WHOIS Task Forces Joint meeting in KL minutes

WHOIS Task Force 1, 2, 3 Joint meeting with GNSO Council members in Kuala Lumpur, 20 July, 2004 - Minutes

ATTENDEES:

Participants:
Bruce Tonkin meeting chair
Jeff Neuman - Chair tf 1
David Fares (tf1)
David Maher tf1 (also representing tf2)
Antonio Harris (tf1)
Amadeu Abril l Abril (tf2)
Milton Mueller (tf1 alternate tf2)
Tom Keller (tf2)
Ken Stubbs (tf3)
Greg Ruth (tf3)
Ross Rader (tf3)
Alick Wilson
Demi Getschko
Carlos Afonso
Cary Karp
Philip Sheppard
Tony Holmes
Niklas Lagergren

ICANN Vice President, Policy Development Support: Paul Verhoef
ICANN Staff manager: Barbara Roseman
GNSO Secretariat: Glen de Saint Géry


General Objectives - next steps
Review proposed recommendations
Review consensus policy recommendations already made, but not yet implemented, and whether they have relevance for current recommendations
Implementation analysis for proposed recommendations

o Reference implementation
Assess Implementability, technical and otherwise
How long to implement
Cost of implementation - impact on ICANN budget, registrars, registries, registrants, user community
Should aspects of implementation be standardised (specified as part of the policy) or left to the market

o Funding model for additional costs
Prioritise implementation work
Take small steps forward

TF1/TF2 discussion
Current state: all data available for anonymous public access
Port 43/web based (bulk access is out of scope)

TF2: conspicuous notice to registrants of current policy
need to clearly define "conspicuous notice".
Consider defining a reference implementation for conspicuous notice and assess whether parts of the implementation should be standardised (ie explicitly included in the policy specification)

How does current status of datacontractual requirements relate to national laws on privacy?

This issue is tightly associated with the degree of consent as discussed above. This will need to be assessed once the policy is improved.

Tiered Access

Basic data (e.g for purposes of contactability) (Tier 1)
Public, anonymous, doesn't matter who sees it
The working group needs to clearly recommend what information should be included in tier 1. Full data (e.g for purposes of accountability) (Tier 2)
Someone needs to be accountable for what happens with the use of this domain name
Identify the requestor of data

Questions: What falls into each set of data?
TF 1 made a suggestion for how to distinguish the data
TFs both need to make clear what the definitions of the data sets would be
(Which data included in which set)

Need to determine how to implement the process of identifying the requestor
Some suggestions approaches include:
Centralised white list (user agreement w/license for multiple uses)
How would this scale?
Who maintains, how operated?
Who manages enforcement of license agreement?
Distributed white list
Each registrar creates white list and determines access
Trust model for sharing accreditation?
Cost effectiveness?
Individual use access
Can we do a combination of both centralised and distributed?
What work is required for identifying the requestor?
Log the requests (e.g identity of requestor, domain name record retrieved, date)
How to conform with national privacy considerations on collection of information on WHOIS requestors
Log reason for request (e.g law enforcement, trademark enforcement, copyright enforcement, etc)
Do users requesting data on behalf of third parties need to identify the third parties?
How to prevent retrieved data being passed on to other parties?
Notify registrant?
Immediate and/or
After some time
Issues with registrant contact in reseller chains
Provide information on request of registrant
Immediate and/or
After some time (supply reason for delay)
*ICANN or registrar or White List maintainer could maintain log for statistical/oversight purposes -- Council could define appropriate measurements, data to be reported on
For what use? To what end? How do decisions based on measurements get fed back into enforcement, or changed rules, or changed policy? Much more discussion needed

TF3 Discussion
Registrants have an obligation to provide accurate data
Registrars have an obligation to notifiy registrants of their responsibility WDRP
Reasonable attempt to ensure registrant corrects the data
Proposed work to be performed by ICANN staff
Centralised complaint form
Notify registrar of complaint
Compile report on activity of complaint system
Study effectiveness of WDRP
Need to determine if achievable within ICANN budget or whether additional funds required.

General comments on TF3 recommendations

The report refers to ICANN in several places. In some cases it seems to be referring to work required by ICANN staff, and in other cases it is referring to further policy development which would be ultimately done by a WHOIS task force (ie ourselves).
In some cases the report discusses issues associated with implementation and enforcement of new policies (e.g data verification) without making clear that the report proposes a new policy.

In discussion of needing to improve implementation practices of existing policy - if it is the task force's view that such practices should become standardised - then these should be formulated in the form of additional policy recommendations (ie contractual obligations).
Thus the task force needs to clarify the use of language in the report to clearly identify where a new policy (and hence contractual obligation) is being proposed, where a refinement of an existing policy is being proposed , and where a request is being made to the ICANN staff to perform additional tasks.
Once the policy recommendations are clear, each recommendation will require work on iImplementability as per TF 1 and TF2.
Cost, resources, how enforced?
Sanctions? How is effectiveness evaluated?

Data analysis of other registrations by same registrant, or with similar registration data?

New obligation - requires implementation analysis Additional measurements requested by ICANN

Is this covered in existing budget? Does it need additional resources assigned in future budgets?

Data verification

New obligation (or replacement of existing policy) Implementability -- Costs, etc.
Through email verification, or other, progressively more costly means
Affects every registrant
if done at time of registration affects every registrant, or could be done following a complaint, perhaps with some sort of reconnection charge when inaccurate data discovered.

Conclusion:
- Prioritise those policy recommendations that "could" be implemented in the short term.
- E.g conspicuous notice, tiered access, monitoring improvements, improvement to process for responding to complaints about WHOIS accuracy
- Design reference implementations for new recommendations (new contractual obligations in the case of registries and registrars)
- Determine impact of implementations - costs, other issues
- Aim to get some recommendations completed quickly, and then continue implementation analysis of further refinements
- Measure impact of actual implementations of recommendations approved by the Board and use this to inform whether further refinement is necessary

Thanks to Barabara Roseman, ICANN staff Manager, who took notes and Bruce Tonkin for edits.