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Personally identifiable information being published in the WHOIS database is both unnecessary and dangerous.
The ability for anyone to register and use .nz domain names safely and without fear is of critical importance to New Zealand. The current arrangement where WHOIS details are made public seriously undermines this safety, and the DNC obviously recognises this in their motion to review the status quo.
Presently a great many people do not realise their personal information has been made public in the WHOIS database, and those who do often opt to provide fake details (which is expressly forbidden) or must go to additional trouble and substantial expense (e.g. establishing a PO box) simply to protect basic aspects of their personal privacy.
The process proposed by the DNC to remedy this situation is absurdly overcomplex, unnecessarily judgemental and would seem to at best only partially address the problem and only for a small priveleged group of people. This cannot be seen as an acceptable solution in the face of simpler and more effective proposals.
In the past 10 years working in Network Operations for several companies and using the .nz WHOIS system extensively to find domain registrant contact details, I have never once found the physical address of a registrant useful or relevant in any situation. The only occasions I have been personally contacted by post from the address given in my WHOIS data was by criminals.
The single most important thing the WHOIS provides for a given domain name is an e-mail address. An e-mail address is ideal for this purpose as it needs not give away the identity of the domain's owner at all, but still provides a reliable and relatively swift means of contact. The WHOIS must provide a contact e-mail address for all domain names to ensure that operational matters may be addressed to a responsible person should the need arise.
For domain names where the owner considers e-mail to be insufficient for contact regarding operational matters, the WHOIS should permit the optional publication of a telephone number. This is important for infrastructure providers where swift inter-operator fault reporting is essential.
No other personally identifiable information should be collected in the WHOIS database - it is of value only to spammers and criminals.
As a second choice, the DNC could collect additional personal information beyond an e-mail address and optional phone number on the basis that they do not publish it.
I support retaining the "registrar" section of the WHOIS database essentially unchanged.
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