[council] Reminder of recent Council decisions regarding WHOIS

[Bruce Tonkin]

Hello All,

Just a reminder of previous decisions of the Council:

>From 12 April 2006:

"The GNSO Council recommends that the WHOIS task force use the following
definition: 
"The purpose of the gTLD Whois service is to provide information
sufficient to contact a responsible party for a particular gTLD domain
name who can resolve, or reliably pass on data to a party who can
resolve, issues related to the configuration of the records associated
with the domain name within a DNS nameserver."
as a working definition to allow the task force to proceed on terms of
reference (2), (3), and (4) (see:
http://gnso.icann.org/policies/terms-of-reference.html )"


>From 28 July 2006:

""The GNSO Council notes that the WHOIS definition approved by the GNSO
Council on 18 April 06, as a working definition to allow the WHOIS task
force to proceed with its work, is related to the service that provides
public access to some of the data collected by registrars. It is not a
definition of the purpose of the data collected by the registrars in the
course of registering a domain name for their customers.

In response to the extensive community and Government input on the
definition of the purpose of WHOIS, the GNSO Council agrees to undertake
the following steps:

(1) Any Council member who voted in favour of the definition may provide
a brief explanation of the reason for supporting the resolution and
their understanding of its meaning. An Advisory Committee that supports
the current definition may also make a statement for the record through
the appropriate liaison to the GNSO Council. 

(2) The ICANN staff will provide a summary of the other interpretations
of the definition that have been expressed during the public comment
period, and subsequently in correspondence from the public and
Governments.

(3) The GNSO Council requests that the WHOIS task force continue with
their work as specified in the terms of reference taking into account
the recent input that has been provided.

(4) The GNSO Council will take the Final Report (as specified in clause
9(c) of the GNSO PDP process) from the WHOIS task force after the task
force finishes its work on all the terms of reference, engage in further
dialogue with the Advisory Committees (including the GAC, SSAC and
ALAC), and consider improving the wording of the WHOIS service
definition so that it is broadly understandable.

Note that the WHOIS Task force will produce a Task Force Report (as
specified in clause 7(e) of the GNSO PDP process) later in 2006 that
addresses all terms of reference. This report will be subject to a
further public comment process, and the output of this public comment
will be incorporated into the Final Report.

Note that the previous clause (3) in the motion posted on 13 July 2006
that related to the purposes for collecting data is now the subject of a
separate motion. "



On 28 March 2007:

"The GNSO Council resolves:

1) To acknowledge the completion of the Whois TF work and note we have
received and discussed their report, and thank the task force for their
work

2) To create a working group of affected stakeholders:

- including GNSO constituency, law enforcement and community
participants, 

- whose work is to be completed within 120 days

- that will work to examine the issues raised with respect to the policy
recommendations of the task force and make recommendations concerning
how those policies may be improved to address these issues, namely:

a. define the roles, responsibilities, and requirements of the
operational point of contact, and what happens if they are not
fulfilled.

b. how legitimate interests will access registration data no longer
published via Whois,

c. whether a distinction should be made between the registration contact
information published based on the nature of the registered name holder
(for example, legal vs. natural persons) or its use of the domain name.
"




Regards,
Bruce