.COM renewal and thick Whois

[Nicolas Adam]

I assume that we would have to know what the best general rule should be
with regard whois requirements (possibly some mandated existence and
conditions of uses for third party privacy-proxy), and then work through
all those issues that bring forth some sort of undermining of that best
general rule in a way that further this goal.

I guess it should in the abstract involve delaying, moving from the
particular to the general, arguing on the merit, insisting on procedure
respect, analogize with principles that are deployed on other issue-axis
in order to widen our coalition, and the usual other stuff that goes
into political mobilization, representation and action.

Not that this is news to any of you, though. Still, any action that
don't start from where we want to land will probably be suboptimal,
unless we have (again) amazing involvement from people who are versed
enough in the ideological axis intertwined within ICANN's debates, and
with procedure, and with the numerous action items that are on the
table, to lead us close to where we would want to land without having to
resort to actually saying where we would want to land. We are graced
with such people whose knowledge and skills makes them "naturals". I
sometimes think this is a hard model to sustain (especially for them),
even though it is as effective as their strength will let it, and it
does have the advantage of not sapping those people's strength.

If we would want to unburden them a bit and go about structuring our
actions, then I would assume that where we want to land is the place to
start.

I'm assuming that mandated thin whois will be hard to get, and probably
isn't even desirable as a principled policy matter. Mandated offerings
of privacy-proxy seems principally sounder, and more politically
practical (liberty vs network engineering is a principled battle that
ain't easy to settle, and we risk reducing an eventual support
coalition, whereas thick whois coupled with mandated offering of proxies
will principally be a win for both privacy/liberty and
stability/security principles).

Only other substantive choice I see is the status quo (liberty of
registry choice, no mandated thickness into whois). On the merit, I
think that mandating privacy-proxy is better because I'm under the
impression that registry will drop you without a second thought. But we
may have to prolong the status quo in the face of thickness proposals as
a way to get to mandated proxies.

Hope this makes sense.

Nicolas


On 4/6/2012 1:13 PM, Avri Doria wrote:
> hi,
>
> I am still oping for a way to make this about the question of whether any registry should be forced into Thick whois.  Thick whois is fine for the willing but it should not be enforced by ICANN, and there was never a GNSO policy process on Thick Whois - it is another one of the Board mandated policies for all applicants gTLDs.
>
> Since the whole PDP is about forcing .com to adopt the thick whois, delaying the PDP is good.  But while it is delayed, it may also be good to find a way to turn the PDP on its head so that the general idea of thick for all is reviewed.  At his point we have thick for most all.
>
> I have no idea how one would go about doing it.
>
> avri
>
> On 6 Apr 2012, at 12:38, Milton L Mueller wrote:
>
>> Sorry, that should be "thin" whois not "think" whois. ;-)
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: NCSG-Discuss [mailto:NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf
>>> Of Milton L Mueller
>>> Sent: Friday, April 06, 2012 12:38 PM
>>> To: NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
>>> Subject: [NCSG-Discuss] .COM renewal and thick Whois
>>>
>>> Just read the GNSO Council meeting agenda for April 12.
>>> Is the .COM renewal being used as an excuse to force or pressure the last
>>> redoubt of think Whois into thick Whois?
>>> If so, what can we do about it?
>>>
>>> Milton L. Mueller
>>> Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies
>>> Internet Governance Project
>>> http://blog.internetgovernance.org