Hi all,

As others have mentioned, probably the most serious examples of this will likely come from MENA, where a number of political bloggers have suffered great repression at the hands of their respective governments, and whistleblower sites.

Here are some specific examples where anonymity of (mostly) websites/blogs has been important:
Perhaps more importantly, it's critical to note that the starting presumption in many legal systems is anonymity. So for example, in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. (to my knowledge, but probably many other jurisdictions as well), there is no right to get someone's identity simply because you want to sue them (for alleged IP infringement, defamation, etc.). You have to go through a process and prove, at minimum, that you legitimately intend to sue and are not using the discovery process simply as a means of identifying someone you don't like. CIRA's policy seeks to replicate this, which seems reasonable.

Hope this helps.

Best,
Tamir


On 4/23/2013 5:21 PM, Robin Gross wrote:
[log in to unmask]" type="cite"> Dear All:

One of NCSG's follow-up items on WHOIS coming out of Beijing was a special request from Stephanie Perrin, who is the only privacy advocate on the ICANN Board's Expert Working Group on Directory Services (aka whois).

Stephanie needs for NCSG to assist her in coming up with a list of use case examples of why one needs an anonymous domain name registration. 

So if you know of any facts that describe a scenario that demonstrates the legitimate need to register a domain name anonymously, please let us know!   Actually, please let Amr Elsadr know (cc'd here) who's agreed to keep track of this information for NCSG and feed it to Stephanie for her work on the working group.

Stephanie came and spoke to NCSG during our open meeting in Beijing and asked for the help of our members in coming up with these examples.  This is a great chance for us to provide direct input into an important process to protect privacy and anonymity rights on the Internet, so I hope you will send any thoughts you may have to Amr (or post to this list for collection also).

Thanks for your help!

Best,
Robin

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