WHOIS Task Force 1 minutes

WHOIS Task Force 1 Teleconference December 23 - Minutes

ATTENDEES:

GNSO Constituency representatives:
gTLD Registries constituency: - Jeff Neuman - Chair
gTLD Registries constituency - David Maher
Intellectual Property Interests Constituency - John Wolfe
Intellectual Property Interests Constituency - Jeremy Banks
Registrars Constituency - Paul Stahura
Non Commercial Users Constituency:- Milton Mueller

Liaisons:
At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) liaisons - Wendy Seltzer
ICANN Staff Manager: Barbara Roseman
GNSO Secretariat: Glen de Saint Géry

Absent:
Commercial and Business Users constituency:- David Fares
Commercial and Business Users constituency:- Marilyn Cade
Internet Service and Connectivity Providers constituency: - Antonio Harris

Administrative Issues:

1. Jeff Neuman referred to the notice from the GNSO Council chair concerning alternate representation from one constituency. The chair of each task force should be given the discretion to take advantage of the availability of alternate members for the purposes of providing factual information, whilst ensuring that each constituency expresses their particular opinion/viewpoint on the policy issue under consideration through a single representative during any single call or physical meeting.
Jeremy Banks form the Intellectual Property Interests Constituency would be the primary person speaking on the call.
2. Caution should be taken with blogging as the public looks at it. Jeff Neuman expressed mixed feelings about whether task force opinions should be reflected in blogs.
3. The minutes of the task force 1 teleconference held on Tuesday 16 December would be approved at the next meeting.

Deadlines

1) December 23, 2003: Dissemination by ICANN of all WHOIS workshop materials related to specific issues

Barbara Roseman reported that links to material from past ICANN meetings and DNSO/GNSO web pages.
Jeff Neuman remarked that the materials should be used by the second sub group, John Wolfe, Jeremy Banks, David Fares and Wendy Seltzer to do the chart.

December 23, 2003: Identification of non-marketing groups that use Whois Data.
Jeremy Banks and John Wolfe posted a list of non-marketing groups.
The groups were characterized as mixed, Search firms, websites that allowed you to do your own looking up, downloadable client allowing for a large number of users. In general they covered sites and services that were and could be used by Intellectual Property interests.

Wendy Seltzer posted a non-marketing group list and responses from Ben Edelman.
Paul Stahura posted a list of non-marketing entities and suggested questions
Jeff Neuman requested some information from the academia world.
The purpose was to collect as much possible information from the non marketing groups through the questions that would be sent out.
Jeff Neuman noted that there was a lack of:
- non US groups
- law enforcement groups

Jeff Neuman proposed combining all the links into one list after all the responses were received.
Notes should be sent to all the constituencies to find groups to send the questions to that would be drawn up by the task force.
5 January extended deadline

"Needs and justifications" chart due (compiled from pre-existing data)
Name of the group which submitted material or who made the statement

Needs and justifications:

Needs for Whois data in general
If they have made a statement on port 43 or bulk access, if port 43 went away could they achieve the same things by using the web based WHOIS

Address the second question:
Soliciting comments on "technical measures adopted for preventing data mining"
What technical means are there for registrars and registries to prevent data mining assuming that port 43 is kept open, assuming that there is a web based WHOIS, what is the feasibility of the technical measures and what costs would be involved to the registrars and registries if they were to implement these.

Paul Stahura suggested some questions and referred to an article in Scientific America.
Milton Mueller suggested having documentation on the impact on the registrars and registries and could this be correlated to the volume that is being imposed on the registries.
Paul Stahura made the point that it was difficult to where mining was taking place.

Jeff Neuman summarized:
assume the WHOIS consists of "x" data, assume data must be made publicly available, the task is to figure out how to make that data available and prevent data mining.

For next meeting January 6, 2004

- Sub Groups should start working

Group 1 "Note going out for non-marketing uses"
David Fares
Milton Mueller
Paul Stahura
Barbara Roseman

January 5, 2004: Draft note


Group 2 "Workshop material: start chart of needs and justifications"
John Wolfe
Jeremy Banks
David Maher
Wendy Setltzer

January 6, 2004: brainstorm and start charts based on materials from workshops and ICANN.

Jeff Neuman thanked everyone for their presence and participation and ended the call at 16:50 UTC.

Next call: Tuesday 6 January 2004, 16:00 UTC, 11:00 EST, 8:00 Los Angeles, 17:00 CET.