[dow1tf] Preliminary Report v. 4

["David W. Maher" <dmaher@xxxxxxx>]

The following are comments submitted by VeriSign, through the Registry 
Constituency, to Task Force 1 regarding the Preliminary Report, v.0.4 
circulated by Jeff Neuman on 17 May.

First of all, I want to say that TF1 has done a good job of identifying key
issues.  I also compliment the TF members in the questions they have raised
for public discussion.  In regard to the questions though, I think some
consideration should be given to ways in which the request for public input
is structured.  The document right now is very long and there are a fairly
large number of questions.  I think the chances of getting desired feedback
from a large number of people and organizations is very low because of how
much time it will take.  Therefore, I recommend restructuring the document
in ways like the following: providing a brief executive summary and
attaching the full document for those who want more detail; grouping the
questions in some orderly way so that those who may not have time or
interest to respond to all questions can easily select a subset for
responding; make the ability to respond to questions as easy as possible
(e.g., providing multiple choice or yes/no questions whenever possible).

Milestone 3, page 10, first full paragraph:

- It seems to me that we should discourage language like this, "4)  To the
extent that Sensitive Data is required to be publicly disclosed by Whois TF
2 . . "  GNSO task forces do not have the authority to require anything.  I
recognize that this might seem picky, but I personally think that we need to
do everything possible to counter the tendency of GNSO participants to think
that they have any authority except to make recommendations.

- In the same paragraph, the requirement for thick registries to make
requests for Whois information known to registrants sounds like a new
registry cost.  Are all of you confortable with this add-on costs as thick
registries?  If we ever became a thick registry, it seems to me that this
might not be a trival task.  For registries with very low registry fees, I
think we need to be careful how much cost we add without corresponding
revenue increases.

Milestone 3, page 12, item 6), last bullet: providing sensitive Whois data
to requestors in human readable format looks like another add-on cost for
thick registries.

Milestone 3, page 12, item 7): I tend to agree with this: "the creation of
such a White List would be impractical and would place a large burden on the
entity handling such requests."



Chuck Gomes
VeriSign Com Net Registry