RE: [gnso-dow123] WHOIS task force draft minutes 1 November 2005

["Marilyn Cade" <marilynscade@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear all,

I will repeat the BC's view on the technical contact definition. We are not
satisfied with this definition and its narrowness and want the following
phrase included:

"And to resolve those matters where it is necessary to get in touch with a
technical contact for the registered domain name in order to resolve
technical/networking problems or difficulties related to or affecting the
Internet or another web site of a technical nature."

I've mentioned this several times, and I'd like to have the TF include my
input in the readout, whatever it is, in VC, and in the documents we are
discussing.

The ISPs may have other suggestions on their own, and David Fares/Sarah/I
may have other BC comments as we progress this work area. 

For the BC, we will not be able to support a technical definition that is
limited to only registration issues. While that may satisfy the registrars
interests, it does not fulfill the needs of the business community,  nor the
ISPs or networking providers. 

While some may suggest that the WHOIS for IP addresses is "sufficient", in
fact it is not, and the enforcement teams of large networking providers and
businesses that I advise are clear that they use both WHOIS/DNS, and
WHOIS/IP to deal with network technical issues. 

Talk to all on the call. 

Regards, Marilyn 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-gnso-dow123@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-gnso-dow123@xxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of GNSO.SECRETARIAT@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Monday, November 21, 2005 2:48 PM
To: gnso-dow123@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [gnso-dow123] WHOIS task force draft minutes 1 November 2005

[To: gnso-dow123[at]gnso.icann.org]

Dear All,

Please find  the draft minutes of the Whois task force call held
on 1 November 2005.
Please let me know what changes you would like made.

Thank you.
Kind regards,
Glen

WHOIS Task Force
1 November 2005 - Minutes
ATTENDEES:
GNSO Constituency representatives:
Jordyn Buchanan - Chair
gTLD Registries constituency - David Maher
gTLD Registries constituency - Ken Stubbs
Registrars constituency - Ross Rader
Intellectual Property Interests Constituency - Steve Metalitz
Internet Service and Connectivity Providers constituency - Greg Ruth
Internet Service and Connectivity Providers constituency - Maggie 
Mansourkia
Non Commercial Users Constituency - Kathy Kleiman
Commercial and Business Users Constituency - David Fares
Commercial and Business Users constituency - Marilyn Cade joined the 
call late


Liaisons
At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) liaisons - Wendy Seltzer - aplogies
GAC Liaison - Suzanne Sene - absent - apologies
ICANN Staff:
Olof Nordling - Manager, Policy Development Coordination - absent - 
apologies
Maria Farrell Farrell - ICANN GNSO Policy Officer
GNSO Secretariat - Glen de Saint Géry

Absent:
gTLD Registries constituency - Phil Colebrook - apologies
gTLD Registries constituency - Tuli Day
Intellectual Property Interests Constituency - Niklas Lagergren - apologies
Commercial and Business Users Constituency - Sarah Deutsch
Registrars constituency - Paul Stahura
Registrars constituency - Tim Ruiz (alternate)
Registrars constituency - Tom Keller
Internet Service and Connectivity Providers constituency - Tony Harris - 
apologies
Non Commercial Users Constituency - Milton Mueller
Non Commercial Users Constituency - Frannie Wellings

MP3 Recording

Agenda:
Item 1 Brief review of constituency statements on the purpose of contacts
Item 2: Scope of the Whois as a broad tool versus narrow tool

Whois task force terms of reference
Item 2) Define the purpose of the Registered Name Holder, technical, and 
administrative contacts, in the context of the purpose of WHOIS, and the 
purpose for which the data was collected. Use the relevant definitions 
from Exhibit C of the Transfers Task force report as a starting point
(from http://www.icann.org/gnso/transfers-tf/report-exhc-12feb03.htm)

Item 1 Brief review of constituency statements on the purpose of contacts
Constituency statements

