The current pretense of "privacy" is nothing more than a convenient
mechanism for registrars to pad their wallets and evade responsible
for facilitating abuse.
As an aside, I used a (wicked big) competitor's "privacy" service to
regsiter a domain for a political worker who wanted to whistleblow
but not be identified.
My customer could now use a web log service such as Duncan Black did
under the name of "atrios", and obtain casual (but not subpoena-proof)
data protection (non-publication of customer profile data).
Broadly I agree that "privacy" as a product under contract law is not
a better solution than data protection as a right under human rights.
However, data protection isn't as available to all potential registrants.