[anti-abuse-wg] GDPR - positive effects on email abuse

On Tue, May 29, 2018 at 11:43:03AM -0700, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
>

<much ranting>
...

Sucks when all the free stuff you've been using to make money
gets taken away, doesn't it?

LOL,

Sascha Luck

>In message <9d061c1e-2d17-48b1-fc72-3c08026bbf2c at key-systems.net>,
>Volker Greimann <vgreimann at key-systems.net> wrote:
>
>>Even in those cases, whois is but one tool that helps identify bad
>>actors by means of violating privacy rights of millions.
>
>I am compelled to point out, once again, the fundamentally demented
>nature of this new-fangled "entitlement" insanity that has been invented,
>literally out of whole cloth, and within just the past few years by
>various self-appointed "privacy advocates" in Europe and elsewhere.
>
>When exactly did it become a part of the UN's Universal Declaration of
>Human Rights that everyone on planet earth is entitled to -both- utter
>annonymity (and thus also utter un-accountability) -and- their own
>Internet domain nanmes?  I guess that I wasn't paying attention that
>day.  I didn't get the memo.
>
>I say again that the possession and use of an Internet domain name is
>-not- (and never has been) a "right" but rather a privilege... one
>that has been, traditionally, and for more than 35 years now, afforded
>only to those who were willing to contractually, and of their own free
>will, exchange a tiny bit of their anonymity for the distinct and clear
>privilege of registering a domain name.
>
>Now however, the brilliant bureaucrats of Brussels... who nobody, even
>in the EU voted for, and certainly no one in all of Asia and/or the
>entire Western Hemisphere... have unilaterally decided, in their infinite
>wisdom, to upend a system of accountability that was working reasonbly
>well for over 35 years just so that they could claim that they are
>"protecting" a miniscule population of shy transvestites from some
>imaginary modern day Stasi.  No proof is or can be offered that this
>is either a sensible thing to do, or that it will protect these new,
>alleged, and entirely made up "rights" of anyone.
>
>Throwing out bits and pieces of longstanding and reasonable social
>contracts, based on nothing at all, leads to clearly ludicrous outcomes.
>You Europeans who are not yet beyond being educated may perhaps benefit
>from googling for "Michael Rotondo" and then start reading.  This man's
>story illustrates, vividly, the final endpoint of the exact same "entitlement"
>insanity that has now apparently come to infect the entire global Internet.
>
>It must be stated also that nobody in their right mind would have ever
>even entertained the idea of killing off WHOIS, wholesale, except for
>the fact that these new GDPR edicts coming out of Brussels played right
>into the hands of the greedy oligarchs who these days run the Internet.
>The registries, the registrars, and their paid lackeys at ICANN had long
>wished to rid themselves of what they view as an unnecessary and unprofitable
>business expense, i.e. running the open WHOIS system.  They were thus only
>too happy to bend over for Brussels and give up without even putting up a
>struggle at all, because they hoped to save themselves the expense of running
>WHOIS servers and/or, at the very least, making it more difficult for their
>competitors to identify and then poach their respective client bases (as
>actually happened, btw, in a notorious case several years ago involving
>Register.com).
>
>The arogant idiocy of Brussels, working in tandem with the greed of the
>registrars and registries has set back the causes of transparency and
>accountability on the Internet not merely by years but literally by decades.
>I, for one, sure do hope that there are in fact at least one or two shy
>transvestites out there somewhere who are celebrating this outcome,
>because for the rest of the planet it is tragedy of epic proportions,
>one which shall be recognized by all in the coming years.
>
>>And maybe it is time to ensure law enforcement is better equipped to
>>deal with such issues earlier and faster. Up to now, governments have
>>been afforded the luxury of being able to underfund such efforts as
>>others were doing their jobs for them. Maybe this will lead to better
>>law enforcement and international cooperation.
>
>I cannot help but wonder which pharmaceutical substances, in particular,
>are capable of inducing this level of utopian daydreams.  I would very
>much like to get ahold of some of that, so that I too could, at least
>on the weekends, also inhabit a world where police forces the world over
>are so well endowed that cybercrime as we have known it simply ceases to
>exist and fades into humankind's collective memory.
>
>It would certainly be enjoyable to be able to take a break from -this-
>reality, where police forces the world over, often even by their own
>admissions, are increasingly out-matched, out-funded, and out-thought by
>the ever increasing plethora of newly invented forms of both online crime
>and online political subterfuge.
>
>
>Regards,
>rfg
>
>
>P.S.  The essential idiocy of applying GDPR to the gobal WHOIS system can
>most simply and elegantly be demonstrated by pointing out the non-existance
>of answers to the following simple question:
>
>   Other than greedy registrars and registries, cybercriminals, and a select
>   handful of Russian state-backed disinformation operatives, who exactly
>   either has benefited or will benefit from the application of GDPR to the
>   global domain name WHOIS system?
>
>For all of the hoopla and shouting about privacy "rights", none of the
>advocates of this insanity have, to date, identified even a single real
>beneficiary of this introduction of unaccountability into the global
>Internet ecosystem, nor are they able to do so, because there are none...
>except of course for the aformentioned greedy registrars, registries,
>cybercriminals, and state-sponsored purveyors of disinformation.
>
>The application of GDPR to the global WHOIS is, was, and always has been
>a solution in search of a problem, and I challenge any of its supporters
>to convincingly demonstrate otherwise.
>