RE: [gnso-whois-wg] Comments on WWG report draft 1.5

["Maria Farrell" <maria.farrell@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear all,

Some misunderstandings seem to be circulating about the OPoC proposal and
decisions of the GNSO Council. I'm copying below the relevant section of the
GNSO Council minutes that dealt with the OPoC proposal, i.e. the discussion
and decision of the Final Task Force Report of the Whois Task Force on 28
March this year. 

There was broad agreement at the Council level that the proposal as it stood
required significant development before the Council could consider
recommending it as policy to the ICANN Board. ICANN staff had also produced
a detailed document outlining concerns with the OPoC proposal as it then
stood, particularly in the light of the Registerfly debacle. (The staff
comments also dealt with the minority proposal of the Task Force.) This
Working Group was created to develop the OPoC proposal in three specific
ways and report back to the Council. 

The Council can then make a decision on whether to recommend the proposal,
commission further work, or even drop it altogether. 

All the best, Maria


http://gnso.icann.org/meetings/minutes-gnso-28mar07.shtml :
Item 3: WHOIS PDP

- summarise outcome of meeting with the GAC
- next steps - consider forming an implementation working group to
resolve implementation details of concern to some constituencies around
OPoC

Bruce Tonkin summarised the WHOIS situation.
Registrars were currently contractually required to:
- provide adequate contact information to facilitate timely resolution of
any problems that arise in connection with the registered name
- take reasonable precautions to protect personal data from loss, misuse,
unauthorized access or disclosure, alteration or destruction.
Issues arose with the implementation, specified in the Registrars contract,
of the above requirements. One implementation issue was that the data be
freely available via the port-43, an IETF standard protocol and a second one
was that data be available on the worldwide Web based query access via a Web
site. The present implementation makes it difficult to protect personal
data.

The WHOIS task force had attempted to improve the effectiveness of WHOIS
services while taking into account the need to ensure privacy protection for
the personal data of natural persons.
Contention arose around the purpose of WHOIS, and if there were a change in
access, how would those who needed to contact people be able to do so
acceptably.
The WHOIS task force has basically put forward two proposals, the
Operational point of Contact Proposal and the Special circumstances
proposal, neither of which has received support from more than three of the
six GNSO constituencies. The operational point of contact proposal has a
simple majority of support within the WHOIS task force.

The options open to the Council would be to submit the report to the ICANN
Board for a decision or to consider forming one or more working groups to
engage in further study to get stronger support for the recommendations
presented to the ICANN Board.

There was general agreement to form a single working group for further
study.

The Council passed the following resolution:
The GNSO Council resolves:

1) To acknowledge the completion of the Whois TF work and note we have
received and discussed their report, and thank the task force for their work

2) To create a working group of affected stakeholders:

- including GNSO constituency, law enforcement and community
participants,

- whose work is to be completed within 120 days

- that will work to examine the issues raised with respect to the policy
recommendations of the task force and make recommendations concerning how
those policies may be improved to address these issues, namely:

a. define the roles, responsibilities, and requirements of the operational
point of contact, and what happens if they are not
fulfilled.

b. how legitimate interests will access registration data no longer
published via Whois,

c. whether a distinction should be made between the registration contact
information published based on the nature of the registered name holder (for
example, legal vs. natural persons) or its use of the domain name.

The motion carried by 20 votes in favour.

Kristina Rosette, and Avri Doria, voted against the motion.
Ute Decker had already left the meeting at the time of the vote, but
requested that her vote against the motion be noted.

Decision 3

The GNSO Council resolves:

1) To acknowledge the completion of the Whois TF work and note we have
received and discussed their report, and thank the task force for their work

2) To create a working group of affected stakeholders:

- including GNSO constituency, law enforcement and community participants,

- whose work is to be completed within 120 days

- that will work to examine the issues raised with respect to the policy
recommendations of the task force and make recommendations concerning how
those policies may be improved to address these issues, namely:

a. define the roles, responsibilities, and requirements of the operational
point of contact, and what happens if they are not fulfilled.

b. how legitimate interests will access registration data no longer
published via Whois,

c. whether a distinction should be made between the registration contact
information published based on the nature of the registered name holder (for
example, legal vs. natural persons) or its use of the domain name. 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-gnso-whois-wg@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-gnso-whois-wg@xxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Tim Ruiz
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 2:29 PM
To: Steve DelBianco
Cc: gnso-whois-wg@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [gnso-whois-wg] Comments on WWG report draft 1.5

Two wrongs don't make a right. Putting bad policy in place and then telling
registrants its for their benefit and so it will cost them more is a
terrible mis-representation of the truth.

The discussions/debates of this WG, IMHO, are entirely for the benefit of
the IP community. The original OPoC proposal was a a perfectly reasonable,
uncomplicated, and workable compromise that has been basically rejected for
no good reason.

Tim 



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: [gnso-whois-wg] Comments on WWG report draft 1.5
From: "Steve DelBianco" <sdelbianco@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, July 24, 2007 10:10 pm
To: <gnso-whois-wg@xxxxxxxxx>

Comment on Section 6 - Access to Undisplayed Whois data, and the question of
paying for access

Some have suggested that these access methods may cause a substantial
increase in costs to Registrars, and speculated on who would bear these
costs. 

Only time will tell, but there may well be incremental costs that persist
after Registrars and Accessors climb their initial learning curves. 

If Registrars are unwilling to bear these costs, then all Registrants should
pay a nominal increase in domain name fees to cover such costs. 

Registrants are the beneficiaries of this change in Whois access policy, and
should therefore bear the costs, if any.


Steve DelBianco
NetChoice
Business Constituency member