Re: IMHO
Actually there IS money on the line, but lives? I doubt it. Certainly not those of bloggers or isolated whistleblowers, who would be EXTREMELY unlikely to buy their own domain for such mundane activities. Real-world examples show that they use established blogging or micro-blogging structures and other foreign-based services, which often retain a LOT more information than whois, going as far as requesting scanned ID, proof of residence and/or bank statements, especially when they think your name sounds funny.
On the other hand, setting up a domain is quite similar to setting up a brick-and-mortar business, and to do business you usually need to be registered, and the registration details are made available to the public; on the internet that's whois's role, that's basic customer protection, and it's not perfect but it kinda works. I don't think there should be a legal duty on the registrar to check that all this info is accurate, but contact info at a bare minimum, should be. There's no additional work in that: it's the info that the registrar uses for domain renewal etc, so they already know it to be accurate.
It helps a great deal to alert domain owners of the ungodly ammount of spam gushing out of their backhole for example.