[council] Compromise wording on WHOIS

Ross Rader ross at tucows.com
Sat Apr 8 12:08:54 UTC 2006


 > Philip -
 >
 > Some further thoughts...
 >
 > It is worth pointing out that under this proposal, a registrar could not
 > use the data collected to;

I've been asked why Philip's proposal will prevent registrars from 
engaging in the tasks I outlined earlier. This is due to the fact that 
most data privacy regulation prevents the use of data for purposes other 
than which it was collected.

Therefore under this proposal a registrar would be faced with three choices;

a) perpetual non-compliance with ICANN consensus policy,
b) ignoring local regulation
c) remove and add terms to the purpose of data collection to make it 
consistent with the realities of running a business.

None is optimal. Most registrars would immediately apply for exemption 
of this policy under the conflict with national laws policy that we 
recently endorsed. Does this make sense? We should be seeking to craft 
policy that is broadly applicable as possible. c) is even less of a 
solution because this would replicate the current status quo. In other 
words, Philip's proposal may as well just simply read;

"gTLD Registrars may state whatever they want in terms of the purpose 
for which the data that populates the gTLD Whois service."

Which leads me to ask - if the proposal simply replicates the status 
quo, then why would we need to adopt it as policy?

The answer is that we don't. Instead, we should focus on the motion 
before us, which is to recommend that the TF adopt formulation #1 as the 
definition necessary to guide their work.

-r



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