Important developments on WHOIS

[Milton Mueller]

Yesterday the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee's 
Subcommittee on Courts, Internet and Intellectual Property handed 
down a terrible new bill. 

Couched in language of US Trademark law, the bill if adopted 
would have sweeping effects on the way WHOIS data is handled worldwide.  

The bill is a huge vote of no confidence for ICANN.  I find 
Congress' timing puzzling because ICANN is doing exactly what 
the  Subcommittee and and the Department of Commerce told 
them to do(!):  work hard to find a solution to the 
problem of inaccuracy in the WHOIS databases.  With 3 GNSO 
Task Forces (TFs) created at ICANN's last meeting and running concurrently as we speak, never before have so many people 
in the ICANN community spent so much energy on a single 
issue.  WHOIS is definitely a key priority of ICANN right now.

So it comes as a surprise that the Copyright Coalition's witness 
Mark Bohannon yesterday sat at the witness table and agreed 
with the other witnesses that ICANN was doing little or nothing 
to address the problem.  Sitting right behind him was Steve 
Metalitz, Counsel to the Copyright Coalition, who is a member 
of GNSO WHOIS Task Force 2, and spends no less than an hour 
a week on a TF conference call (and more on email) examining 
and debating the WHOIS privacy vs. accuracy issues. 
 
The bill is HR 3754.  For coverage of the bill and hearing, check 
out the National Journal's Feb 4 PM Edition (still posted as I 
write this) at http://nationaljournal.com/pubs/techdaily/, under 
"New bill targets online fraudsters."  

My quote is at the end: 
"The subcommittee is bypassing the best way to improve 
accuracy in the databases, which is the creation of basic 
privacy protections," said Kathy    Kleiman, an attorney at 
McLeod, Watkinson and Miller, and co-founder of 
ICANN's non-commercial constituency. "The legislation chills 
free speech, particularly online speech critical of corporations 
[using trademarks], and denigrates ICANN's current and 
extensive efforts in the Whois area." 

 
Regards,  Kathy (Kleiman)
NCUC's Rep to TF2 on Whois data elements