WHOIS data

Web Site Owners May Get Tougher to Find
Proposal could aid infringers on the Net
Lynne Marek
The National Law Journal
March 1, 2007

My summary:

Two sides to this story: the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will consider a policy that would allow web site owners to keep their contact information private when registering for a domain name. What this would mean is that their information would be placed with a proxy, and the proxy contact information would show up in WHOIS databases.

Side one: companies wanting to protect their intellectual property don't want an extra layer to work with when asking people to stop using copyrights, trademarks, etc.

Side two: ordinary people who want a domain but don't want to have their personal information available on the web for anyone to see, similar to choosing an unlisted telephone number.