Support of Motion 1: OPOC

["Ian Flanigan" <flan@xxxxxxx>]

As the owner of several internet domains, I believe that it is useless to
publish all of the data that's currently collected.  It should be sufficient
to publish a point of contact which can then relay inquiries to the right
person.  I have several domains from other countries that do this and it
seems to work fine.

I mostly agree with Prof. Wendy Seltzer's carefully reasoned analysis of the
issues which can be found at
http://forum.icann.org/lists/whois-comments-2007/msg00140.html

In particular, I want to quote these words by Prof. Seltzer for special
emphasis of my agreement with them: "ICANN has mandated collection and
display of this information as a legacy of old practices, not because there
has been any agreement that it should be so. [...] Yet intellectual property
interests, who see WHOIS as their own data-mine, have managed to stall any
movement away from the status quo. As they're trying to do again now.

The specifics of the current debate, apart from the substanceless comments
filling the forums, is a proposal to allow domain registrants to substitute
an "Operational Point of Contact", or OPOC, in the public listing. While all
their private information would still be collected, it need not be
published. Instead, the OPOC would route messages to the right recipient,
for operational, technical, or legal inquiries."

It seems ridiculous to let a small, rabid, special-interest group hold the
reasonable evolution of the whois database hostage.

I am writing to support motion 1, the 'Operational Point of Contact' (OPoC)
proposal. If that fails to pass, I will then support motion #3 to eliminate
"all contractual obligations which require registrars to display domain name
ownership and contact details."

Thank you,

Ian Flanigan