GNSO representation & WHOIS

[Norbert Klein]

Just for the history of it: The GNSO Council had voted against studies - after
we had thought we had put the whole WHOIS clarification process to rest with
a majority vote - defining the WHOIS database according to its original
functions: a technical reference tool.

Then came the requests to look into some details again - basically security
and law enforcement related - and some of us thought our votes had clarified
what could be clarified - hen came the next step: why not clarify these
questions with studies - and we should say which studies might be useful.

To my surprise, this resulted again in a long list, which was re-organized and
prioritized - but often not showing the real practical implications (as
Milton gave an example).

So I suggest to focus on essentials: privacy and openness (law enforcement has
its own mechanisms, this is NOT in the ICANN mandate).


Norbert

 =

On Monday, 24 November 2008 01:18:08 Milton L Mueller wrote:

> thanks for asking, Bill.
> I think most of us were pretty much agreed that Whois studies were a
> delaying tactic the U.S. successfully used to prevent the GNSO from taking
> any action on privacy, and to give the IPR interests a new stick with which
> to beat the privacy-proxy services of the registrars. Typically ncuc and
> the registrars are against these studies altogether. for a while, the
> registries were, too. however, verisign (either as a corp or perhaps due to
> the personality of Chuck Gomes) is less privacy-friendly and more law
> enforcement/trademark friendly than the other registries, and seems to have
> turned them around. furthermore, GNSO politics have turned the idea of
> proposals into a fairly complicated thing (ask Avri why). This caused the
> GAC to ridicule the gNSO in Cairo and may even cause it to bypass it
> altogether and go directly to the Board to ask for studies. my advice is,
> push with the registrars for no studies; failing that, pick one or two that
> actually contribute something new to the debate, such as: how many gTLD
> registrants are actually  natural persons?
>
> I had a very intense conversation/debate with William Dee of the EU about
> this in Cairo. I asked him how empirical studies about, say, whether 24% or
> 34% of the registrants in .com are natural persons in any way affects the
> principle that natural persons must have their private info shielded
> according to EU law. He couldn't answer that, of course.
>
>
> Milton Mueller
> Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies
> XS4All Professor, Delft University of Technology
> ------------------------------
> Internet Governance Project:
> http://internetgovernance.org <http://internetgovernance.org/>

--
Norbert Klein
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