NCUC Statement on Whois Notification - final draft

[Milton Mueller]

This would be the final draft, to be sent to the Task Force and GNSO.
Note that the only dissent is recognized in the statement. (sec. 2)

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Statement of the Noncommercial Users Constituency on Whois Task Force
1/2 Recommendation:
Improving Notification and Consent for the Use of Contact Data in the
Whois Service

1. Constituency position
Noncommercial domain name users welcome efforts to ensure that domain
name registrants are better informed about the publication of their
private contact information via the Whois system. Public, anonymous
access to private contact information poses a number of risks to
registrants and may violate their rights to privacy. Until this
situation is reformed, conspicuous notification is essential.

The text we reviewed contains an error. Under point 3, the sentence
"Registrars must obtain a separate acknowledgement from registrars that
they have read and understand these disclosures" should read
"Registrars
must obtain a separate acknowledgement from _registrants_ that they
have read and understand these disclosures."

NCUC strongly supports the requirement to set aside the notification
and to require a distinct and separate acknowledgement from registrants
that they are aware of the exposure of their private information. We
observe, however, that for customers registering multiple domain names
in the same transaction, only one such acknowledgement should be
required. The constituency would like to make sure that the same
notification and acknowledgement should take place during renewals.

We strongly support the statement "The wording of the notice provided
by registrars should, to the extent feasible, be uniform." Because of
the highly competitive nature of the registrar business, registrars have
an incentive to downplay or obscure the privacy implications of
registering a domain name because they fear it may deter customers from
signing up. The specific wording of the notification, therefore, should
not be left to the discretion of registrars. We suggest that the wording
be developed by staff subject to the approval of the GNSO Council, and
translated as literally as possible into different languages by an
independent party. This language should then be incorporated into the
Registrar Accreditation Agreement.

2. Method for Reaching Agreement on NCUC position

NCUC's Chair drafted and circulated via email a constituency
statementon its discussion list, soliciting input from its members. A
minor addition to the draft, concerning renewals, was suggested and
agreed and incorporated into the constituency statement. All comments
were supportive except for one, which emphasized the additional burden
on registrants of the additional process.

3. Impact on Constituency.
While there is some recognition that the registration process might be
slightly more complicated as a result of the proposed change, all member
organizations but one considered the benefits of more prominent
notification and registrant awareness to outweigh any burden.



Dr. Milton Mueller
Syracuse University School of Information Studies
http://www.digital-convergence.org
http://www.internetgovernance.org