Interesting: WHOIS Privacy Considered 'Material Falsification'

[Paul Ferguson <fergdawgster () gmail com>]

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Via Sedo Domain News.

[snip]

A recent decision by the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has
determined that using WHOIS privacy on domains may be considered
“material falsification” under federal law. The defendants in US v.
Kilbride (9th Cir., 2009) were convicted under the CAN-SPAM Act in a case
that involved criminal charges of intentional email spamming.

Enacted by the US Congress in 2003, the CAN-SPAM Act prohibits false or
misleading transmission information, deceptive headers, and requires email
solicitations to give an easy opt-out method and be labeled as an
advertisement, including the senders physical post address. Commercial
emails that use false or misleading headers, or violate other CAN-SPAM
provisions, such as falsified registration information, are subject to
fines of up to $11,000 for each unsolicited email sent.

The court then made it clear in their ruling that the defendants’ use of
private WHOIS information in this case materially falsified the
registration information. The court declared that “It should have been
clear to the defendants that intentionally falsifying the identity of the
contact person and phone number [through WHOIS privacy] for the actual
registrant information constitutes intentionally decreasing the ability of
a recipient to locate and contact the actual registrant, regardless of
whether a recipient may still be left some avenue to do so. We therefore
conclude defendants had notice that their conduct violated the CAN-SPAM
act.”

[snip]

More:
http://sedo.com/links/showlinks.php3?Id=2575

- - ferg

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-- 
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawgster(at)gmail.com
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/

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