No more Private WHOIS! (12)
If this rule passes, we, marketers, would no longer be able to protect our private information with WHOIS protection services.
I am sure no affiliate would want to have their private information exposed and connected to websites giving away free iphones or any other type of landing pages affiliates tend to use.
The issue:
"Under new guidelines proposed by MarkMonitor and others who represent the same industries that backed SOPA, domain holders with sites associated to "commercial activity" will no longer be able to protect their private information with WHOIS protection services. "Commercial activity" casts a wide net, which means that a vast number of domain holders will be affected. Your privacy provider could be forced to publish your contact data in WHOIS or even give it out to anyone who complains about your website, without due process. Why should a small business owner have to publicize her home address just to have a website?
We think your privacy should be protected, regardless of whether your website is personal or commercial, and your confidential info should not be revealed without due process. If you agree, it’s time to tell ICANN.
To view the new proposed rules, visit: Privacy & Proxy Services Accreditation Issues Policy."
What can you do?
Go to respectourprivacy.com and either call them or send an email that you are against the proposed rules.
Source:
https://www.respectourprivacy.com/
It's been the case for a while with .co.uk domains with Nominet.
With certain UK registrars you can opt out of having your address if it's a personal domain. If you select business use, you can't. Or in my case, it used to be then they removed it and exposed my details.
People often get round it by using a virtual business address and biz "trading" name.. But you are still contactable.. 
FUCK THEM and all attempts to control freedom on the internet.
They already got too much power... Internet should be anonymous, free, open...
they always try to pass some laws - fuck them and their music rights -- it's just an excuse.
Last time Wikipedia saved us with protest... and sites going dark for 24 hours... but little laws they pass without big sites being able to react... little by little.. we are fucked.
fuck them.
Cant you just use fake names and address and contact info, plus a real email address on the Whois?
This has always been the case in many countries like UK, Germany and Korea. There are definite pros and cons to a real names only policy ... in my view more cons than pros ... but those people who are proclaiming that getting rid of cloaked or private WHOIS will somehow spell the end of the Internet are definitely engaging in some gross exaggeration.
The terrible part about this is that spammers will likely develop software's, contact all domain registrars with automatic rotating messages requesting the details. Next, you're getting heavy spam emails that you used to avoid when protecting your information.
I assume you will be still able to use things like http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/ (on your own risk of course).
you could always register your domains through a middlemen like http://mediaon.com/ which is even more safe than just a simple whois protect since you can buy these anonymous so they don't have an details from you they could hand out. but i hope this rule won't pass
Tried to call, but their lines were busy, so sent an email instead. Seems like resistance is growing on this one, so might be able to get it stopped.
why not just have a free flow of fake IDs and emails and replace them faster than others can trace them? we have little control over what they do, but we can pivot our own activities
Seems like something people would quickly try to circumvent to protect their privacy, e.g. VCCs with fake details.
In the end there are pros and cons. I don't care that some countries require transparent details to have their countries TLD. To me this is reasonable, you have no specific entitlement to use whatever domain extension you want, nor should you have.
On the other hand forcing transparency everywhere is a) terrible for privacy and b) will just get abused by malicious parties. Any government/regulatory body that can't see that is extremely naive.
This would be a royal pain in the arse.
So... you can bet affiliates will find 101 ways to get around it.
Anybody who works in CPA is going to have good reason to avoid their domains coming home to roost.
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