Re: [ga] Summary of Verisign meeting in Washington on WHOIS services

["William S. Lovell" <wsl@cerebalaw.com>]

"Sapiro, Miriam" wrote:

Danny -

I'm sure it wasn't your intention, but your note may have left some folks
with the wrong impression about what I said and the state of play:

-  The first of three consultations that VeriSign plans to hold on
developing a universal Whois database took place on Aug 15, hosted by the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  It was focused on getting input from business and
IP folks, as well as the law enforcement community.  Efforts were made
several weeks ago to publicize the session, as everyone was most welcome.
The invitation was, for example, sent to the Registrar and Registry
Constituencies.  Our intention was not to exclude anyone, but to focus
different sessions on different audiences.

A more clear indication of the need for a new constituency could hardly
be
imagined. Why was the invitation not sent to the Registrants Constituency?
Simple answer: because there is no such thing.  And until there
is, individuals
themselves will have little say on the WHOIS issue
(although the public forum
referred to will help).

Leah Gallegos and I have been batting back and forth the question of
whether or not there should be an actual "Registrants Constituency,"
meaning that anyone who has a registered domain name should be
included, or an "Individuals Constituency" that would include all
individuals as registrants, but exclude corporations, etc.  But under
either scheme, the Individual would indeed be in there. The efforts
by William X. Walsh to move the IDNO issue into a new approach
in the formation of such a constituency (which flavor I don't think is
quite clear yet), now being thoroughly examined on the IDNO mailing
list, deserves the attention of all GA members.

What is needed is to adopt the old phrase from grade school:
the 3 Rs -- not Reading, 'riting and 'rithmatic but
Registrar, Registry, Registrant. Without that last, registrants
will continue to be victimized.

[snip]

Bill Lovell
--
 

The URLs for Best Practices:
DNSO Citation:
http://www.dnso.org/dnso/gaindex.html
(Under "Other Information Documents"; "August 2001:
Proposal for Best Practices for the DNSO GA")
Part I:
http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/20010813.GA-BestPractices.html
Part II:
http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/20010813.GA-BP-flowchart.pdf
(Access to the .pdf file requires installing the Adobe Acrobat
Reader, which is available for free down load at
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.)