simplify the draft policy

["Greg Aaron" <greg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The following comment is submitted regarding the GNSO's proposed Draft Whois
Information Status Policy.

 

The draft policy states:

"Registrars and registry operators who include domain name registration
statuses in Whois output must:

a. only refer to the statuses by their respective EPP status codes;

b. provide a link or URL next to each EPP status code that directs to an
ICANN web page describing and defining EPP status codes.  The URL for this
page is [URL].  Although not mandatory, the URL should link to the HTML
anchor for the respective EPP code on this page; and 

c.  include in their WHOIS output the following message: "For more
information on the WHOIS status codes, please visit [URL]."

 

My comment is that requirement  "b" looks overly prescriptive and
complicated and could be eliminated entirely.  The purpose of the policy is
to educate registrants and other Internet users as to what EPP  statuses
mean, and "c" looks sufficient to meet that need and is a suitable
improvement over the status quo.

 

Most ICANN registry contracts state that WHOIS output should contain a
separate line for each and  every EPP status currently associated with a
domain name.  Many domain names have more than one EPP status associated
with them during most of their lifetimes.  Requiring a link next to each EPP
status code would unnecessarily overload and clutter the Whois output.  It
will also complicate the automated parsing of registration data that many
legitimate Whois users rely upon.

 

Under the proposed policy, port 43 output for a typical new TLD domain name
would go from something like this.

Domain Status: clientDeleteProhibited

Domain Status: clientRenewProhibited

Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited

Domain Status: serverUpdateProhibited

 

.to something like this, which is ugly and of dubious necessity:

Domain Status: clientDeleteProhibited
http://www.icann.org/whois/eppstat#clientdeleteprohibited

Domain Status: clientRenewProhibited
http://www.icann.org/whois/eppstat#clientrenewprohibited

Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited
http://www.icann.org/whois/eppstat#clienttransferprohibited

Domain Status: serverUpdateProhibited
http://www.icann.org/whois/eppstat#serverupdateprohibited

For more information on the WHOIS status codes, please visit
http://www.icann.org/whois/eppstat

 

Please note that:

1.       Whois output is provided from port 43 servers, and port 43 output
is what is displayed on Web pages for Web-based lookups.  In most cases the
proposed URLs in the port 43 output will not show up as clickable hyperlinks
when the WHOIS data is viewed on a Web page.   

2.       Instead of "For more information on the WHOIS status codes, please
visit [URL]," the message should say "For more information regarding status
codes, please visit [URL]."  (They are not "WHOIS" status codes; they are
EPP domain status codes.)

3.       EPP statuses can be associated with contact and host objects.   

 

Sincerely yours,

--Greg Aaron

President

Illumintel, Inc.