Key-Systems comments on Whois Accuracy Program Spec Review

[Volker Greimann <vgreimann@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear ICANN team,

Key-Systems is pleased to be able to submit its comments regarding the 
Review.
Key-Systems is deeply dismayed by the chilling effects and negative 
consequences this spec has had over the brief time it has been in 
effect, leading to over a million domain names suspended world-wide and 
a significant increase of consumer support required. Understanding 
however that a wholesale removal of the specification will be unlikely, 
even though highly desirable, we comment as follows:
The Implementation details and interpretation of the Specification by 
ICANN compliance have uncovered a number of issues that need urgent 
clarification or rewriting to appropriately cover the original intent of 
the parties when drafting this specification.
Re: ICANN staff comments:
Section 1:
1) A clarification of the terms validation and verification would be 
helpful, especially in an international context.
2) A clarification for manual verification may not be helpful, as it 
might reduce the ability of the registrar to employ various means to 
achieve the desired result. If a clarification is provided, it needs to 
be as broad as possible as not to exclude potential means of 
verification a registrar may conceivably employ.
3) This clarification would be helpful.

Section 2:
1) At the same time, the section should be more clear that it only 
applies to material changes. Fixing typos, etc should not trigger 
revalidation or re-verification.
Section 5:
1) We reject any proposal that would expand verification requirements to 
any fields that only require validation under the current spec. While 
the registrar may have the option to verify newly provided data in the 
listed occurrences, making it a requirement is unreasonable and 
uneconomical at least, and may be potentially impossible. Required 
verification should remain limited to email address and/or telephone 
number as envisioned in the drafting of the specification. There is no 
basis for an expansion of verification requirements to other fields.
Re: RrSG comments:

Section 1:
1) We agree with this proposal as a suspension upon transfer is indeed 
potentially harmful to existing businesses of the registrant. We also 
point out that under the transfer policy, the FoA requirement already 
provides for a verification of the email address as the registrant must 
respond to a trigger sent by the gaining registrar.
2) We agree with this proposal.
3) We agree that there should be no limit on how a registrar performs 
the validation or verification. If he for example wants to walk past the 
address or look it up on Google Maps, that should be permissable just 
the same.
4) We agree with this proposal. Thus far, no commercially reasonable 
service or solution for a cross-field validation has been suggested. 
Key-Systems is of the opinion that no such service that meets the 
requirement of a free, worldwide service for cross-field validation with 
acceptable error rates exists at this time.
5) We agree with this proposal.
6) We agree with this proposal.
7) We agree with this proposal.
8) We agree with this proposal. This clarification is needed.

Section 2:
1) We agree with this proposal. Simple corrections or minor changes 
should not trigger validation and verification. This causes significant 
user confusion and encourages the opposite of what the specification is 
supposed to achieve as the registrant will now have to jump through 
additional hoops just to correct an incorrect whois entry.
2) We strongly agree with this proposal.

Section 4:
1) We wholeheartedly support this proposal. Unsubstantiated complaints 
should not be given and time of day. They belong in the bin, not in a 
verification routine. Any complaint must be sufficiently substantiated 
to even be considered.
2) This section has in its currnt form caused sufficient heartache and 
confusion that this proposal does not go far enough. A re-verification 
of an email address does not even make sense when the corrected part was 
the telephone number, the street address or the name. We therefore throw 
our full support behind the proposal to remove the re-verification 
requirement for email-addresses for any other case than that where it 
was the email address that was incorrect.
We further propose that language be added to clarify what an incorrect 
email address means, as currently it is read to include temporary 
delivery failures or failures to successfully send e-mails to an 
IDN-email address as well, for example if the email postbox is full. 
This should not be considered an invalid email address, but rather a 
non-functional, but correct email address and not trigger the 
re-verification requirement.
3) We agree to this proposal.

Section 5:
1) We agree with this proposal, see our comments to Section 4, Nr 1.

Section 6:
1) We fully support the proposal to regularly review the specification, 
as some effects may not be visible at the time of the first anniversary 
and any updates or modifications resulting from the initial or any 
subsequent reviews should also be subject to further reviews.
Section 7:
We fully support both proposed amendments.

--

Should you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Best regards,

Volker A. Greimann
- legal department -

Key-Systems GmbH
Im Oberen Werk 1
66386 St. Ingbert
Tel.: +49 (0) 6894 - 9396 901
Fax.: +49 (0) 6894 - 9396 851
Email: vgreimann@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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