EU to ban anonymous websites and “whois privacy” services | Hacker News Reader

EU to ban anonymous websites and “whois privacy” services

twitter.com

36 pointssdoering15 comments

New business plan: Offer cheap useless/fake phone numbers addresses that don't actually exist in any functional way to be used for whois data.

they do whois data checks IIRC

How do the data checks work? You can have a PO Box for a whois address and you can have any number of phone numbers in general.

The EU becomes a hostile place to civil rights more and more. This isn't about fighting criminals, that would be ineffective. It is about information control. Cooperation with the EU on anything digital should be minimized.

Time to block EU IPs I guess.

Not going back to public whois.

You have to remember that the WHOIS services for EU TLDs are not public due to GDPR as least all of the ones I have tried to resolve are all unavailable now.

This is still terrible since it just raises the cost of privacy to the cost of registering a shell LLC or the EU equivalent or having a law office register in your place, etc.

Many EU cTLDs already do register using a real name but they keep the info somewhat private.

Sigh, after GDPR (IMHO rightfully) doing its best to kill public-by-default WHOIS, now double-down in the reverse. Seriously wonder if any lobby pushed for that or self-thought-out stupidity.

Applies to domains. Not just websites. Even phone number in whois required.

what happens to Njalla?

This is a terrible proposal. People deserve the right to anonymous communication. WHOIS Privacy services are a key part of granting that anonymity. This is especially bad for activists, whistleblowers, and the politically persecuted. But it is also just bad in an 'everyday' sense, for people who simply do not want their personal information out there visible for the whole world to see.

> This is especially bad for activists, whistleblowers, and the politically persecuted

No, it's not. There's no need for hyperbole.

They can always go through an intermediary.

That is laughable, the law doesn't net advantages aside from letting scared bureaucrats sleep better at night.

I've been leaning more and more away from a global internet and back to regional EU only internet.

EU & US & every other region in the world are different.

As it stands, the global internet is dominated by US cultures & laws.

I think the internet as it stands inhibits Europeans forging their own path.

Don't reply to say "ur WRIting tHIs On US site".

You're writing this on a US site.

You try to change the lives of hundreds of millions of people for the worse, when you are not even able to change your own.

As a European I would highly like to switch to the Anglo internet full of barbarism in that case. I don't think something like the internet could have been developed in Europe and legislation like this hints to the reasons.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com