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