In a turnaround from the company's previous position, Tucows is calling for restricted access to the 'Whois' database.
Whois holds details of the owners of .com, .net and .org domains, and bulk access to this database by registrars is currently allowed for any purpose except spam.
Recently, the information has been used to generate direct mail, phone and fax solicitations as a way of getting around this restriction.
"When [people] buy a domain name, they are not agreeing to being direct-marketed," said Elliot Noss, president and CEO of Tucows.
Noss's proposal is that registrars should be required to have a privacy policy that requires domain name holders to consciously choose that their details be available for marketing purposes. Currently, an opt-out model is used, and the mechanism for opting out is not clear, Tucows claims.
Ness used this week's ICANN meeting in Melbourne to raise the matter with the board and other interested parties, in the hope of changing the terms of the ICANN Registrars Accreditation Agreement (RAA).
"These agreements need to be living and breathing...it's a very dynamic space," he said.
The risk, according to Noss, is that without such a policy people may either be less inclined to register domain names (which would not be in the interests of Tucows and other registrars), or they may supply false data when registering, which would be undesirable as it could hinder legitimate communication with the domain holder.
There is nothing in the proposal that would limit individual access to whois, which would still return full details. It only blocks bulk access except where the domain holder has opted in.
Ness observed that some registries do not provide a 'Whois' service at all. Instead, when someone seeks whois-style information, they ask the domain holder concerned to release the data requested.
