There is a greater need for information than operational changes

["President" <President@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

1) All registries must implement so called "thick whois", which means COM/NET 
must be centralized as are the other GTLDs. 

I can rattle off many examples of bad registrar data I've seen through the 
years, and how many registrars to this day play the game of presenting 
different whois info in their registant admin panel that their public facing 
whois server. I believe this is intentional and relates to registrar's conflict 
of interest in obtaining greater profits from tranfer fullfillment that 
renewals, errors in their systems are acutally desired.

A thick whois insures the registry, who should be impartial (they don't care 
which registrar pays the sponshorship fee), simple shows the resulting 
composite record of accumulated chages. This insures a truely authoritative 
whois record

2) Privacy whois MUST be forbidden.

This finally cut through the BS on this issue. Privacy whois has nothing to do 
with spam. Years ago I recall NameScout was the first registrar I saw implement 
randomized short duration tokenized email addresses to allow direct contact to 
the registrant but greatly cripple spam as the emails quickly became invalid.

Spam exists due to emails being free. Physical mail costs real money, thus few 
send "mail spam" anymore. Telephone numbers are an in between issue.

However the registrant's name, and physical address, should be REQUIRED to be 
correct and accurate, privacy whois must end, period.

A thick whois, combined with no privacy whois, ensures an electronic 
"ownership" finger print is created, this protects registrants. I have no 
interest in having the owneship of my house be hidden, and thus difficult for 
me to prove, nor should anyone want thier domain registrantion to be hidden - 
Again, exceptions being email and possibly phone. The price of a stamp should 
be an effective barrior to filter serious contacts form nuisances.

3) Registry "WhoWas" service

I'm am constantly offended by the perceived "authority" that sites like 
DomainTools have in our industry! DomainTools is filled with gross errors and 
gross omissions. But it represents a service that all intuit a need for.

Registries have all this information, if they are required to implement a thick 
whois server.

This means the extension of a thick whois is the ability to provide a truely 
authoritative registrant record. Without such a record, one can not seriously 
address the issues stated to be the goal of this group.

A Whowas service would no doubt create registry server bandwidth loads that 
make Whois loads look trival. Thus such a service could not be free. There is a 
huge opertunity here to provide a well needed service addressing the core 
issues of this group, and profit from doing so. I suggest a $5 fee for the 
complete historical record (for all time) of 1 to 3 domain names. For someone 
to prove historical ownership, they'd pay $5 to pull the record for their 
domain name, and perhaps one or two other records showing corelating records 
the theif performed on other domains (likey a theif will steel more than one 
domain from a registrant). Lawyers can also use the service to expose squaters.

I can imagine a registry potentially making more money per year selling such 
whowas records that is made leasing domains through registrars. And the service 
in turn provides us the "county recorder" records that our industry needs to 
address all issues of theft and ownership.

4) Registry operations.

I see no need for any changes if registry behavior, or domain state control, to 
address the issue of this group. I only see the need for info to prove who 
registered what and when. The current 60 day holds create suffient dispute 
periods to resolve complaints. Without the raw non privacy whowas information, 
everything else is meaningless.

Who can look to the domainer forums to see these individuals have refined their 
professional to be able to easily spot domain theft based on "fingerprints" 
that domain theft virtually allways leaves in what little whois history is 
avialable now. Offer authoritative WhoWas service and everyone will quickly 
learn this art, and registrants, fraud, theft, etc, will be trivial for all to 
spot and decide on.

Registrars do work together, and the industry quickly reveals those most 
preditory. Registrars have an interest in preserving their reputations, and 
thus work togther to insure domains don't "walk away". 

True a registrar might decide become the industries theives prefered provider, 
I do not have any suggestions at this time for such a registrar. In the 
industy's current forums people work together to identify such behaior. I 
perosnally discussed RegisterFly in the forums 1.5 years before ICANN 
involement, I refer to my own posts and peers telling others what we were 
personally experiancing, this was the time I could prove what was going on and 
warned other to get their domains out.

Domainers are the experts of these matters in our industry. My own observations 
suggest domainers are a resource that ICANN constantly fails to tap, and fails 
to recognize domainers know these issues better than most as they are often the 
bigest targets and thus have the most scars of experiance.

Charles Christopher
Domainer Since 1999
CIO ICANN Accredited Regisrars; Alfena, IgniteLA, PocketDomain, Yenkos