[Tmch-iag] FW: T1 Data Locations

Wed Feb 8 22:54:45 UTC 2012

Forwarding the below message from James Mitchell

-----Original Message-----
From: James Mitchell [mailto:james.mitchell at ausregistry.com.au] 
Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2012 4:33 PM
To: tbarrett at encirca.com; tmch-iag at icann.org
Subject: RE: [Tmch-iag] T1 Data Locations

Tom,

Your issue with data mining is completely at odds with the claims process. The nature of this service is to provide information to potential registrants (i.e. anyone) whether they choose to register the name or not. If mark holders do not want their "claims strategy" becoming public then they can choose not to participate. Alternatively we can give mark holders the option of signing up for the registration notices while electing not to present the relevant claims notice to the potential registrant (which is essentially a watch service).

Creating the clearinghouse as a centralized database for all claims notices and the "matching" function will create a huge risk not only to the operation of individual registries but to the new gTLD program in general. Registries are required to escrow their data to facilitate transfer of operations to other registry providers in the event of business failure, and ICANN is in the process of establishing Emergency Back-End Registry Operators that will operate such failed registries while minimizing unavailability. These 'safeguards' do not make much sense when unavailability or failure of the clearinghouse (financially, technically, natural disaster etc) will, possibly permanently, impact the operation of each of these registries.

I am in favour of separating the registry data from the clearinghouse data, however I don't currently see this as a viable option unless the dependency on availability can be reduced. If data must be located at the clearinghouse then I suggest that we relax the requirements regarding presentation of the claims notice to allow for a registration to proceed if the claims notice cannot be presented due to service unavailability. In such cases the potential registrant can be presented a notice stating that the service is unavailable and provide instructions on how to get this information outside of the registration process.

On another note, the calculations included potentially downplay the processing requirements. 173,611 claim notices per day is easy to achieve however it is unlikely that this load will be distributed evenly at ~2 notices/second. The system will probably have to consider handling thousands of notices per second over a short period of time. I'm also not confident using WHOIS queries as a comparison, except for perhaps the bandwidth required to transmit notices. The number of domain create operations (excluding failed creates used in name-catching activities) would more accurately describe the frequency of claim notice queries.

Regards,

James Mitchell
Product Manager
ARI Registry Services
Level 8, 10 Queens Road
Melbourne. Victoria. Australia. 3004.
Ph: +61 3 9866 3710
Fax: +61 3 9866 1970
Email: james.mitchell at ariservices.com
Web:  www.ariservices.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: tmch-iag-bounces at icann.org [mailto:tmch-iag-bounces at icann.org] 
> On Behalf Of Tom Barrett
> Sent: Thursday, 2 February 2012 4:33 AM
> To: tmch-iag at icann.org
> Subject: Re: [Tmch-iag] T1 Data Locations
> 
> 
> This is a correction to the note I submitted Monday regarding Data 
> Locations and Data Mining..
> 
> In the note, I stated that the list of eligible strings could be 
> safely distributed by the TMCH without risk of data mining.
> But I realized this morning (while rowing at the gym) that this would 
> create a false sense of security.
> 
> Even the list of registrable strings can be data mined to determine a 
> trademark owner's TMCH strategy.
> 
> For example, let's say I wanted to know what trademarks Google has 
> submitted to the clearinghouse.  All I would need to do is the 
> following:
> 
> a. Do a free owner search at the USPTO trademark database
> 
> b. take the resulting list of trademarks and strip out any special 
> characters to generate a list of possible domain names
> 
> c. check the resulting list of possible domain names matching Google 
> trademarks against the registrable strings in the clearinghouse 
> (either by a central query or distributed list)
> 
> d. The result would tell me what US trademarks owned by Google were 
> protected in the clearinghouse.  I could repeat this process for other 
> jurisdictions, such as Australia, Japan, etc.
> 
> There could be some slight noise in the data, since it is possible 
> that there is a trademark submitted by a different trademark owner 
> that is an identical match to one owned by Google, but that Google 
> decided not to submit to the TMCH.
> 
> Nonetheless, it is clear that determining the owner identity from just 
> the list of registrable strings in the clearinghouse would be easy to 
> do.
> A
> data miner would not even need access to the claims notices.
> 
> In order to detect this type of data mining, we need to log every 
> lookup of a registrable TMCH string.  This is easy to do if the TMCH 
> data is centralized (think Whois).  If the TMCH data is distributed, 
> then such logging would need to be self-reported by registries and 
> registrars.
> As a
> practical matter, self-reporting by registries and registrars would 
> not be very reliable, even if there were penalties for non-compliance 
> added to the registry and registrar contracts.
> 
> One final thought regarding Data Locations.  This decision does not 
> need to be "either-or".  The TMCH could start out with a centralized 
> data approach.
> After the first round of gTLD's, this issue could be re-visited to see 
> if data distribution is warranted.
> 
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Tom Barrett
> EnCirca
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: tmch-iag-bounces at icann.org [mailto:tmch-iag-bounces at icann.org] 
> On Behalf Of Tom Barrett
> Sent: Monday, January 30, 2012 5:37 PM
> To: tmch-iag at icann.org
> Subject: [Tmch-iag] T1 Data Locations
> 
> 
> 
> IAG T1 comments - Distribution of TMCH Data January 30, 2012 Tom 
> Barrett - EnCirca
> 
> The main topic of discussion for the IAG last week was concerned with 
> distribution of TMCH data.
> 
> After comparing estimates of the maximum volumes for the TMCH to the 
> query volume, uptime and responsiveness of existing registries, it 
> seems very clear that the TMCH data could be kept solely in a central 
> database utilizing a technical architecture similar in scale to some 
> of the existing smaller gTLD registries, such as .MOBI and .TEL.  This 
> level of architecture for the TMCH could ensure the uptime and 
> responsiveness required by registries and registrars while satisfying 
> the trademark owner concerns for data security.
> 
> We agree with and confirm the following:
> - The TMCH data is proprietary to trademark owners and is not 
> currently in the public domain .
> 
> - Prevention of data mining should be a priority for the TMCH
> 
> - Distributing the TMCH data makes data mining impossible to prevent
> 
> - Distribution of the TMCH data is not even necessary given the 
> expected scale of the TMCH
> 
> Please see the attached document for a detailed examination of these 
> issues, including an analysis of how big the TMCH needs to be compared 
> to existing gTLD registries.
> 
> I look forward to your comments.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Tom Barrett
> EnCirca
> 
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