Silverdream

Instead of doing the right thing and enforcing a requirement for a higher degree of accuracy in the WHOIS database, ICANN have rolled over and surrendered to registrars (seeking to line their pockets with more of your money) and privacy advocates.

The WHOIS database exists to ensure accountability, without it there is zero accountability. There should be stricter requirements on the accuracy of WHOIS information and a wholesale ban on services like Domains By Proxy. Not because privacy is a bad thing, because we need more accoutability on the Internet today, not less.

Without the WHOIS database, where do you to find out who is accountable for a site that has been used in spam? Where do law enforcement go to find out who is accountable for a site hosting child pornography?

If law enforcement want the information they can subpoena it!
They can, however right now they don’t need to do this. The WHOIS database is publicly available. The founder of GoDaddy recently said (since disappeared, Google still has it cached though):

The information in (or associated with) the WHOIS database is important to law enforcement, intellectual property and other attorneys, who use this data to locate domain name owners for the purpose of enforcing laws or addressing grievances. In certain cases, however, the information in the WHOIS database is not accurate. This is where the problem caused by anonymity rears its ugly head.

He’s right and he’s also wrong. The WHOIS database is not just important to law enforcement, IP and other attorneys, it’s also important for Joe Bloggs who wants to find out who owns the site linked to in the last 50 viagra spam messages he received.

Making the public WHOIS database 100% accurate has proven elusive.
Various government agencies, intellectual property organizations, attorneys, and others have long wrestled with how to improve the accuracy of information in the WHOIS database. To date, they have not been able to find a way to guarantee or even improve the accuracy of this information.

Improving the accuracy of the WHOIS database will always be elusive while registrars continue to evade their responsibilities. Despite that though, supplying false information for a domain is already grounds for deletion of a domain, as it should be (although, once again, ICANN is loathe to enforce this).

It is now illegal to provide false information when registering a domain name.
Last year, there was a brief attempt to make registrars responsible for the accuracy of the Whois database. Fortunately, that legislation failed. [..]

Just as registrars won the fight to force them to take responsibility for the domains registered through them, they’ve now won the fight to essentially abolish the WHOIS database, all in the name of increasing profit.
If you want true privacy, live in a cave, please don’t register a domain name.