In a ham-handed effort to address online piracy, the budding United Nations of the Internet, ICANN, wants to change the rules and require all users registering a web address to provide their full contact details for publication in a public, online registry.
This assault on anonymity would remove an important protection for people with unpopular or marginalized opinions across the globe. Anonymous registration established the Internet as a platform to speak and be heard without fear of harm. It protects ordinary people reporting crime and waste, whistleblowers exposing fraud and journalists uncovering corruption. Ending privacy online makes targets out of web users who do not share opinions with the most domineering regimes of the world.
Is this the future you want for the web?
It is time to take back our Internet and call for clear protections from ICANN.
“ICANN must make user privacy a central tenet of any new registration data system. To achieve that goal, any new system should collect the minimum amount of data required for legitimate purposes, and make such data available only as needed to fulfill such purposes.”
Stand with us and sign our petition to protect Internet freedom and defend privacy online.
-Team Freedom