[gnso-rds-pdp-purpose] Purpose of registration data: Whois Review Team never assessed

Mon Apr 4 19:25:51 UTC 2016

+1.

-Carlton

==============================
Carlton A Samuels
Mobile: 876-818-1799
*Strategy, Planning, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround*
=============================

On Sun, Apr 3, 2016 at 10:50 PM, Kathy Kleiman via gnso-rds-pdp-purpose <
gnso-rds-pdp-purpose at icann.org> wrote:

> Hi Maryan and All,
> Tx you for your analysis, and I would like to provide some additional
> background on the Whois Review Team Final Report.  The Whois Review Team was *expressly
> barred **from looking at the purpose of the Whois system*. It was allowed
> to look only at ICANN's "existing policy relating to WHOIS" per the
> Affirmation of Commitments signed between US Department of Commerce and
> ICANN in 2009.
>
> Even within that scope, the Whois Review Team recommended protection of
> privacy for commercial companies, noncommercial organizations and
> individials (finding that each shared with us legal and legitimate reasons
> for privacy including as-yet-unannounced mergers, new movie names,
> unpopular religious, ethnic and policy views, etc). The Whois Review Team
> further advised ICANN to work towards a standard of contactability -
> reaching the registrant by some means rather than all means - which we
> wrote as: "ICANN should take appropriate measures to reduce the number of
> WHOIS registrations that fall into the accuracy groups Substantial Failure
> and Full Failure (as defined by the NORC Data Accuracy Study, 2009/10..."
> p. 87.
>
> This history means that our RDS Working Group remains the only group I
> know -- since the 1980s -- to look at domain name registration data anew
> and ask the key questions:
> 1. What is the primary purpose for which domain name registration data is
> collected, and
> 2. To what secondary purposes (such as directories) may this data be used
> and pursuant to what requirements of law?
>
> We are creating a new process/system and it falls to us to determine
> Purpose.
>
> Best,
> Kathy (Kleiman)
> Formerly, Vice-Chair of the Whois Review Team.
>
>
> On 4/2/2016 4:31 AM, Maryan Rizinski via gnso-rds-pdp-purpose wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> I hope that you are all having a great week so far!
>
> I spent some time reviewing the WHOIS Policy Review Team's Final Report
> from May 2012 with the goal of extracting relevant information regarding
> the purpose of registration data. This has been a challenging task because
> of two reasons:
>
>
>    1. There is a lack of clearly defined purpose for collecting
>    registration data within the existing WHOIS system (it is not surprising
>    that the SSAC's report SAC055 is entitled "Blind Men and An Elephant")
>    2. Significant emphasis is given on topics such as compliance, data
>    accuracy and data access which all seem to share an intangible common
>    underlying (or over-arching) purpose/principle
>
>
> I have the impression that the purpose implicitly evolves around the
> concept of achieving and ensuring "trust" - a term that is used a number of
> times throughout the document.
>
> Many, if not all, stakeholders involved with or affected by WHOIS, may be
> interested in achieving and ensuring trust in the online environment (which
> may in turn represent a reasonable basis for achieving consensus regarding
> purpose), but as Chuck said, at this point we should restrain from
> deliberating on that topic even though it may look like a tempting starting
> point for discussing the fundamental question:
>
> *What should the over-arching purpose be of collecting, maintaining, and
> providing access to gTLD registration data?*
>
>
> In this context, I compiled some relevant excerpts from the final report
> regarding trust that we may want to consider when preparing our concise
> summary. The excerpts are given as follows (some parts are highlighted for
> improved readability and navigation throughout the excerpts):
>
> *"The WHOIS Review Team’s scope, guided by the Affirmation of Commitments
> was to review the extent to which ICANN’s WHOIS policy and its
> implementation are effective, meet the legitimate needs of law enforcement
> and promote consumer trust." (page 6)*
>
> *"Part of the WHOIS Review Team’s scope was to evaluate the extent to
> which ICANN’s current WHOIS policy and implementation “promotes consumer
> trust”... This found that drivers of consumer trust include knowing the
> entity with whom they are dealing, and being able to find reliable contact
> information." (page 9)*
>
>
> *"...the current implementation of WHOIS services does not help to build
> consumer trust, and more could be done to raise awareness of the service,
> and to improve its user-friendliness." (page 10)*
>
> *"The low level of accurate WHOIS data is unacceptable, and decreases
> consumer trust in WHOIS..." (page 12)*
>
> *"ICANN will organize a review of WHOIS policy and its implementation to
> assess the extent to which WHOIS policy is effective and its implementation
> meets the legitimate needs of law enforcement and promotes consumer trust."
> (page 20)*
>
> *"The Review Team found the definition of Consumer Trust, something the
> ICANN Community is also exploring in the context of its policy-making
> processes, to be particularly challenging. Consumer Trust can be narrowly
> construed to mean the level of trust Internet users have in available WHOIS
> data; or more broadly as the level of trust consumers have in Internet
> information and transactions in general." (page 23)*
>
> *"Thus, lack of support of non-ASCII characters introduces an additional
> barrier for non-ASCII users to provide accurate and consistent domain name
> registration data. This has implications for their tractability for law
> enforcement and associated organizations. Further, many people attach some
> pride and fondness to the correct representation of their name and other
> data. While this is not a purely technical or administrative requirement,
> it is relevant in the context of Consumer Trust." (page 46-47)*
>
> *"The Review Team was clearly told in written and oral comments that
> inaccurate WHOIS data can also significantly impact consumer trust and
> confidence in the Internet." (page 51)*
>
> *"Consumers engaged in online purchases, in our Consumer Research Study
> agreed: findings showed that factors which positively supported consumer
> trust included knowing the company with whom they were dealing with, and
> being able to verify their contact details online." (page 51)*
>
> *"A significant number of public responses to the WHOIS discussion paper,
> and input from law enforcement agencies via the review team’s targeted
> questionnaire, argued that privacy and proxy services undermine the
> effectiveness of the WHOIS service, both in terms of its ability to meet
> the legitimate needs of law enforcement and to promote consumer trust."
> (page 61)*
>
> *"The GAC WHOIS Principles similarly note that WHOIS data can contribute:
> to user confidence in the Internet ... by helping users identify persons or
> entities responsible for content and services online" (page 67)*
>
> *"Part of the WHOIS Review Team’s scope was to evaluate the extent to
> which ICANN’s current WHOIS policy and implementation “promotes consumer
> trust”. Having struggled with what “consumer” means in the context of
> WHOIS, and aware of the Affirmation of Commitments’ observation that there
> are key stakeholders who do not engage in the ICANN environment, the WHOIS
> Review Team commissioned consumer research. This found that drivers of
> consumer trust include knowing the entity with whom they are dealing, and
> being able to find reliable contact information. The vast majority of
> consumers were unaware of the existence of the WHOIS service, and many
> struggled to understand the format of WHOIS outputs. This led us to
> conclude that the current implementation of WHOIS services does not help to
> build consumer trust, and more could be done to raise awareness of the
> service, and to improve its user-friendliness." (page 84)*
>
>
> I hope that this input would be helpful for our small team and I am
> looking forward to working with all of you.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Maryan
>
>
>
>
>
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