Global Name Registry is in the news for charging access to their Whois information, “a step that security researchers say frustrates their ability to police the internet and creates a haven for hackers who run internet scams” according to Wired. The article says ICANN traditionally requires Whois information to be publicly available, however Global Name Registry “won the right to create tiered levels of Whois access, where public searches show very little information beyond what registrar sold the name and what name servers the site uses.”The article quotes Karen Lentz of ICANN saying GNR is allowed to keep the data behind a paid firewall as part of its contract with ICANN, and to comply with British privacy laws. In a subsequent article in Wired, Hakon Haugnes, the founder and president of the Global Name Registry, says their Whois “policy is a compromise between ICANN’s older Whois lookup policy and the European Union’s Data Protection Act.”For the full articles in Wired, see:Dot-Name Becomes Cybercrime Haven
www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2007/09/dot_name.Name Registrar Defends Pay for Whois Policy
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