[TomOfTTB]

I don't necessarily disagree with you in theory but in actual practice I don't think what you are proposing is worth it.

The way I see it people who aren't causing trouble should have the right to stay anonymous on the net if they so desire. There are tons of reasons for this but the most obvious one is so people on the net can't seek retribution against you for something you say online.

Now I can see your perspective which seems to be that we should limit privacy because of those who abuse it and do cause trouble. But even if you do that at the Whois level these people can still create a dummy corporation or llc and stay anonymous. Which, to my eyes, means we really can't eliminate anonymous troublemakers.

So being we can't eliminate anonymous troublemakers I don't think there's any point in limiting the privacy of people who aren't troublemakers and who just want their privacy.

[aj]

Oh I agree. There SHOULD be privacy controls.

I was only disagreeing with the OP that all contact information should be "not required" at all.

My take is: Yes, collect the contact information (and as much as feasible, ensure it is valid) but also provide options to make it private to an extent (perhaps have at least one public email (protected from spam bots obviously) while making the rest of the info private and available only through a court order etc)

As you can see, I also have extreme parentheses usage syndrome ;)