The Canadian Trademark Blog notes that after years of consultations and discussion, CIRA has finally committed to a date for implementing its revised WHOIS policy. As of June 10, 2008, CIRA will no longer release information about individual registrants. Registrants can still opt-in to having their information posted to the public. CIRA will also establish a message delivery form that will allow people to contact registrants without accessing their contact information.
CIRA’s New WHOIS Policy To Take Effect in June
April 18, 2008
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Episode 271: Taking Stock of a Wild Week in Canadian Digital Policy With the Online Streaming Reversal, AI Strategy Release, and Lawful Access Review
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This is a good thing. This should be done for .com and .net as well. it’s asking for abuse to be forced to put up your full contact info, especially if you’re just a private webmaster putting up a personal website. I’d never submit my real info. The hosting company has all my details anyways, that’s good enough.
One Word:
Finally.
I wrote to request my information be removed from my whois listing, for fear some crazy person would take offence to something I may have written on my site and use my whois to find me. It does, after all, post ALL of my personal information…
Want to kill my family in a fit of rage? Just search the CIRA whois database and you’ll have a map to my bedroom. Awesome.
The world is not all rainbows and sunshine.
More Needed
Agreed that this is much overdue. However, many improvements are still needed — i.e., updating whois information and completing registrar transfers for .ca domains are still unduly slow/time consuming.