WHOIS Task Force27 September 2005 - Minutes ATTENDEES:
GNSO Constituency representatives:
Jordyn Buchanan - Chair
gTLD Registries constituency - David Maher
gTLD Registries constituency - Phil Colebrook
gTLD Registries constituency - Ken Stubbs
Registrars constituency - Ross Rader
Intellectual Property Interests Constituency - Steve Metalitz
Intellectual Property Interests Constituency - Niklas Lagergren
Internet Service and Connectivity Providers constituency - Tony Harris
Internet Service and Connectivity Providers constituency - Maggie Mansourkia
Non Commercial Users Constituency - Kathy Kleiman
Non Commercial Users Constituency - Milton Mueller Liaisons
At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) liaisons - Wendy Seltzer - apologies
GAC Liaison - Suzanne Sene - absent - apologies
ICANN Staff:
Maria Farrell Farrell - ICANN GNSO Policy Officer
GNSO Secretariat - Glen de Saint Géry Absent:
Registrars constituency - Tim Ruiz (alternate)
Registrars constituency - Paul Stahura
Internet Service and Connectivity Providers constituency - Greg Ruth
gTLD Registries constituency - Tuli Day
Non Commercial Users Constituency - Frannie Wellings
Commercial and Business Users Constituency - David Fares - apologies
Commercial and Business Users Constituency - Sarah Deutsch - apologies
Commercial and Business Users constituency - Marilyn Cade - apologies
Registrars constituency - Tom Keller - apologies MP3 Recording Action Summary - Maria Farrell Agenda
1 WHOIS Task Force work plan
2. The purpose of WHOIS , whether the contact information should be for the registrant itself or some agent of the registrant or the registrant.
3. OAB Steve Metalitz suggested an update of constituency statements 1 WHOIS Task Force work plan
Jordyn Buchanan proposed the following work plan and timelines:
Preliminary reports on the purpose of WHOIS and the WHOIS contacts before the Vancouver meeting. 11 October - substantive discussion based on email work on the purpose WHOIS . Summarise the technical and legal definitions from the email lists, incorporate the notion of agent versus registrant. Middle October - circulate the issues around the purpose of the contacts of WHOIS
25 October- proposed task force vote on a preliminary report on purpose WHOIS 8 November - final call on the substance of the purpose of the contacts. 15 or 22 November - preliminary report on the purpose of the contacts. In parallel, ongoing work on the recommendation and advice on a procedure for handling conflicts between a registrar/registry's legal obligations under privacy laws and their contractual obligations to ICANN
when the public comment period finishes on 2 October in a relatively small window on the proposed calls. Niklas Lagergren reported on the Accuracy working group mandated by the GNSO Council
The GNSO agrees to create a working group, with a representative group of volunteers, Councillors or non councillors, to work with the ICANN staff to review the effectiveness and compliance of the current contractual requirements with respect to WHOIS accuracy. The group will take as input
(1) the WDPRS report released on March 31st 2004,
(2) the WDRP report released on November 20th 2004, and
(3) the impact of ICANN's compliance plan.
The working group, chaired by Niklas Lagergren would report ot the GNSO without prejudice to the ongoing work of the task force and the paragraph in the work items on accuracy. Jordyn Buchanan, responding to Steve Metalitz, commented that the group would continue to make progress on accuracy but more productive work would depend on knowing the underlying purpose of WHOIS thus until there was more clarity about the definition of WHOIS, the work items – access and accuracy – would be deferred. The task force agreed in general to the work plan and time lines. 2. The purpose of WHOIS, a definition of the legal and technical issues, whether the contact information should be for the registrant itself or some agent of the registrant.
Jordyn Buchanan reminded the group that the work had been split in 2 subgroups, legal and technical. Task force members were free to join whichever group they chose or subscribe to both. Working via the mailing lists would obviate frequent task force calls. The mailing lists set up for 2 subgroups, legal and technical, were reported to have problems.
Glen would look into the problem, send out a list of subscribers and add task force members to lists at their request. 2 Weeks 11 October 2005 - Deadline for the subgroup work. Constituency statements on the purpose of WHOIS
Outstanding statements: Registrar statements on the purpose of whois and the purpose of the contacts.
NCUC statement on the purpose of the contacts. Jordyn Buchanan urged the constituencies to provide their statements within 2 weeks. Kathy Kleiman reported that the NCUC had just completed their public notice period on the purpose of the contacts.
Ross Rader reported the registrars would provide a statement and then take it through the constituency process to make it official with the aim to have the final official statement in the task force report Jordyn Buchanan gave a high level summary of the other constituency views on the purpose of WHOIS - whether WHOIS was intended to provide information for the registrant or some agent of the registrant. Both the iISP and IPC statements specifically indicated the registrant and did not make provision for others, whereas the CBUC and the NCUC statements made it relatively clear that some agent of the person could be contacted while the gTLD Registry constituency was harder to characterize as the information should only be available to the registrar for the purpose of billing. Jordyn Buchanan posed the question to the IPC whether they wanted to start with the registrant or have a technical contact be the first contact. Which was important, that the registrant was contacted or someone who could fix the problem? Maggie Mansourkia commented that it would certainly be the latter and a technical agent would be desirable. Niklas Lagergren commented that from the IPC perspective the key issue was speed, usually the registrant would be the fastest way to resolve a specific domain name problem, but it would depend on the problem. In the case of copyright infringement it would be necessary to get to the source of the problem as quickly as possible. whereas a technical problem with a domain name, contacting the registrant first could produce the desired result.
The IPC considered the privacy/proxy services provided by the registrars in case of a dispute, an interesting idea. Jordyn Buchanan further enquired whether it was the intent in the IPC statement to prohibit privacy/proxy services, if the registrar data showed up in the WHOIS? The IPC statement currently provided for contact information for the registrant, but the proxy services might provide information for an agent of the registrant and act as their public face. So would the IPC position be that those types of services were inconsistent with the purpose of WHOIS or would there be no problem? Niklas Lagergren responded that it would not be a problem if the entity holding the information had the power to act on behalf of the registrant and gave the following example:
if a domain holder needed to be contacted for licensing purposes or because it was noted that on a specific website or domain name a pre-released movie appeared as yet unavailable theatrically, a proxy service, solving the problem in a timely manner could do the trick as speed was the key issue. Jordyn Buchanan referred to the CBUC statement on the purpose of the Whois database:
" A database of contact information sufficient to contact the registrant or their agent(s) to enable the prompt resolution of technical, legal and other matters relating to the registrant’s registration and use of its domain name."
and posed the question whether the task force considered it reasonable to allow the purpose of the WHOIS to include the notion of agency in the "prompt resolution of issues." It was argued that the above was existing policy but that there could be notions in the status quo that might or might not be in the purpose of WHOIS. There was broad agreement among the ISP, IPC, NCUC and gTLD registries representatives that, the notion of the registrant or their agent combined with the notion of the prompt resolution of various problems in the purposes of the WHOIS would not be an issue for the constituencies. Ross Rader preferred to comment after seeing the proposition in writing and but said that it was desirable to separate what could be policy, versus guidelines that would not be in the policy, such as speed of response, and although sympathetic to the discussion believed that speed of response was not a controllable factor. Next Call:
11 October 2005
Synthesise the various threads on the purpose of WHOIS
Discuss Public comments on recommendation 2 Jordyn Buchanan thanked all the task force members for participating. The WHOIS task force call ended at 16 :20 CET - | 