TELNIC has a problem writes Milton Mueller in this posting on the Internet Governance blog: ICANN’s contracts require it to display all the personal contact data of its registrants through a service known as “Whois.” But unrestricted access to personal contact data, aside from being a rather bad idea, is against the law in the UK. It follows European, not American, privacy and data protection rules. So after consulting with the UK’s data protection authorities, TELNIC asked ICANN to modify its Whois requirement. But the US government, responding to trademark and copyright interests, won’t let it, and is manipulating ICANN to get its way.

To read Milton’s article on the Internet Governance blog, see blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2007/10/23/3309763.html