[dow1tf] FW: Follow up to yesterday's call

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

Forwarded on behalf of Jeremy...
-----Original Message-----
From: Jeremy Banks [mailto:Jeremy.Banks@xxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 12:31 PM
To: Jeff.Neuman@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Follow up to yesterday's call



Jeff

 

I hope all is well, clarification of comments I made during the call:

 

Summary of Findings

 

3. Other Task Force members do not agree with this finding, which would
substantially undermine the value of Whois data for a host of legitimate
purposes; would be likely to add considerable cost and delay in obtaining
access to Whois data; would do little if anything to discourage data mining.
It would entirely abolish anonymous access to Whois data, in direct
contravention of the Task Force's terms of reference, which state that "the
task force should not study the amount of data available for public
(anonymous) access for single queries."   

 

4. Other Task Force members do not support this finding.  The complete
abolition of Port 43 access, except for registrars, would destroy one
mechanism currently used to obtain access to Whois data for the provision of
value-added services, which is necessitated by the widespread failure of
registrars to provide bulk access as contractually required.  Furthermore,
allowing registrars to continue to employ Port 43 access would undercut any
value in this recommendation in terms of preventing data mining, since (1)
registrars are among the entities that engage in data mining, and may indeed
be among the leading practitioners of it, and (2) to the extent that the
task force finds that reliable identification of requesters via Port 43 is
not possible, it is similarly impossible to restrict access via Port 43 to
registrars.  

    

Needs and Justifications

 

The paragraph which starts "Whois TF1's goal was to strike a balance among
concerns and needs of the different stakeholders" significantly misstates
TF1's sole goal, which is defined in the DOW as "to determine what
contractual changes (if any) are required to allow registrars and registries
to protect domain name holder data from data mining for the purpose of
marketing.  The focus is on the technological means that may be applied to
achieve these objectives and whether any contractual changes are needed to
accommodate them."     

 

The paragraph which starts "Whois TF1's goal was to strike a balance among
concerns and needs of domain name registrants" has become too ambiguous to
support.  In particular, it appears the position of ALAC and NCUC may have
been misstated, since it currently indicates that it is not necessary, for
law enforcement, IP owners, ISPs, and consumers to perform their functions,
that they have access to information necessary to perform their functions. I
do not believe this view is reflected in the statements from the ISPC and
IPC.

 

General Approaches to Prevent Data Mining

 

In concluding this section I would propose the wording: These approaches
work in most cases but are not enough to entirely solve the data mining
issues.

 

Policy Recommendations

 

3. National Law Applies

 

The contents of these paragraphs are outside of the scope of TFI and, as I
understand it, are addressed in the TF2 report.

 

6. Future of Port 43 Access

 

Some task force members note that the inability of Port 43 to provide the
functionality described in Section 4 is not dispositive since there is a
split of views with regard to Section 4.  They also note that the proposal
to shut down Port 43 except for registrar access is outside the scope of the
Task Force and unworkable for the reasons stated above.  

 

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for everything you have done
as Chair of this interesting and challenging TF.  

 

Best regards

 

Jeremy