Business Constituency Comments Regarding .COM Registry Agreement

[Elisa Cooper <Elisa.Cooper@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Business Constituency (BC ) supports VeriSign's continued operation of the 
.COM Registry. 

However, we strongly urge ICANN to take this opportunity to require the 
maintenance of Thick Whois by VeriSign for the .COM Registry.  

We believe that requiring all Registries to support direct access to Thick 
Whois is an important first step in improving Whois. 

The BC has previously stated the importance of timely, unrestricted, and public 
access to complete and accurate Whois information. While the BC recognizes that 
Thick Whois does not directly improve accuracy, it does contribute to 
addressing the need for timely, unrestricted and public access of Whois 
information. 

The BC expects that other ongoing ICANN projects will improve Whois accuracy 
and responses by privacy/proxy services to relay/reveal requests. In 
particular, we expect improvements to result from:

- current negotiations on the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA);
- implementation of SAC 051 recommendations 
(http://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/sac-051-draft-roadmap-18feb12-en.htm)
 ; and 
- policy development indicated by results of five pending Whois studies 
(http://gnso.icann.org/issues/whois/studies).