Re: [registrars] DC Head Count

[Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine <brunner@nic-naa.net>]

> Having gained an increased appreciation of privacy rights ...

Oh look! A slow pitch!!

I'll try and make this geek-free.

In PROVREG (IETF) some people are wrangling over what "privacy" means for
registrar-registry systems. The positions in play are:

	o there is no business requirement for automated processing of
	  registrant data with "privacy" modification, hence no mechanism 
	  other than registry-registrar contract is required.

	o there is a regulatory requirement for <mumble, above>, and
	  this requirement is that registrants be capable of "opt-out"
	  of WHOIS.

	o there are business and regulatory requirements for <mumble, above>,
	  and these requirements are not uniform, further, the requirements
	  apply to every element in the "onward transport" of customer
	  profiles (resellers, registrars, registries, escrows), again, not
	  uniformly.

	o there are generic business and regulatory requirements for <mumble,
	  above>, common to mobile device location products and domain names,
	  and possibly other devices, for which a generic mechanism must be
	  defined. 

I'm sure, that after burning a year of wax on a customer profile "onward
transport" industry effort with IBM and other large hetrogeneous electronic
traders, and another year of wax on W3C's P3P putting cookies into the mix
of P3P policied webbery, and above a year flogging position #3 (above),
I'm incapable of making "Eric's Restatement of Sports" really impartial.

Both Scott Hollenbeck (VGRS, advocate of position #1, above), and I are
trying to get the EPP implementor/operator communities to give us a sign
which general approach is preferable, and to whom. The IESG, apparently
relying upon bird entrails for devination, advocate position #2, and also
#4.

But fundamentally, these are what-policies-play-in-what-market questions,
modified by what-value-registrars-and/or-registries-bring to operational
problems.

Thanks Michael, I needed a straight man.

Eric