights", none of the advocates of this insanity have, to date, identified even a single real beneficiary of this introduction of unaccountability into the global Internet ecosystem, nor are they able to do so, because there are none... except of course for the aformentioned greedy registrars, registries, cybercriminals, and state-sponsored purveyors of disinformation. The application of GDPR to the global WHOIS is, was, and always has been a solution in search of a problem, and I challenge any of its supporters to convincingly demonstrate otherwise.