If you’ve ever registered a domain name, you’ve probably stumbled across WHOIS, a series of databases that contains basic information on whoever registered a particular domain name. While WHOIS makes this information public by default, it’s long been possible to hide behind a proxy — something the entertainment industry is hellbent on changing.

The benefits of using a WHOIS proxy should be evident to anyone who’s ever come across the nasty side of Twitter. WHOIS makes it easy to dox anyone who gets on the wrong side of 4chan trolls, so using a proxy to register a domain name is a perfectly sensible precaution. If someone really needs to get in touch — say, to issue a DMCA notice — the proxy service can be legally obliged to pass a message on, or surrender a registrant’s information (depending on the laws of a particular country).

But that’s not enough for the entertainment industry. Under the murky umbrella of the “Coalition for Online Accountability”, they’re petitioning ICANN, the organization that manages WHOIS data. They claim that proxy services are too slow to act, and any website registered for commercial purposes should be obliged to make its WHOIS records public.

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