Thus mulls legal action over Nominet's 'Whois' service

Thus, the owner of UK ISP Demon, is considering taking legal action against Nominet following a change in the domain name registry's policies.

Nominet UK - which administers .uk domain names - is revising its policy on the publication of details for UK registrants via its 'Whois' directory.

From 1 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.

Thus claims that although the Distance Selling and Electronic Commerce Regulations do state that businesses must in most instances publish their contact details, 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 support services and may be wholly inappropriate to be listed in a directory as the main contact address for a business, according to Thus.

However, Nominet believes that its policy not to have an opt-out for domain names that are classified as businesses is in line with UK and European legislation.

Ian Hood, director of communications and regulation for Thus, said: "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. For instance we don't object to people's phone numbers being ex-directory. It is important that any changes to the way information is handled are carried out entirely in accordance with the existing legislation," he added.

Thus's legal team is investigating whether the whois system can be classified as a directory as defined by the Telecommunications (Data Protection and Privacy) Regulations. Under this legislation individuals and businesses have the option to be ex-directory and individuals (including those trading) and businesses can have part or all of their address omitted.

Thus is in the process of seeking clarification on Nominet's proposals from the Office of the Information Commissioner.