On Sat, Nov 03, 2012 at 06:45:02PM +0000, Milton L Mueller wrote:
raised by this proposal. First, privacy issues pertain to ???natural persons??? not to the organizational entities (legal persons) that typically hold and trade address blocks.
IP resources are held by both legal and natural persons. In the case of natural persons, privacy implication certainly exist (yes, this is the case with already available registry data, too).
Second, and more fundamentally, recording transactions in the way suggested by 2012-05 does not alter anyone???s privacy status whether they are a natural person or legal person. The possession of an address block both before and after the transaction will be recorded in the Whois. We are simply making the information about the functioning of the transfer market easier to see, compile and analyze.
In my opinion, while whois is a useful and necessary resource, access to that data needs to be better controlled. IP resource holders are in the pretty unique position to have nearly all their business relationships published in a database, access to which is basically uncontrolled. Also, referring to recent debate on which RIR services should be free and which should require payment, this sort of data collation service should not be provided free to all comers, paid for by the membership. On the contrary, it should not only require payment (commensurate with the effort of the RIR) but also an agreement specifying exactly the purposes for which the data may be used. Regards, Sascha Luck