In Brief
The Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Council seeks volunteers to serve on a Working Group to develop policy recommendations on issues relating to the accreditation of privacy and proxy service providers for domain name registrations.
What This Team Will Do
The Working Group (WG) is tasked to provide the GNSO Council with a set of recommendations regarding issues identified during the recently-concluded negotiations for the new 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA), including recommendations made by law enforcement and GNSO working groups, that were not addressed during the negotiations and otherwise suited for a Policy Development Process (PDP); specifically, issues relating to the accreditation of privacy & proxy services.
Specific issues to be discussed by the WG are detailed in the WG's charter: http://gnso.icann.org/en/drafts/raa-pp-charter-22oct13-en.pdf
How This Team Will Work
ICANN Working Groups use transparent, open processes. The meetings of this WG will be recorded, and the recordings will be available to the public. The mailing list for the WG will be archived publicly. WG members are expected to submit Statements of Interest (SOI). The group will collaborate using a public workspace. The WG is expected to follow the GNSO Working Group Guidelines.
How to Join
The GNSO Council invites interested parties to join the WG, which will be open to anyone interested to join. Community members who wish to be invited to join the group should contact the GNSO secretariat (gnso.secretariat@icann.org).
Background
In October 2011, the ICANN Board initiated negotiations with the Registrars Stakeholder Group for a new form of RAA, and simultaneously requested an Issue Report from the GNSO on issues not covered by the negotiations and otherwise suited for a PDP. The Final Issue Report was published in March 2012, and recommended that the GNSO commence its PDP as soon as possible after receiving a report that the negotiations were concluded.
In June 2013, the ICANN Board formally approved the new 2013 RAA. In September 2013, ICANN staff published a paper for the GNSO reporting on the conclusion of the RAA negotiations and highlighting that of all the high and medium priority topics for the negotiations previously identified by the GNSO and the law enforcement community, only two were not fully addressed in the negotiations, viz. clarification of certain registrar responsibilities in relation to proceedings under the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), and issues relating to privacy and proxy services, including their accreditation and Relay/Reveal procedures. The UDRP questions have, however, been dealt with in a separate PDP that concluded with the publication of a Final Report in June 2013 and its adoption by the GNSO Council in August 2013.
Following a number of discussions on the topic, the GNSO Council formally approved the charter for this RAA Privacy & Proxy Services Accreditation Issues WG at its meeting on 31 October 2013.
As ICANN has already committed itself to establishing an accreditation program for privacy and proxy service providers, the recommendations from this WG are expected to inform the development of such a program. In addition, there continues to be ongoing work on various aspects of the Whois gTLD registration data directory service, including the creation of an Expert Working Group (EWG) in December 2012 that is expected to assist ICANN in redefining the purpose and provision of gTLD registration data directory services. The EWG published its Initial Report in June 2013 and is currently working on its Final Report.
In addition, the GNSO had previously commissioned a study on Whois Privacy & Proxy Abuse. The results of the study, performed by the National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom, were published for public comment in September 2013. It is expected that the study will be relevant to the deliberations of this WG.
This WG is an opportunity for the GNSO and other interested community members to help develop specific recommendations that will assist ICANN in developing a privacy and proxy accreditation program in relation to gTLD registration data directory services.