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2002

THUS plc, one of the UK's leading providers of voice, data, Internet and contact centre services, is today advising customers of its Demon branded Internet services, that the recent decision by Nominet to publish the contact addresses of all UK domain name registrants may not be legal.

Nominet UK, the registry for .uk Internet domain names, has revised its policy on the publication of details for UK registrants via its whois directory. From 1st October Nominet will publish the contact addresses of all registrants that it deems to be "trading" or "businesses". These registrants will not be given an option to opt-out of the directory. The full announcement can be read at

http://www.nominet.org.uk/ref/whois3.html.

THUS believes that although the Distance Selling and Electronic Commerce Regulations do state that businesses must publish their contact details under certain circumstances and in certain manners, it is not clear that they allow Nominet to publish this information without seeking prior agreement. In many cases the contact details published on websites relate to technical and supports services and may be wholly inappropriate to be listed in a directory as the main contact address for a business.

THUS are investigating the likelihood of the whois system being classified as a directory as defined by the Telecommunications (Data Protection and Privacy) Regulations. Under this legislation individuals and businesses are granted certain rights:

• Individuals and businesses have the option to be ex-directory and;
• Individuals (including those trading) can have part or all of their address omitted

THUS is investigating these proposals further and is in the process of seeking clarification on Nominet's proposals from the Office of the Information Commissioner.

Ian Hood, THUS's director of communications & regulation commented:

"While we can understand that Nominet would like some degree of conformity with whois services internationally, we do feel we have a duty to question the proposals on behalf of our customers. The right to privacy is an important one - individuals have entirely legitimate reasons for wishing to remain anonymous, and businesses have a right to appropriate privacy within the bounds of current legislation. It is important that any changes to the way information is handled are carried out entirely in accordance with that legislation."