Steve Metalitz reported on the Intellectual Property Interests 
constituency statement
Currently there was no consistency of the terms and a better 
understanding of how to populate the data fields would be helpful. The 
IPC considered the registered name holder should be the ultimately 
responsible party, also the entity allowed to transfer the domain name, 
and that information should be public. The technical contact should 
ensure operational stability and security.
The admin contact had 2 purposes:
- to give the registrar a clearly identified voice to manage the domain 
name, and
- to give the public a point of contact regarding the website, for the 
site content, legal process, etc. The Transfers Task Force definition of 
admin contact was ambiguous as it viewed the latter as the authoritative 
point of contact, but secondary to the domain name holder.The registered 
name holder had ultimate authority over and responsible for use of the 
domain name, corresponding website or internet resource but could 
designate the authorized point of contact.
Ross Rader commented that if it was presumed appropriate to start 
tracking the link between domain names and Internet resources, that the 
resources should be enumerated in some form.

Maggie Mansourkia reported on the ISPCP statement which stated that the 
registered name holder, was the person who initiated the use of the 
domain name, was responsible for everything associated with the domain 
and owned the domain name. The technical contact was the person 
responsible for security or interoperability issues, and was the contact 
the ISPs usually interacted with the most. The constituency discussed 
the admin contact, whether it was a different person and considered it 
the appropriate contact to address business or legal issues associated 
with the domain name.
Kathy Kleiman reported on the Non Commercial Users Constituency 
statement that took a slightly different approach. As task 2 in the 
Terms of Reference asked to provide "purpose" in context of purpose of 
WHOIS, the NCUC considered that purpose within the scope of ICANN was 
the technical purpose. The NCUC referred to the Transfers task force 
definition and agreed that the material collected by the technical 
contact had to be relevant and not excessive for the purpose.

Steve Metalitz asked for clarification on how the NCUC concluded that 
the technical contact was often not a person and the registered name 
holder was a person.

Kathy Kleiman explained that the information was gathered from some NCUC 
members who had been surveyed, discussions on line, and years of working 
in the field, as an attorney and as a non commercial organization but 
this could vary from business user registrants.
Jordyn Buchanan noted that although the terms of reference required that 
the purpose of WHOIS be considered in the context of national and 
international laws, the views of the global WHOIS policy could not be 
based on any one jurisdiction and its legal framework.

Ross Rader, reporting for the Registrar's constituency stated that the 
purpose of the contacts was well bound up in the purpose of WHOIS itself.
The definition on p. 9 of the Registrar's submission: Registrant purpose 
? to provide a entity of response. Admin contact purpose - to provide 
contact information for individual or entity to provide assistance to 
third parties on administrative issues. Technical contact purpose - for 
assistance regarding technical management of the zone.
The information associated with the registrant was discussed, a lot was 
extraneous, most was not related to the delegation itself and most could 
be removed from the WHOIS system. Similarly, other end user contacts 
have become closely related over the years and little distinguishes them 
in the mind of end users. They could be redefined to give relevant data 
which could provide a subset of the current data which could, for 
example, fall into the bucket of business data

Jordyn Buchanan asked a clarifying question: If it was the view of the 
NCUC and/or Registrars that contacts were not correctly part of the 
WHOIS data set, would their view be that the terms should not be 
defined? If so, if an entity wanted to publish an additional set of 
WHOIS data, they would not be able to, e.g. an admin contact. Would that 
not be an option available to a registrant?

Ross Rader responded that the registrars had tried to define the 
existing construct. There was a new content type that made the 
publication more optional such as having an operational point of 
contact. Allowing for the current practice allowed registrars to publish 
additional information in the WHOIS and there was no reason to restrict 
the practice. In addition it allowed users to be more interactive with 
the records and their contents.

Kathy Kleiman responded that the NCUC believed registrants should be 
allowed to opt in to include additional information.

David Fares reported for the CBUC which identified the registered name 
holder as the person responsible for canceling and transferring a domain 
name, the tech contact was responsible for responding to and handling 
technical inquiries and should be competent to do so, the admin contact 
was responsible for content on the site. In general the CBUC considered 
it important to clarify the information provided and called for 
consistent terminology.

