WHOIS Task Force 2 Reporting

[KathrynKL at AOL.COM]

All:
After many months of work, WHOIS Task Force 2 has finally issued a lengthy 
report on the WHOIS system, national privacy laws, and some proposed changes to 
the WHOIS system.  I am pleased to say that the report spends considerable 
time on the NCUC issues of:  
- that WHOIS data often contains personal data of individuals/ sensitive data 
of organization (e.g., human rights groups)
- WHOIS data is often misused/abused 
-  National law and public policy throughout the world protect individuals 
and even organizations from having to publish name/address/phone/email in public 
directories.

The new idea introduced in the report is a change of the WHOIS system.  The 
report proposes a "Tiered Access System" in which the public would have access 
to almost no personal/sensitive data (perhaps only technical contact or 
name/country of registrant), and then at a second tier (where we record the 
requester and their reason) perhaps have some access to a bit more data to contact the 
domain name holder (perhaps name/email or address) and a third tier where 
registries and registrars still have access to all the data for technical 
purposes (e.g., transfering domain names).

After consultation with other WHOIS TF members, here is the "vote" I entered 
on this draft report: 
===> "The Noncommercial Users' Constituency approves the preliminary TF2 
report and supports its publication in full to the public for comment.  We note 
the 
following concerns and reservations regarding Section 3.5 and throughout the 
report, to be recorded with our vote:"
===> "The Noncommercial Users' Constituency approves of the concept of a 
Tiered 
Access With Balance, in which the rights of the data subjects (domain name 
holders) are clearly balanced with the rights of the data recipients (e.g., 
intellectual property owners).  In doing so, we submit that there must be a 
clear 
distinction of sensitive and non-sensitive data, that domain name holders 
must 
receive immediate notification when data is released (in most cases), and 
that 
the system must avoid any White List (unlimited access to certain parties 
merely 
because they are known users)."  

Regards,
Kathy  (Kleiman -- WHOIS Task Force 2 member).





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