No Such Weblog

Here's a policy proposal that ALAC just injected into WHOIS Task Forces one and two: Collect as little as possible, display even less. What is displayed goes into two tiers: A public one (with just the technical stuff) and an authenticated one (where some personal data may go). Whoever wants to use the authenticated tier needs to identify themselves and their purpose. Purpose and identity of data users are made accessible to registrants.

In response to other proposals that are floating around, we strongly recommend against a "shut down port 43, and do web interfaces with CAPTCHAs" approach," and make some comments on the IP constituency's call for more telephone numbers in WHOIS.

If you're interested in following the advancement of tests intended to tell humans and computers apart, www.captcha.net is a good place to start. You will, for instance, learn that some more or less simple tests that involve reading characters displayed as graphics, and entering these characters into forms, have been broken. Accredited registrars still use this kind of test, though, to protect Web access to their whois databases.

The same people that are behind the CAPTCHA project are also behind the ESP game which is about describing pictures in text. It's no coincidence that the latest captcha that they are beta-testing also involves describing images: Users are shown a collection of images, and they have to pick a word that describes what these images have in common. If that word matches, they pass, if it doesn't match, you have failed the test.

The problem with this test is that it requires an active command of written English, and that it is purely visual.

(More notes on the accessibility problems with CAPTCHAs here.)