{"id":7231,"date":"2015-06-22T14:25:05","date_gmt":"2015-06-22T22:25:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=7231"},"modified":"2015-06-23T22:04:35","modified_gmt":"2015-06-24T06:04:35","slug":"preserve-the-proxies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=7231","title":{"rendered":"Preserve the Proxies!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Under the original ethos of the 'Net<\/abbr>, those who registered domain names were required to make publicly available their contact information.<\/p>

A technical loop-hole was found. One party could register a domain name, and that party could provide its own contact information; yet the party could allow (and perhaps even be contractually required to allow) some other party to use the domain name for its own ends. So the technical registrant was a proxy agent for the practical holder. This loop-hole was challenged, but ultimately allowed to remain.<\/p>

Now pressure is being brought upon ICANN<\/abbr><\/a> to prohibit proxies for what are deemed commercial<\/q> sites. The primary motivation appears to be to help firms identify and pursue those who infringe upon trademarks and other intellectual property. (At present, they would have to get a court order requiring the proxy service to release the identity of the practical holder.)<\/p>

I think that this effort should be strongly resisted.<\/em> At the time that the use of proxies began, I had mixed feelings about it. But use of the Internet and of the World-Wide Web has evolved, and evolved within the context of this proxied registration being an accepted practice. A rule-change now would impose new costs — sometimes quite significant — on many people, the vast majority of whom are quite innocent of any trespass on intellectual property. Further, I note that most of those who are deliberate in their infringements are unlikely to have qualms about using using proxies that simply claim to be practical holders.<\/p>

You may want to read ICANN<\/abbr>'s discussion of the matter<\/a><\/p>

Comments may be sent to comments-ppsai-initial-05may15@icann.org<\/code><\/a> before 7 July.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Under the original ethos of the 'Net, those who registered domain names were required to make publicly available their contact information. A technical loop-hole was found. One party could register a domain name, and that party could provide its own contact information; yet the party could allow (and perhaps even be contractually required to allow) […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,318,69,4],"tags":[1284,1282,258,1283],"class_list":["post-7231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-ethics-philosophy","category-information-technology","category-public","tag-domain-names","tag-icann","tag-intellectual-property","tag-internet-corporation-for-assigned-names-and-numbers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}