RE: [ssac-gnso-irdwg] proposed new structure and recommendations for final report

["Metalitz, Steven" <met@xxxxxxx>]

I was surprised to see in ICANN's draft budget and operating plan the statement 
that ICANN will, by June 30,2012, "develop and support the standardization of a 
new Registration Data Directory Service in the IETF that will not be limited by 
the issues that current Whois has (e.g., supports internationalized 
registration data) and is extensible to support a wide array of policies 
present and future."  

Does anyone (staff?) know the mechanism by which ICANN will develop this new 
service?  How does this relate to the work of this group?

Steve Metalitz  

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ssac-gnso-irdwg@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-ssac-gnso-irdwg@xxxxxxxxx] 
On Behalf Of Owen Smigelski
Sent: Thursday, June 09, 2011 3:31 PM
To: ssac-gnso-irdwg@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [ssac-gnso-irdwg] proposed new structure and recommendations for 
final report


Hi Jim,

I think the below outline looks good: it identifies the issues and proposes a 
solution.  

My only concern is that this report will go nowhere, e.g. generate some 
discussion and then WHOIS remains static for years to come.  Is there any way 
to make these recommendation changes mandatory?  I know ICANN cannot make the 
changes to WHOIS directly (that's for IETF/others), but what about changing the 
registrar/registry agreements to require them to provide internationalized 
WHOIS that conforms to ICANN requirements in the report in 5 years?  That will 
certainly incentivize the necessary actors to discuss and agree upon a new 
protocol and implement the changes.   My above timeframe and method for making 
this required are just examples.  

I'm certainly open to other proposals, but I would certainly like to see our 
efforts result in actual improvements to WHOIS.

Regards,

Owen 

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-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ssac-gnso-irdwg@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-ssac-gnso-irdwg@xxxxxxxxx] 
On Behalf Of James M Galvin
Sent: Sunday, May 15, 2011 15:18
To: ssac-gnso-irdwg@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ssac-gnso-irdwg] proposed new structure and recommendations for final 
report


We are meeting on Monday, 16 May, at 1500 UTC.  Our last two meetings have been 
cancelled due to lack of participation.  However, it is important that we move 
forward and seek closure on our work in this group.

I am going to propose a path to closure in this message.  It represents my 
understanding of our last meeting on 18 April (transcript has been available 
for some time), our public meeting during ICANN San Francisco (transcript has 
been available for some time), and a few private conversations I have had since 
and between those two meetings.

I am submitting this proposal as an individual.  I welcome discussion on its 
merits and completeness both in the meeting on 16 May and on this mailing list.

Speaking as co-Chair, I am going to press to move forward with this plan, 
incorporating feedback and suggestions from our discussion in our next meeting 
on 16 May as well as any future discussions in meetings and on this mailing 
list.  I will interpret silence as agreement with this plan and its evolution.

In the rest of this message I am speaking as an individual.

As a reminder, the mission of this working group is as follows:

The IRD-WG shall study the feasibility and suitability of introducing display 
specifications to deal with the internationalization of Registration Data.

In our interim report we have evolved 4 models and we sought community input on 
the efficacy of the those models.  We did get a few well reasoned comments but 
it is fair to say that we did not receive anything close to a community 
consensus on how to choose between the models.  I would like to propose 
something different than choosing between the 4 models, which we discussed 
during our last meeting.

In my opinion, the models are trying to address the problem of executing 
translation and transliteration.  Model 1 is status quo, i.e., we stick with 
the system we have and require US-ASCII to be present at all times.  The other 
models distribute the translation and transliteration services in various ways. 
 I do not think we need to solve this problem.  I think we identify this as the 
problem that needs further study.

Specifically, I suggest the outline below for our final report.
This is an expanded outline insofar as I try to say a bit about what I would 
expect to be in each section.  It is probably not explained as well as it could 
be but I do hope it gets the point across.  I did not want to make this message 
any longer than it already is.  I also was not trying to write the report since 
I do want some discussion about this approach first.

The model for the outline is we state what we have, we make some observations 
about what we have, and we propose further study of a few specific issues.



1. INTRODUCTION - Mostly boilerplate information including problem statement 
and details about the formation of this group.  We can re-purpose a great deal 
of what is in the interim report.

2. BACKGROUND - This should include all the facts we need to support our 
findings.  Most of this is in our interim report.

a. what we know various registrars and registries are doing today to support 
the display of internationalizes data.

b. what we know about the existing WHOIS protocol.

c. what we know about the definition of registration data.

d. what we know about where different registration data elements are collected, 
stored, managed, and displayed.

3. INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS - This could be a part of the background information 
but my current thinking is that it is better to elevate to a major section.  In 
this section we summarize all the international standards and standard 
practices that exist for internationalizing the various elements of existing 
registration data.  Most of this is in our interim report.

4. FINDINGS - In this section we list the conclusions we can draw from all the 
facts stated previously.

a. WHOIS is insufficient.  It has no structure and hence no method of signaling 
encodings.

a.1. Registration data has multiple purposes and internationalization 
requirements are different depending on the purpose.  To the extent the data is 
already represented in XML, e.g., within EPP between registrars and registries, 
internationalization is primarily ensuring the data is properly tagged with the 
script that is in use.

a.2. The lack of structure in WHOIS excludes any signaling mechanism, thus the 
data can not be correctly tagged and further it can not be correctly displayed.

a.3. There are recognized standards for internationalizing many of the elements 
of registration data but in many cases the data would need to be translated or 
tranliterated for use with the current WHOIS.

b. Registrants are monolingual.  This is intended to highlight the problem of 
who does the translation or transliteration and what it means to responsibility 
for quality and compliance.

c. Quality of data is not a well defined phrase.  Registrants are expected to 
provide high quality data but can it be verified?  Even if could what happens 
to the quality after translation and transliteration and who is responsible for 
that?

d. Registration data is itself undefined.  WHOIS services do vary.
WHOIS requirements vary between registrars and registrants as evidenced by the 
contracts.

4. RECOMMENDATIONS

a. Seek a plan to define registration data, who collects it, who stores it, who 
is responsible for it, and specify its purpose.

b. Seek a plan to replace WHOIS.  In other words, although the data can 
probably be internationalized, displaying it is problematic with the current 
system.  This study would need to consider if registration data should be 
translated or transliterated, who should do it, what it means to the overall 
registration data infrastructure, and what it means to the quality of the data.

c. As an interim solution, given the continued use of WHOIS, as much as 
possible, all parties in the lifecyle of the registration data should adopt the 
international standards noted above for registration data elements wherever 
they can.


Thanks,

Jim