Input needed: Prioritizing WHOIS issues

[Marc Schneiders]

On Wed, 27 Aug 2003, at 09:16 [=GMT-0400], Milton Mueller wrote:

> At the Whois Steering committee, teleconference  August 7/8, 2003,
> the Acting Chair, Bruce Tonkin asked each constituency to formally
> review the draft table attached (see link below) and please provide
> input to help select 5 top issues for further consideration in one or
> more task forces.
>
> You can see the Draft Table referenced above at this URL (scroll down
> once you get there):
>
> http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/whois-sc/msg00012.html
>
> NCUC's two representatives to the Whois Steering Committee are
> Milton Mueller and Stephanie Perrin. We need to do this by September 4.

It seems rather weird to have to pick 5 from these 20 questions. Some
are very specific and already contain an implicit answer to other
questions. So I would suggest to pick the questions that ask the right
questions but do not also imply a wrong answer to a more fundamental
question, as with no. 4 and 18 below.

I see that the provisional choices of the NCUC are:

3, 4, 5, 15, 18

My comments and alternatives:

3 Good question.

4 (about pseudonymous registrations) concedes that the data of all or
most registrants should remain available for everyone. For it would
not make sense to study the mechanism of pseudonymous registrations,
if there is no information (worth) anymore to hide in whois. So I
don't like this one. Assuming it is impossible to make whois totally
voluntarily on the part of the registrant, I think we should strive
towards a whois that has fewer required fields, e.g. only name and
postal address or only name and email address. This question is not
helpful to get closer to this goal. So I say: Dump it.

5 I don't know the answer to this question, so it may be a good one.

15 asks what uses of whois are allowable, listing examples like spam
fighting. I find 15 particularly sneaky. Does it make sense to list
uses?  I would rather say what people, bodies, authorities. Those can
be identified. The police may see it. A spam fighter may not see it,
because we have no way to determine if she is a spamfighter. Question
13 puts the same topic in a much better perspective. I suggest to swap
15 for 13. 15 has just 1 vote, 13 has 2. With 3 votes 13 may make it
to the top 5.

18 (some registrants qualifying for exemption to provide certain
data, and how to establish whether they qualify) is a non-question,
since this cannot be implemented except by paperwork, which will make
it too expensive. This question has, however, already taken the step
of accepting a full public whois by assuming it. Bad question.

14 (limiting bulk access) I like.

7 (what with false/incorrect data?), maybe? It gives opportunity to
discuss more topics, since it asks in what cases to allow inaccurate
data. This question may also make it, if you vote for it.

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