Domain Name WHOIS Anonymity Hangs in the Balance under ICANN Proposal

The agency that runs the Internet’s technical infrastructure—ICANN—is mulling a plan pushed by the entertainment industry that could dramatically limit the use of proxy registration services that mask domain ownership.

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) analyst Jeremy Malcolm and EFF attorney Mitch Stoltz said the content industry wants “new tools to discover the identities of website owners whom they want to accuse of copyright and trademark infringement, preferably without a court order.”

ICANN is accepting comments on the proposal until July 7. Comments can be e-mailed to: comments-ppsai-initial-05may15@icann.org.

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