[gnso-rds-pdp-wg] "optional", who has data, and what "data collection" means (was Re: IMPORTANT: Invitation for Poll from 29 August Meeting)

[Stephanie Perrin]

It matches mine.  I find it confusing that wen we use the acronym "RDS", 
some folks construe that as registrant directory service, or 
registration data service, or there is RDDS Registration data directory 
service or is it registrant data directory service? It would be good to 
nail that jello to the wall, at least, and perhaps I am forgetting a 
collective rough consensus agreement here but I am not sure that we have.

IN any case I think of what we are designing as an interface of some 
type to data that has been deemed necessary to make accessible (not the 
same as publishing).  The contracts are the data collection instruments, 
wherein ICANN exercises its control (as data controller, she tediously 
repeated yet again :-))  Hopefully the policy we come up with eventually 
will cause ICANN to back off some of those (IMHO) excessive 
requirements, and I mean for collection, not just disclosure in any 
WHOIS replacement.

Stephanie


On 2017-09-04 13:51, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Mon, Sep 04, 2017 at 12:38:18PM -0400, Stephanie Perrin wrote:
>> the Registrars' client records, so at the risk of slowing us down, I do
>> think it is useful to consider exactly how separate these various data
>> collections are.  I think it is quite relevant to the discussion of whether
>> an optional field has to be filled if data exists [somewhere].
> I think that the above opens (or re-opens) the important topic of what
> "data collection" means in the RDS.  Once again, I feel like imprecise
> terminology is getting in our way, so I think I want to try to
> describe my current model and see whether it matches what others think.
>
> It is plain that the collection side of the RDS is not just the SRS,
> or we would not be bothering to create a new term.  Therefore, I have
> been working lately from the ostensive definition we came up the last
> time I got on this hobby horse.  It's something like this: the RDS
> contains data about registrations of some objects related to domain
> name registrations, where the data might be queried for some
> legitimate purpose (under some terms and conditions) by someone via
> the RDDS.  For gTLDs, all of this is to be governed by such ICANN
> consensus policies as are in effect at the time.
>
> Now, since every RDDS protocol we have except the original
> (i.e. pre-separation of registries and registrars) whois can do
> distributed queries (whois, admittedly, not very well), this means
> that the RDS might be a distributed database.  As such, there is only
> one meaningful definition of "collected" in this account, and that is
> such data as is acquired from whoever made the connection to the
> registrar.  In many cases, that is a registrant.  In other cases, of
> course, it is a reseller, and it might be a reseller that itself does
> not have a direct relationship to the registrant (because of reseller
> chains and so on).
>
> Once data is in the registrar's possession, the question is not
> whether the data is "collected" in the RDS, but whether it is
> accessible through the RDDS.  By definition, it _could_ be in the RDS,
> but if it is never to be queried via the RDDS under any conditions,
> then the data is not in the RDS.  Otherwise, it _is_ in the RDS.
> Working out data access is not our task right now, so I'm going to set
> that problem aside.
>
> To me, this understanding of data collection means that any data that
> is "optional" can't possibly have rules about what to do "if it is
> available", because the registrant (or some downstream reseller, for
> that matter) might just decline to provide it.  There is no way to
> know whether the registrant decided not to provide it because s/he
> didn't want to, or didn't provide it because it didn't exist.  ICANN
> does not have a direct contractual relationship with the registrants,
> and I do not think it would be a good idea for ICANN to start
> mandating ways that registrars audit registrants' data submissions.
>
> Does this match what other people are thinking?
>
> Best regards,
>
> A
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/gnso-rds-pdp-wg/attachments/20170904/967810c6/attachment-0001.html>