Re: [gnso-thickwhoispdp-wg] i've started drawing pictures -- here's the first one

[Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg@xxxxxxxxx>]

At 04/02/2013 06:31 AM, Volker Greimann wrote:
> Hi Alan,
> > Regarding "authoritative", it is not clear to me who is 
> > authoritative in a thick model. I am not even sure exactly what the 
> > term means. If it means who holds the version to be trusted and is 
> > correct if the two version differ, there seem to be various takes 
> > on this. The UDRP tells dispute providers to go to the registrar to 
> > find out registrant information. I suspect (but do not know for 
> > sure) that this is an outcome of the only whois model that existed 
> > at the time the UDRP was created was thin.  I have heard that it is 
> > not uncommon for a registry to make a chance in a thick model (such 
> > as a transfer ordered by a court) that for whatever reason does not 
> > get reflected in the registrar's data.
> Autoritativeness is a nut to crack, but all things considered, it 
> will have to be the registry that is authoritative, i.e. the party 
> holding the data that can and should be relied upon when referencing 
> that data. That data will have to be provided by a registrar at some 
> point (registration, modification, ownerchange, etc), so for that to 
> be possible, the registry must also accept the modification commands 
> from the registrar as quasi-authoritative, but that is an internal 
> matter altogether, with no third-party relevance.
> As the registry is able to unilaterally change registration details 
> without registrar assistance (as performed in compliance with court 
> orders), thin registries are even today partly authoritative for 
> certain data, namely the part of the whois that is provided by the 
> registry concerning the identity of the sponsoring registrar, name 
> servers and whois servers. Depending on the content of this data, 
> the output of a given registrar for this data may be authoritative 
> or not even today (for example if the domain name was transferred to 
> another registrar by the registry without notifying the previous 
> registrar, that registrar may be unaware of this transfer and 
> provide false whois data. As that whois server would however no 
> longer be referenced by the registry whois, no queries for that 
> domain would reach that server, making it's data irrelevant).
> With regard to the UDRP, I do not think that there would be too much 
> of a change. The source of the initial whois query of the provider 
> would become the registy, but the registrar would still be able to 
> confirm this data prior to locking the domain name. In fact, the 
> handling of UDRP cases (at least on the registrar side) does not 
> differ between thick and thin registries. The procedure for a .COM 
> UDRP is identical to that of a .ORG UDRP for us. For this reason, 
> there should be no need for change based on a transition from thick to thin.
> Best,
>
> Volker
Volker, as far as I can see, you are verifying my somewhat fuzzy 
beliefs with facts. It is currently a messy situation, whether thin 
or thick. The specifics of the "messy" may change for a registry 
moving from thin to thick.
But I still do not see why it is THIS PDP's job to fix that.

Alan