Re: [gnso-acc-sgb] Report for tomorrow

[Dan Krimm <dan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 5:34 PM -0700 5/23/07, Hugh Dierker wrote:

>The concept that private IP concerns are interested in the data to protect
>consumers is very interesting and I think requires some thought.


One should not overstate this case.  For one example, as I understand it
most credit card companies limit liability to customers if they report
false charges promptly.  (And then they will change the credit card number,
etc.)

This off-loads risk from customer to the financial institutions directly.
Thus in those cases the greatest damage is not to consumers but to the
financial institutions.

This is not to discount the interests of financial institutions, as they
definitely have legitimate interests.  But for example talking about
"consumers' life savings" rather than "financial institutions' profit
margins" has a rather different ring to it.

I'm all for supporting consumers' real interests in contexts where that
makes sense, but I am rather less patient with rhetoric that holds up
consumers as proxies for the interests of very wealthy legal persons.

(Also: did you really mean "IP" above or "ID"?  I don't see *any*
connection between "intellectual property" interests and consumer
interests, while the financial institution arguments are more common and on
the surface more plausible.)

-----

One other point, with regard to access types:

I personally don't see any reason that anyone, even LEAs, would ever need
"bulk access" to Whois data (which I interpret as the ability to download a
registrar's entire Whois database in a single integrated lump -- this would
be Type 3 access according to Milton's definition, if I understand
correctly).

Why would anyone ever need more than ongoing query access (as long as
queries can sometimes entail multiple domains, such as "all domains for a
particular registrant")?

I would suggest that there may be no compelling case that warrants true
bulk access to Whois data.

Dan

PS -- I believe Milton is going to revise the interim SGB report, so until
we receive that I will endeavor to refrain from a whole lot of further
comment.  I think it would be useful for us to proceed as much as possible
from the outcome of our call today.