Congress Eyes Internet Fraud Crackdown
Date: February 16, 2004Source: E-commerce Times
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Congress is expanding its focus on the growing business of online fraud with the introduction of new legislation that would mandate stiffer sentences for anyone who commits a crime using a Web site registered under a false name.
The "Fraudulent Online Identity Sanctions Act," sponsored by Reps. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Howard Berman (D-Calif.), would add as much as seven years to prison sentences handed out to anyone committing fraud through a Web site registered under a false name or contact in formation. And it would permit copyright owners to seek larger monetary damages from people who falsify their registration information to run Web sites that distribute copyrighted material without permission.
"The Government must play a greater role in punishing those who conceal their identities online, particularly when they do so in furtherance of a serious federal criminal offense or in violation of a federally protected intellectual property right," Smith said at a hearing on the topic today.
Smith and Berman drafted the bill after receiving complaints from the entertainment and software industries that much of their material is made available for free on Web sites whose owners are impossible to track down because their domain name registrations often contain made-up names like "John Doe" and phone numbers like "123-4567."
The information is stored in public "whois" databases that are run by registrars, the businesses that sell Internet addresses. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees the Internet's addressing system under an agreement with the U.S. government, says registrars must require their customers to submit accurate information when they sign up for an address.
The proposal could run up against opposition from privacy advocates who say that information like home addresses and telephone numbers should not be made available if the registrant does not want it revealed. They say that the information would make the databases a welcome hunting ground for unscrupulous marketers, identity thieves and stalkers.
"Because of the way whois is currently structured, there are a lot of reasons why users might submit false information that have nothing to do with copyright infringement," said Michael Steffen, a policy analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology .
The CDT said that access to some personal contact information should be restricted to law enforcement officers and copyright owners.
Defending the rights of domain owners to submit false or incomplete information to domain registrars, Marv Johnson, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, noted that the U.S. Constitution "recognizes that you have a right to anonymous communication."
The bill would not affect people who are trying to safeguard their privacy because it only makes it a crime to submit false registration data when it is done to help commit a crime, said Mark Bohannon, senior vice president for public policy at the Software &Information Industry Association, which supports the bill.
Bohannon added that ICANN should enforce its policy of terminating contracts with domain name holders whose information is found to be inaccurate, but "is either unable or unwilling" to do so. Intellectual property groups have complained for several years that ICANN has not enforced its policy.
ICANN "takes these issues very seriously" but has not decided whether to support the bill, said spokesman Kieran Baker.
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