It may be sometime yet till will see the domain whois privacy changes that everyone is hoping for. In late March, an international council that oversees domain name registration created a study group to further review a system that another subcommittee had supported a few weeks earlier.

On March 12 the earlier panel told the council, the Generic Names Supporting Organization, that it voted 7 to 6 to support a system that reduces the amount of information that must be made public. But on March 28 the council voted to create the new study group largely because of the lack of consensus.

"We have the votes to basically just push this thing through, but people are being very delicate about not wanting it to look like we're saying, 'Ha ha, we outvoted you,'" says Milton Mueller, a professor at Syracuse University's School of Information Studies who favors increased privacy. "They want to build consensus."

The issue has pitted privacy advocates against intellectual property attorneys and their clients for years. It is now unlikely that there will be a final decision to submit to the board of the council's broader organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, at its June meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Under the proposed system, Web site owners would be able to keep confidential most of their contact information, except for their name, state and country. When they register their domain name, they would list a point of contact for people who might want to reach them, replacing a current system that displays an owner's name, e-mail address, home address and other information in the so-called Whois database, an online directory of domain name owners.

For privacy advocates, such as Mueller, the proposed operational point of contact system was a compromise, because they would prefer even more privacy. They argue that keeping registrant information confidential is no different than an individual exercising the option to get an unlisted phone number.

When contact information is public, Domain Name owners can be subjected to spam and harassment, the privacy advocates say. For instance, they claim that some companies have surveillance programs on the Internet that scan registrant information and automatically send notices, without review, to suspected trademark infringers.

Intellectual property attorneys have supported keeping as much contact information as possible public because it allows them to communicate with people who may legally or illegally be using a Web site that has commercial value to their clients. It also helps them in situations where they want to shut down a Web site or file a lawsuit against counterfeiters or trademark infringers.

The new study group will explore the role and responsibilities of the point of contact; how legitimate parties, such as law enforcement agencies, will get registration information; and whether a distinction should be made for individual versus business registrants.

The council's intellectual property interests constituency hopes at least to have some influence on some fairly specific issues in the point-of-contact proposal.