Re: [alac] WHOIS impact review: Some proposed changes.

[Thomas Roessler <roessler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 2003-02-18 10:59:28 -0800, Denise Michel wrote:

>    I think a more productive course of action is for Thomas, who
>    has served on the WHOIS Task Force for year(s) as the General
>    Assembly representative, to submit his detailed comments as
>    the GA representative, since they seem to reflect his
>    experiences and comments he's received on the former GA list.

It's not so much based on comments received on the GA list, but
rather on comments received by the WHOIS Task Force itself, on
discussions at ICANN meetings (with people across constituencies, by
the way), and so on...

>    If ALAC members feel strongly that a statement must be
>    submitted today, 

Since I'm also wearing the hat of the WHOIS Task Force's formatting
slave, I can sneak in any text until noon tomorrow (East Coast
time)...  Deadline extended by 20 hours. ;-)

>      * ALAC members have not had time to get up to speed on this
>      issue, the Task Force's work, and "At-Large" WHOIS concerns,
>      and the ALAC is still developing its processes

I'd very much hope that any ALAC members who have a concern along
these lines can speak up for themselves...  If this point mirrors
the concerns of a significant part of the members of this Committee,
I'd be happy to post the comment as a personal one elsewhere.

>      * Thomas has just been designated as Task Force ALAC liaison

This is a problem for what reason, precisely?

>      * This draft is not an "impact statement", but rather report
>       comments. Developing an impact statement for individual
>       users is a very challenging process, given the vast
>       disparity of individual users of the Internet.

An "impact statement" is a very broad concept, and groups can use it
to roughly say what they want to say.  What this document does is to
discuss the impact on various classes of registrants, and to put
this into a broader context.  It also, in some places, gives
interpretations of the text.  While this is not a very narrow impact
statement, I think that it's still within the confines of what's
appropriate.

>      * The Task Force is in the process of producing issues
>      reports on 1) further work on accuracy and marketing uses of
>      data 2) consistency and uniformity of data elements and
>      searchability and 3) privacy issues related to WHOIS. **ALAC
>      has more time to comment on these, if it so chooses.**
>      Today's deadline does not have to be met and it is not our
>      only opportunity to comment.

It is clearly not our only opportunity to comment.  However, there
is a difference between an issues report on which the council may or
may not act, and a policy report which is (probably?) going to be
forwarded to the board.  The GNSO Council is going to vote on that
report on Thursday, between 14 UTC and 16 UTC.  One of the
objectives I had in drafting the issue statement the way I did was
to make sure that certain points are documented *within* the report
which goes to the GNSO Council, and is supposedly forwarded to the
board.

>      * ALAC is in a fragile period of establishing itself and
>      building respect and credibility with the ICANN
>      constituencies. You all need to ensure that your work
>      represents your constituency *and* builds a working
>      relationship with other ICANN stakeholders.

If you have the concern that something in my proposed document would
undermine the respect and credibility we are trying to get, or would
be detrimental to building a working relationship, please be
explicit about it, so we can fix it.

In case this remark was inspired by today's WHOIS conference call
(which Denise attended in part as an "ALAC liaison"), without any
specific conerns in mind: Note that the fact that Ruchika Agrawal's
dissenting opinion was received quite badly by most of the Task
Force on today's call does not mean that we'd have to expect the
same thing -- while the underlying concerns are similar, the
procedural conclusions are rather different: We don't say that the
TF's work on accuracy should not be adopted -- instead, the
statement is that the TF's recommendations are "first steps" (i.e.,
we implicitly expect that it's adopted). We don't say that the TF
has ignored privacy -- we say that it needs to be taken into account
in future discussions (which is basically the same thing the TF as a
whole has been saying for quite some time).  We don't say that the
TF's report is not a consensus report -- that's none of our business
at this point of time.  Finally, we aren't a [GD]NSO constituency
which has participated throughout the Task Force process, and
explicitly raises dissent with a relatively fundamental decision
only *after* the Final Report has been published.

If anyone needs to talk to me directly on this, I'm (once again)
available under +49-228-638007 or +49-171-9508078 around the clock;
depending on the time of the night, I may, however, ask for some
minutes to wake up. ;)

-- 
Thomas Roessler                        <roessler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>