[CPWG] ICANN orgs responds to digital Services Act initiative Public Consultation launched by European Commission

[John McCormac]

On 16/09/2020 13:51, Lutz Donnerhacke wrote:
> 
>> This is a welcome, good and balanced response by ICANN to the WHOIS
>> damage caused by GDPR.
> 
> The damage was not done by GDPR, it was done by ICANN as they insist on a
> centralized model despite different approaches were given. The major pitfall
> of the centralized approach is the assumption, that there could be a
> worldwide, consistent law for this purpose.

Well, maybe this is evolution in progress with ICANN after the scale of 
the screwup has become apparent.

> This is well known to ICANN, but they decided to ignore all legal and lawful
> issue in order to please the law enforcement agencies (which are too lazy to
> fill out the legally required forms for data access), the IP property
> companies (which consider themselves as the private part of the LEAs), and
> the domain marketing industry (which likes bulk access for wet Big Data
> Dreams).

Redacting personal data may be a good thing. It is being abused by 
spammers and marketers. However, the problem is that *all* data is being 
redacted including legal person data (company ownership etc). That 
creates stability and trust issues.

I've been working on a project measuring the domain name industry and 
TLD market each country and at a global level. At the moment, it has 
grouped approximately 94% of the legacy gTLD markets and 96.34% of the 
new gTLD markets. It has similar coverage on some of the ccTLDs samples 
in the project. There are issues with the accuracy of some of the WHOIS 
data that is still visible. Those wonderful ICANN WHOIS accuracy studies 
seem wonderfully optimistic and are about as reliable as opinion polls. 
Their samples are mathematically sound but it is Numerology for ICANN 
management.

> So GDPR is not the cause of the problem. It only makes a long standing
> ignorance of ICANN public. So please do not shot the messenger.

GDPR is not a global solution. ICANN should have concentrated on 
ensuring the stability of the Internet rather than allowing a Babel-like 
situation to emerge.

The one strong point of a centralised system is that the centraliser can 
chose the jurisdiction. But that would assume that the gTLDs have no 
competition. The reality is that ICANN management banjaxed the dominance 
of the gTLDs in the mid-2000s when it failed to effectively deal with 
Domain Tasting. That kickstarted the growth in the ccTLDs.

The reality is that the .COM gTLD is now a second choice TLD in most 
countries outside the US and the other legacy gTLDs are on life-support 
from their old brand protection registrations. New registration volume 
in most countries outside the US is overwhelmingly ccTLD. In some 
respects, ICANN is the Titanic unwittingly steaming towards an iceberg 
field with a coalbunker fire weakening its hull.

Regards...jmcc
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