[Rt4-whois] That's all folks

[Seth M Reiss]

very well handled by all, particularly Susan and Emily

 

Mahalo.

 

From: rt4-whois-bounces at icann.org [mailto:rt4-whois-bounces at icann.org] On
Behalf Of Emily Taylor
Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2011 12:22 PM
To: rt4-whois at icann.org
Subject: [Rt4-whois] That's all folks

 

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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