How easy would it be for you to manage the site and just use another willing person's name and address for the WHOIS? Maybe a nice reader of the blog would do it for free. (Though obviously this only works if you have control of the site, not them.)
I have no idea if this is already a thing. Lawyers certainly can do things in trust for their clients. Whether any particular lawyer would be willing to do this particular thing -- and for what fee -- is an entirely different question. But certainly I would try lawyers. If there's one who is aware of both this nym and your professional name, I'd start there.
I think I would want to start with one who doesn't already know both.
Any ideas how I would go about finding such a laywer? ETA: Like, I'm not even sure what kind of lawyer I would want or how I would explain it to a non-technical person.
The Mass. Bar Association has a lawyer referral service. The Boston Bar Association also has one. You may have to call them to explain what you want, though. Intellectual property or business lawyers are probably your best bet.
"I want to register ownership of this thing and not have my name attached to it in easy-to-access public record" seems a straightforward enough thing to explain to a lawyer.
An IP lawyer might not be the right kind of lawyer, but would probably understand what you want and be able to point you in the right direction if they aren't it.
A lawyer who handles real estate and/or trusts -- including doing exactly this with other sorts of property -- could handle all the paperwork and maintenance once they understood what was involved in registering and maintaining registration of a domain name.
Given the concern about things like registrars going out of business, I expect this is a lawyer-on-retainer operation rather than a one shot process paying for "enough" years up front.
Our company already sorta does this. We're a small three-man shop that helps design, builds and manages customers' business-solution websites.
We often end up being sysadmins for hire, mostly because my boss does 'value-add' work with feature creep and has a weak sense of boundaries when it comes to customer expectations.
However! He does do this. You're looking for something similiar. A small shop that you can get along with, shared values and all, with proficiency and experience in the industry. I just have no idea who is close to you that might manage this.
Not only that, but ICANN is trying to get rid of whois privacy. :-(
What exactly is your threat model here? I too would have suggested "have a friend be the contact" just based on what you'd written, except you were also talking about lawyers, which is a big step up in Seriousness along *certain* axes from the rest of the post. (And I read that other comment, too.) Does the identity connection need to be deniable in court? Unlinkable in practice? Does the attacker mostly have social vs. technical capabilities? etc.
Not only that, but ICANN is trying to get rid of whois privacy. :-(
Ah, splendid. :(
What exactly is your threat model here?
I'd like to constrain the discussion to what I asked, because having a bunch of people who know less about my security issues than I do try to nitpick my decisions is not a great use of my time.
That said, I blog while female. Would you want your home address to be listed as my WHOIS contact information?
I hear you on the nitpicking thing, and certainly on blogging-while-female. :-/
Unfortunately, the only answers I have for the latter are "find a trusted friend" or "be a big obtuse corporation", and it sounds like those are out. I'll certainly watch comments to see what other people come up with though, because this is a topic of relevance to me.
I take it that an LLC wouldn't be sufficient privacy protection?
I suppose you could use one of the big domain management companies, like MarkMonitor; they're not likely to go out of business soon, but I suspect they're Not Cheap, too. (They're their own registrar, so it's a one-stop shop.)
Comments 15
Reply
Reply
Reply
Any ideas how I would go about finding such a laywer? ETA: Like, I'm not even sure what kind of lawyer I would want or how I would explain it to a non-technical person.
Reply
Reply
An IP lawyer might not be the right kind of lawyer, but would probably understand what you want and be able to point you in the right direction if they aren't it.
A lawyer who handles real estate and/or trusts -- including doing exactly this with other sorts of property -- could handle all the paperwork and maintenance once they understood what was involved in registering and maintaining registration of a domain name.
Given the concern about things like registrars going out of business, I expect this is a lawyer-on-retainer operation rather than a one shot process paying for "enough" years up front.
Reply
We often end up being sysadmins for hire, mostly because my boss does 'value-add' work with feature creep and has a weak sense of boundaries when it comes to customer expectations.
However! He does do this. You're looking for something similiar. A small shop that you can get along with, shared values and all, with proficiency and experience in the industry. I just have no idea who is close to you that might manage this.
Reply
Reply
What exactly is your threat model here? I too would have suggested "have a friend be the contact" just based on what you'd written, except you were also talking about lawyers, which is a big step up in Seriousness along *certain* axes from the rest of the post. (And I read that other comment, too.) Does the identity connection need to be deniable in court? Unlinkable in practice? Does the attacker mostly have social vs. technical capabilities? etc.
Reply
Ah, splendid. :(
What exactly is your threat model here?
I'd like to constrain the discussion to what I asked, because having a bunch of people who know less about my security issues than I do try to nitpick my decisions is not a great use of my time.
That said, I blog while female. Would you want your home address to be listed as my WHOIS contact information?
Reply
Unfortunately, the only answers I have for the latter are "find a trusted friend" or "be a big obtuse corporation", and it sounds like those are out. I'll certainly watch comments to see what other people come up with though, because this is a topic of relevance to me.
Reply
I suppose you could use one of the big domain management companies, like MarkMonitor; they're not likely to go out of business soon, but I suspect they're Not Cheap, too. (They're their own registrar, so it's a one-stop shop.)
Reply
...
You've never looked into this, have you?
I suppose you could use one of the big domain management companies, like MarkMonitor
I suppose, but how does that reduce the number of people whom I am trusting with my data, as I describe above?
Reply
Leave a comment