Jordyn Buchanan summarised the constituency presentations saying that 
there appeared to be common ground on most definitions, and the biggest 
gap seemed to be whether the admin contact should be responsible for 
content.

Action:

Proposed that Maria complete the compilation, posted on on August 26 
2005, of the constituency statements on the 'purpose'.
Proposed a side by side comparison of each of the various terms in the 
text from the constituencies.

Item 2: Scope of the Whois as a broad tool versus narrow tool

Whether the purpose of WHOIS was narrow in scope and focused 
specifically on factors relating to the registration of the domain name, 
or whether it was a broader repository of contact information related to 
any issues on the use of a domain name, regardless of whether they had 
to do with registration or not.

Jordyn Buchanan suggested given the agreement in the task force that 
technical issues related to the domain name registration or delegation 
were in the scope of the purpose of WHOIS,
sometimes the person who resolved those problems was not the same as the 
person who resolved other technical issues, did that apply that if the 
purpose of WHOIS was broader than registration and delegation issues, 
more types of technical contact were needed to deal with those other 
issues, e.g. dns and spam issues.

Steve Metalitz commented that rather than look at a granular level, 
another approach would be to have a high level definition of what these 
contacts were supposed to do, a contact point who would find the 
appropriate person to address that problem

Marilyn Cade joined the call.

Ross Rader agreed with Steve and added that it would be difficult at any 
level to enact policy that included the broader purpose.

Marilyn Cade commented that it could vary from company to company 
depending on the size of the company.

More information would be needed on how the fields were populated.

Next call 8 November 2005

Action Items for next call:

a. TF members to discuss on-list what data gathering, if any, might be 
useful on how the various WHOIS contact fields are populated. What 
approaches would be useful?

b. Jordyn will email framing questions to the list to guide the discussion.

c. Task force members who support the idea of a broader purpose for the 
technical contact are encouraged to consider if a larger data set is 
needed to support this, and what form it might take.

d. Continue discussion on next week?s task force call

Jordyn Buchanan thanked all the task force members for participating.

The WHOIS task force call ended at 16 :50 CET

WHOIS Task Force?s terms of reference (June 2005) which includes the 
definitions provided by the Transfers Task Force.

Define the purpose of the Registered Name Holder, technical, and 
administrative contacts, in the context of the purpose of WHOIS, and the 
purpose for which the data was collected. Use the relevant definitions 
from Exhibit C of the Transfers Task force report as a starting point
(from http://www.icann.org/gnso/transfers-tf/report-exhc-12feb03.htm):

"Contact: Contacts are individuals or entities associated with domain
name records. Typically, third parties with specific inquiries or
concerns will use contact records to determine who should act upon
specific issues related to a domain name record. There are typically
three of these contact types associated with a domain name record, the
Administrative contact, the Billing contact and the Technical contact.

Contact, Administrative: The administrative contact is an individual,
role or organization authorized to interact with the Registry or
Registrar on behalf of the Domain Holder. The administrative contact
should be able to answer non-technical questions about the domain name's
registration and the Domain Holder. In all cases, the Administrative
Contact is viewed as the authoritative point of contact for the domain
name, second only to the Domain Holder.

Contact, Billing: The billing contact is the individual, role or
organization designated to receive the invoice for domain name
registration and re-registration fees.

Contact, Technical: The technical contact is the individual, role or
organization that is responsible for the technical operations of the
delegated zone. This contact likely maintains the domain name server(s)
for the domain. The technical contact should be able to answer technical
questions about the domain name, the delegated zone and work with
technically oriented people in other zones to solve technical problems
that affect the domain name and/or zone.
Domain Holder: The individual or organization that registers a specific
domain name. This individual or organization holds the right to use that
specific domain name for a specified period of time, provided certain
conditions are met and the registration fees are paid. This person or
organization is the "legal entity" bound by the terms of the relevant
service agreement with the Registry operator for the TLD in question."

-- 
Glen de Saint Géry
GNSO Secretariat - ICANN
gnso.secretariat[at]gnso.icann.org
http://gnso.icann.org