Why are owning a domain and running a business from that domain considered the same? What if I own a domain and lease it out? Why should I have my personal details made public for a business which I do not own?

Who is to oversee this whole thing? Most likely, a bureaucracy that is incapable of handling the tsunami of complaints it will receive. The scammers, who presumably this proposal is intended to protect us from, will just fill in fake whois information as they always have and hide behind that, while all of the legitimate users will be hurt by all of the unintended consequences. And, without a doubt, all of the people at ICANN involved in making the proposal will profit, and none of them will be harmed.

I was selling trade show exhibits in Silicon Valley during the .com bust and I can tell you that the first department to cut their budget in an organization is marketing. We knew we were in a recession/local depression long before anyone else.

Companies whose revenue comes primarily from venture capital may have certain requirements for promotion, as some investors want to see promotion for promotion's sake, vs. requiring an actual ROI on promotion efforts. Network out to some of your non-tech co-workers and vendors in the marketing arena. When they start to see a lot of companies holding back on hiring new positions, reducing trade show attendance and other marketing expenses, evaluate your current options. It may be that you have an opportunity to seek safety in a lower paying, but far more secure position in your current firm or a different firm. Management is often very insecure.

I can tell you that the nearly instantaneous elimination in the number of commuters in 2000/2001 here was mind-blowing. I knew if a prospect was worth pursuing by the evaluating the size of a building and how empty it's parking lot was. This all happens much faster than most people realize, so having a canary to tell you what is about to come is very important. It may be that you are in a very secure company, but they decided to purchase some large asset or make some other large investment that offsetting the cost due to reduced revenue requires those positions and even whole departments considered secure to be temporarily eliminated.

Companies whose primary revenue comes from advertising will see some of the largest reductions in revenue. Stay away from them unless they are incredibly well established and you have a seriously critical position.