Draft NCUC comments

[Milton Mueller]

I join Chris in thanking Kathy for getting the comments underway.
In response to Chris's comments, I tried to define a more developed
and stronger position regarding Whois data elements. My proposal
focuses on getting certain data elements OUT of Whois altogether,
and if that is not possible proposes opt-out as a back up. Let
me know what you think of this language:

=====BEGIN PROPOSED LANGUAGE===========

If Whois data remains fully accessible on a public and 
anonymous basis, we strongly favor the elimination of all 
personally identifiable contact data as a required element 
of Whois except for:

Registrant Name
Registrant Country of Residence

Technical Contact Name 
Technical Contact Address 
Technical Contact E Mail address 
Technical Contact Phone number 
Technical Contact Fax number 

All other data elements containing contact information, 
including new ones desired by other constituencies, could 
be continued as voluntary elements; i.e., registrants 
would have the right to fill them out or leave them blank as 
desired. 

We favor continued mandatory inclusion of the following data 
elements:

Domain Status 
Domain Name ID 
Domain Name 
Registrar ID* 
Name of Registrar 
Name Server(s) 
Name Server ID* 

Most of these are technical in nature. Note that we have 
eliminated domain creation and expiration dates. 
We believe that the inclusion of that information promotes 
spamming and manipulative or fraudulent service offerings 
from competing registrars. We can think of no legitimate purpose 
that is served by requiring that information to be public; for 
example, when one looks up someone's telephone number in a 
white pages directory there is no statement about when the 
line was rented. If that information is necessary for law 
enforcement purposes it can be subpoenaed from registrar 
records. 

Our recommendations are intended to return Whois to its 
original purpose as a technical coordination vehicle. We note 
that the best way to improve accuracy of the data is to 
provide privacy and security. Domain name registrants' 
incentives to provide accurate information will dramatically 
increase once they feel the information is secure. 

If these data elements are not fully removed from the Whois 
database, NCUC favors immediate adoption of privacy 
protections for the WHOIS fields, and the creation of an 
"opt-out" policy that allows a domain name registrant to fully 
understand and freely choose whether or not to allow his/her 
personal data to be published in worldwide directories and 
available anonymously in any form. These options would apply 
to all of the data elements we favor removing from the data 
elements above. 

===END OF PROPOSAL===