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[nc-whois] RE: Critical Relationship Between Accuracy and Privacy That the WHOIS Task Force Continues To Overlook and My Contribution to the WHOIS Privacy Issues Report

  • To: "Ruchika Agrawal" <agrawal@epic.org>, "NC-WHOIS" <nc-whois@dnso.org>
  • Subject: [nc-whois] RE: Critical Relationship Between Accuracy and Privacy That the WHOIS Task Force Continues To Overlook and My Contribution to the WHOIS Privacy Issues Report
  • From: "Bruce Tonkin" <Bruce.Tonkin@melbourneit.com.au>
  • Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 16:10:24 +1100
  • Cc: <discuss@icann-ncc.org>, <ehchun@peacenet.or.kr>
  • Sender: owner-nc-whois@dnso.org
  • Thread-Index: AcLZW5di4CffSY5nTYKuT3f4cceyQwABGKMQ
  • Thread-Topic: Critical Relationship Between Accuracy and Privacy That the WHOIS Task Force Continues To Overlook and My Contribution to the WHOIS Privacy Issues Report

Hello Ruchika,
 
Thank you for attending the GNSO Council meeting this morning, and your contribution to the debate.
Privacy is indeed a very important issue, and there was strong support on the GNSO Council for further work in this area.

 
I am happy to work on the privacy issues report as long as the WHOIS Task Force can guarantee that enforcement of accuracy and implementation of privacy safeguards would be concurrent (or that implementation of appropriate privacy safeguards would precede enforcement of accuracy).   
 
 
Please note that it is not in the WHOIS Task Force's power to make such a guarantee.  
 
The issue of advancing the privacy issue in parallel with the new consensus policies on WHOIS (that do not talk about enforcement, but recommend that a registrant be reminded of their EXISTING contractual obligation as part of the domain name registration agreement) is in the hands of individual members of the ICANN community (which includes you).  You may make a significant contribution to achieving your aim for a speedy solution to the privacy issue (which I think is well supported at the GNSO Council based on the discussions during the call) by focussing your efforts on using the ICANN procedures to create new policies for privacy protection.  If you are unclear on the process going forward please feel free to contact me and I will try to assist.
 
I can guarantee that if the GNSO Council receives an issues report on privacy by Tuesday 11 March it will be voted on by the GNSO Council meeting in Rio de Janeiro to initiate the policy development process on privacy.   
 

 "  Issue Raised by Other than by the Board. If a policy issue is presented to the Council for consideration via an Issue Report, then the Council shall meet within fifteen (15) calendar days after receipt of such Report to vote on whether to initiate the PDP. "

An example of an issues report (which is only about 2 pages in length) can be found at:

http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/20020919.NCdeletes-issues.html

I expect that the new consensus policies recommended by the WHOIS Task Force will take from 3 to 6 months to implement, which is enough time for the Privacy policy development process to make significant progress provided it is begun at the GNSO Council meeting on 25 March 2003.

 This guarantee does not conflict with the vote taken during the GNSO Council meeting today, as the GNSO Council specifically and only voted on the WHOIS Task Force’s Final Report’s consensus policies (see below).

 The council approved the WHOIS report to be sent to the Board for consideration at the ICANN Board meeting in Rio de Janeiro, which contained 4 new consensus policies as you listed.   The minutes of the discussion on privacy from the GNSO Council meeting that related to the WHOIS report will also be forwarded to the Board.
 
I hope you will be able to devote some time to create an issues report using the material from your recent postings that explain WHOIS issues.  Your voluntary efforts would be most appreciated.  Please also be aware that your colleagues on the WHOIS task force are also all volunteers and devoting their personal time.  Many members have devoted over 10,000 hours of their own time each on WHOIS to achieve a better result for the community.  It is time for new people to get involved with fresh enthusiasm - it is through personal effort and enthusiasm that the privacy issues will be dealt with in parallel with improvements in accuracy.
 
Please also note that there is no disagreement that resolving the privacy issue will further improve WHOIS accuracy.  Thus there is an incentive from many of the constituencies to work with you on this issue.   For example I know registrars and registries are most concerned about the abuse of the public port 43 WHOIS service.  Note however that privacy is but one of many reasons why WHOIS data is inaccurate.  
 
I hope you will be prepared to continue to lead the debate.
 
Regards,
Bruce Tonkin
 
 
 
 


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