[gnso-rds-pdp-wg] The meaning of the things we're talking about (was Re: Principle on Proportionality for "Thin Data"access)

[Greg Shatan]

Seems like an inescapably rational position to me.

Greg

On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 2:03 PM Andrew Sullivan <ajs at anvilwalrusden.com>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 10:09:46AM -0700, Michael Peddemors wrote:
> >
> > We aren't discussing DNS or any other places that data is available as
> part
> > of this working group. Only the informed consent of data held in whois
> thin
> > data.
>
> I feel like maybe some of us are talking at cross purposes because we
> seem not to be talking in a common language.  I suspect that I have
> some pretty dark corners in my understanding of the legal and policy
> language here.  Equally, it seems to me that some others have a very
> different understanding of some of these terms than the one I have.
> Mine is informed by data theory and many years of experience with
> these kinds of systems.  I thought maybe it'd be useful for me to lay
> out what I understand, in the hopes that maybe others can spot ways in
> which my understanding does not match their model.
>
> In my view of the world, the fundamental purpose of the entire
> registration system is to create name spaces on the Internet using the
> DNS.  There are certain data that are absolutely necessary for that:
> the name itself, a record of who is in control of it, the NS records
> that create the delegation, and so on.  These things carve out a name
> space from the global Internet name space (which is founded in the
> root zone, which is why ICANN is involved in this at all).  People
> might want to create domain names for reasons _other_ than making them
> work via the DNS, but those are derivative and secondary purposes that
> supervene on the basic purpose of the registration system.
>
> When you create an entry in the domain name space (anywhere in it --
> immediately beneath the root, beneath a TLD, or at
> very.deep.delegation.crankycanuck.ca), you are performing a
> "registration", and the authority who has the ability to create that
> entry is called the "registry".  Over time, in the part of the name
> space near the root, we created some formalisms about this, including
> a model that looks a little like "wholesale" vs "retail" markets.  The
> result of this is the R/R/R model that governs the contracted-party
> world at ICANN.  The result of this is that we have a distributed
> database, operated by multiple parties along the lines of separation
> implied by the business model and the authority distributions.
>
> Modern registries contain additional associated data about domain
> names created in the bailiwick of the registry.  That is "registration
> data", and the RDS we are talking about is the generic access protocol
> by which that data may be accessed.
>
> From my point of view, the data "in the registry", "in the whois", and
> (when relevant) "in the DNS" is _the same_ data.  It might be
> instantiated in different databases -- that is, there might be
> different servers where it lives.  But it's the same data.
> Distinctions between what is "in the registry", "in the registrar",
> and "in the whois" are meaningless to me for that reason.
>
> Some additional data about the registrations are a result of the act
> of registration itself.  Some of that data is held by the operator of
> the registry, and some by the agents that perform registrations (the
> registrars).  These are things like the creation and update dates --
> in effect, metadata about state transformations and so on.  My
> understanding is that, when we talk about "thin data", it is either
> this sort of action-generated metadata, or else it is data that is
> intrinsically necessary for using the data (e.g. to make names work or
> else to make the RDS itself work).  It is that basic fact of what the
> data is for that makes me think thin data cannot be subject to
> controls for privacy and other such reasons.
>
> Some additional data about the registrations are data that need to be
> provided by someone.  This additional data is what I think we are
> talking about generically when we refer to "thick data".  Thick data
> has many species, and probably we are going to need to discuss in
> depth the different kinds of data in there.
>
> I hope this makes at least one perspective a little clearer.
>
> Best regards,
>
> A
>
> --
> Andrew Sullivan
> ajs at anvilwalrusden.com
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