RE: [dow1tf] Draft of letter

["Neuman, Jeff" <Jeff.Neuman@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks Milton, Paul and David for your work on this.  Lets review the letter
on today's call.

Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: Milton Mueller [mailto:Mueller@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2004 9:52 AM
To: dow1tf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [dow1tf] Draft of letter


Attached is the letter draft. We came to quick agreement on the 
wording but neglected to send it to the list until now. Sorry. 
I have appended an unformatted version below, but the 
"real" one we have been using is attached as a Word document.

=================

From: ICANN Whois Taskforce 1
Re: Your need for Whois information
To: [contact]

 

Dear [contact]

We're from ICANN and we're here to help you.  ;-)

We are members of an ICANN Task Force investigating the use of Whois for
data mining. To help the task force develop policy recommendations about
access to Whois data, we are gathering information from organizations such
as yours that we understand are using or have used Whois information for
various purposes.

Because your business or activities could be affected by our
recommendations, we encourage you to take a few moments to answer the
questions below. Your input will be greatly appreciated. Your submissions
will not be shared beyond the members of this task force.

Please note that all questions pertain only to whois information which is
the name, email, street address, phone and other information about the
registrant, and the other contacts, of the domain name), and not to zone
file information which is the list of all domain names (with each name's
name servers) registered at the registry.
 	
1) How do you obtain the Whois information?

a.	Via port-43 
b.	Via the Web
c.	Via bulk access licenses with ICANN accredited registrars. If the
licenses are not obtained from accredited registrars, please specify the
type of  entity: _______________________________________
d.	Other/I don't know

2) From whom do you obtain the Whois information?
a.	Directly, from either a registrar or a registry
b.	Indirectly (please specify the entity)
c.	I don't know

3) How do you disseminate the obtained Whois information (possibly compiled,
aggregated or combined with other information)?

a.	Via port-43 (for example if you proxy/aggregate Whois data from a
number of sources and provide a port-43 feed to the public)
b.	Via the web (for example, by displaying reports, or a web-based
Whois query interface)
c.	Both a) and b)
d.	It is not disseminated at all (for example, it is used internally)
e.	Other. Please specify method: ______________________________

4) Approximately how many Whois queries/lookups do you perform on average
per day?

a.	Less than 10
b.	10-100
c.	100-1000
d.	More than 1000
e.	It varies too much to select the other options: some days it is many
(say, over 1000) and some days none
f.	I don't know

5) Do you store the Whois information?

a.	Not at all
b.	I cache queries for a short period (less than a week)
c.	I store it for longer periods such as more than a week (for example,
if you obtain bulk Whois, you probably do this)

6) Please indicate the general purposes of your use of Whois data (you may
select more than one item - choose as many as apply)

a.	To facilitate law enforcement by public authorities
b.	To facilitate intellectual property enforcement by
trademark/copyright holders
c.	To obtain marketing data, for direct use or resale
d.	For inter-registrar domain name transfers
e.	To facilitate spam prevention
f.	To operate a public information service
g.	Statistical research on domain registrations, Internet users, etc. 
h.	Other: ___________________________________

7) In your own words, please provide a brief justification of your usage of
the Whois data. Whois provides anonymous public access to individual users'
contact data and to registrars' customer lists. Why do you feel that your
usage and purposes warrant access to this data?







Thank you very much for your time and participation.

Regards,
ICANN Whois Taskforce 1