[Comments-whois-privacy-law-03may17] AFNIC comment on ICANN Procedure for Handling WHOIS Conflicts with Privacy Law

[Marianne Georgelin]

Afnic is the registry operator for top-level domains corresponding to the national territory of France (.fr, .re, .pm, .yt, .wf, .tf) and the backend registry operator for 14 new generic TLDs. Afnic is a member of CCNSO, Centr, and APTLD.

We welcome the opportunity to comment on this procedure.

In response to the first question raised in the document, we believe that requesting a data protection agency to provide a written statement indicating that a Whois obligation in an ICANN contract conflicts with national law is unrealistic.

In this regard, we agree with the Data Protection Unit of the Council of Europe's general comment on what the "Alternative Trigger" would imply for DPAs i.e. having to "deal with each and every request they might get from contracted parties who feel ICANN contracts are in conflicts with the appicable law".

We also believe that a regime based on exception as it is proposed in the revised ICANN procedure shouldn't be recommended as it has already been stated that Whois contractual obligations as defined today are generally not in compliance with privacy legislation in force in many countries including France.

That is the reason why we fully support the Council of Europe's proposition in response to question 11: "There should be procedure(s) and triggers put in place for the assessment of the compliance of ICANN contractual obligations with the applicable law raised by a contracted party based on its own assessment (without governmental, DPA's supporting documents.)"

Thank you.

AFNIC
Marianne Georgelin
Senior Policy Manager
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