[Rt4-whois] That's all folks

[Emily Taylor]

Hi all

We're there now.

I believe that everyone has now had time to respond.  I have heard no
strong objections to the route that Lynn and Susan have advocated, in fact,
I see that it has gathered support from all quarters.

So, we adopt the following two recommendations on proxies:

- the Dakar one
- The text on good practices.

We put the following text in our findings (please excuse me, I have tidied
up my own hastily written and repetitive text, and I hope have taken in
Bill's point about consensus);

*> Review Team members are in unanimous agreement that the status quo
regarding proxy registrations is not sustainable, is not fair to legitimate
participants in the domain name marketplace, frustrates valuable social
goals such as law enforcement [and the protection of intellectual
property], and reflects poorly on ICANN's commitment to serve the public
interest.
>
> We are also in agreement that the goal should be to give accredited
registrars strong incentives not to foster this undesirable status quo, and
that such incentives should arise both from the terms of the ICANN
contracts with registrars, and from principles of legal responsibility
under national law.  ICANN can control the first source of these
incentives; its contractual provisions may influence, but cannot control,
the second, since neither of the parties most directly involved -- the
proxy service customers, and the law enforcement or other party seeking to
identify them and hold them accountable -- is under contract to ICANN.
>
> We have not reached consensus on how best to advance this common goal.
 Some believe that the best approach is to start with the proxy services
that are made available in connection with domain name registration, and
require these services to follow best practices for promptly disclosing the
identity of the party actually in control of the domain name, with
registrars facing consequences if they do business with services that do
not fulfill best practices.  Others prefer the approach of denying any
recognition of proxy services in ICANN contracts, and treating all such
services simply as registrants, regardless of their practices.
>
We have reached consensus on all the recommendations set out below.
However, we include our recommendation on best practices [see
recommendation xx below], with the proviso that a significant body within
the WHOIS Review Team has little confidence that such measures will prove a
satisfactory solution over time.  We request that the next WHOIS Review
Team reviews the proxy industry's progress in this regard, and in the event
that it finds the WHOIS policy and its implementation unsatisfactory at
that point, we trust that it will make recommendations for more concrete
measures.

> One other area of agreement is that neither approach will be successful
without proactive ICANN compliance measures, either to police observance of
best practices, in the first approach, or to press registrars to cancel
registrations of proxy services that do not fulfill their contractual
obligations as set forth in the RAA.  A well resourced and credible
compliance program is essential to reforming the unacceptable status quo in
this area.* *

*
---------

That's the contentious stuff, I think.  We also have the additional
recommendation (Lutz's wording on interface, which was agreed yesterday).
There's also a huge to do list that Kathy and I compiled over Skype chat
today, which we will now turn our attention to.

In the background today, Kathy and Alice have been working tirelessly to
proof-read, and generally tidy the final draft report, remove comments,
queries, and add references.  Lynn and others, thanks for your contribution
to that effort, too.

I will have little time tomorrow, but will review the entire document over
the weekend before it's published.  Kathy and I will also draft a covering
note for the public comment, and with Alice sort out all those appendices
we keep throwing in!  If any team member can devote some time to assist,
that would be great.

The last few days have been challenging, but we have pulled together a
fine, punchy report that does not skirt the difficult issues.  We have
worked through consensus, despite the challenges inherent in doing so.
Thank you to each of you for your work and friendship over the past year,
and for trusting me to serve as your Chair.  There are two people that I
would particularly like to thank and that's Alice Jansen and Kathy Kleiman
for their extraordinary efforts - truly great colleagues.

Kind regards, thank you.  Good night and good luck.

Emily

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