Quoting Bennett Oprysa on Wednesday April 06, 2005:
| 
| One point that is clearly missed is that most domain spaces are for business
| use, not private use. Businesses have no right to hide their contact
| details, that is against trading rules in most countries. If you want a .com
| or a com.au, you must be prepared to provide accurate and complete contact
| details for everyone to see. The fact some people use .coms for their own
| private purposes is their problem, it is not what they are meant for.

The difference is .com domains are unchartered. They allow registrations
for anything and everything. Obviously the nomenclature came from
somewhere but it has never been restricted just to companies.

I guess the problem for an American is they ostensibly have nowhere to
go if they want both a domain and their full contact details secret.
Both .us and the gTLDs publish all contact details as a matter of course
- even for the .name domain which is purely for persons.

However in Australia not only is .id.au shielded (for people), but
companies are too in .com.au etc.

| I would certainly support hidding contact details for id.au domains for
| example, but I see no reason why registrants of commercial names should be
| allowed to hide their contact details.

I agree. As it stands though, .au errs on the side of privacy. So I
don't understand Mike's point.

kim