Special interests who oppose privacy are circulating draft legislation to cut short ICANN's Whois policy process, warns Milton Mueller in a post published today in Internet Governance Project. He writes: "They want to substitute U.S. law for the ICANN process. We have a draft of the proposed law available here. The people pushing this legislation are the same folks who are always trying to regulate and control the Internet. Copyright maximalists, big pharma, and the like. Economic interests are also at play. To companies like Domain Tools, Whois data is raw material for commercial services that they offer to brand protection firms and others. By negating domain registrants' privacy rights, they are able to monetize the sale of their personal information — and unlike Google, Facebook and others who monetize personal information, there is no service offered in exchange, no contract, no ability to opt out."
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