[whois-sc] Draft terms of reference for task force to prevent data mining for marketing purposes

["Bruce Tonkin" <Bruce.Tonkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Title: Restricting bulk access to WHOIS data for marketing purposes

Participants:
- 1 representative from each constituency
- ALAC liaison
- GAC liaison
- ccNSO liaison
- SECSAC liaison
- liaisons from other GNSO WHOIS task forces

Description of Task Force:
==========================

In the recent policy recommendations relating to WHOIS:
(see http://www.icann.org/gnso/whois-tf/report-19feb03.htm)
it was decided that the use of bulk access WHOIS data for marketing
should not be permitted.  Bulk access need not be the entire database
(millions of records) of contact information but could also be
considered to be hundreds of WHOIS data records.   The current registry
and registrar contracts provide for third parties to obtain access to
bulk WHOIS information via an agreement that limits the use of the
information for marketing purposes (the number of these agreements in
existance is probably less than 10 for each large registrar).  However
most collections of bulk WHOIS data are currently obtained by a
combination of using free zonefile access (via signing a registry
zonefile access agreement - the number of these in existance approaches
1000 per major registry) to obtain a list of domains, and then using
anonymous (public) access to either port-43 or interactive web pages to
retrieve large (great than 100 records) volumes of contact information.
Once the information is initially obtained it can be kept up-to-date by
detecting changes in the zonefile, and only retrieving information
related to the changed records.   This process is often described as
"data mining".  The net effect is that bulk access to WHOIS data is
easily available for marketing purposes, and is generally anonymous (the
holders of this information are unknown).

The purpose of this task force is to determine what contractual changes
(if any) are required to allow registrars to protect domain name holder
data from data mining for the purposes of marketing.

In-scope
========
The purpose of this section to clarify the issues should be considered
in proposing any policy changes.

The task force must ensure that groups such as law enforcement,
intellectual property, internet service providers, and consumers can
continue to retrieve information necessary to perform their functions.
In some cases this may require the provision of searching facilities
(e.g that can return more than one record in response to a query) as
well as look-up facilities (that only provide one record in response to
a query).

The task force must ensure that any access restrictions do not restrict
the competitive provision of services using WHOIS information (for
example ensure that intellectual property protection can be provided
competitively), nor restrict the transfer of domain name records between
registrars.


Out-of-scope
============
To ensure that the task force remains narrowly focussed to ensure that
its goal is reasonably achievable and withina reasonable time frame, it
is necessary to be clear on what is not in scope for the task force.

The task force should not aim to specify a technical solution.  This is
the role of registries and registrars in a competitive market, and the
role of technical standardisation bodies such as the IETF.  Note the
IETF presently has a working group called CRISP to develop an improved
protocol that should be capable of implementing the policy outcomes of
this task force.

The task force should not review the current bulk access agreement
provisions. These were the subject of a recent update in policy in March
2003.

The task force should not study the amount of data available for public
(anonymous) access for single queries.  Any changes to the data
collected or made available will be the subject of a separate policy
development process.

Tasks/Milestones
================

- collect requirements from non-marketing users of contact information
(this could be extracted from the Montreal workshop and also by GNSO
constituencies, and should also include accessibility requirements (e.g
based on W3C standards)
[milestone 1 date]
- review general approaches to prevent automated electronic data mining
and ensure that the requirements for access are met (including
accessibility requirements for those that may for example be visually
impaired)
[milestone 2 date]
- determine whether any changes are required in the contracts to allow
the approaches to be used above   (for example the contracts require the
use of the port-43 WHOIS protocol and this may not support approaches to
prevent data mining)
[milestone 3 date]

Each milestone should be subject to development internally by the task
force, along with a public comment process to ensure that as much input
as possible is taken into account.