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Comment by amaccuish | Hacker News Reader

Then facebook can do that through the official means by submitting requests. They want to skip that process. I'd prefer their requests to be vetted before personal information is divulged. That way there is oversight.

We've already seen with the DMCA what happens when you give free-reign to companies in this area.

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What process would that be? Genuine question, since the only process that the article mentioned apparently was only meant for law enforcement and registrars.

In particular, in the linked to lawsuit there's example sites that Facebook requested details for from Namecheap, and Namecheap chose not to give out the information. Many of them were 100% obvious phishing sites [0]. Clearly no option where the registrar gets to decide when to reveal information about the owner would work.

[0] E.g. facebo0k-login.com, facebokloginpage.site, faceboookmail.online

If you're genuinely confused, you really should get yourself informed on the concept of an independent court operating under the rule of law, and how it's implemented in our current systems. There are well-established legal procedures for requesting information on other parties that doesn't involve megacorps deciding to do whatever they please.

The phrasing that amaccuish used was "submitting requests". At least I've never heard filing a lawsuit be called "submitting a request", so the implication seemed to be that there was in fact some other process that was supposed to be followed.

The normal process is Facebook files a lawsuit against a John Doe respondent ("Facebook vs The Registrant Of Domain facebo0k-login.com"), then issues a subpoena to Namecheap.

...then a judge who is assigned the case evaluates the claim and then issues a subpoena if the request meets the standards of the law.

Facebook thinks they're above this process and should have unrestricted access to the PII behind every single domain name in existence. I'm sure we, collectively, could rustle up a few dozen instances where Facebook would immediately abuse such information, in moments.

> In particular, in the linked to lawsuit there's example sites that Facebook requested details for from Namecheap, and Namecheap chose not to give out the information.

So if I ask the phone company to give me a log of all of your phone calls, you'd be fine with that? How else could i get that log of calls?

Hopefully, we can agree that it is private information we wouldn't want a company sharing or selling to other companies. The same principal is in play here. There is no reason a registrar should be compelled to release private customer information because someone demands it without following the legal process.

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