[Rt4-whois] That's all folks [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

[Nettlefold, Peter]

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this difficult issue, particularly to those who drafted these very useful findings to weave together our current thinking.

I think we have reached a very positive position to share with the community, and I share Bill's optimism that we will be able to reach consensus on an approach for our final report.

On the 'portal' recommendation - where did that finish? I'm not sure I'm clear whether this will apply to all gTLDs or just the thin registries? I still do not understand why it would be contentious for ICANN to search a registry database on behalf of a consumer and pass those results on, without in any way maintaining a database itself? That said, I understand that we may not be able to reach consensus on that now, if we haven't already.

If we cannot/do not reach consensus on that now, I would ask that we take a similar approach to that which we just adopted for proxies: ie we all agree that we need to improve consumer accessibility, and all agree that ICANN should develop a portal to do this, and in this draft we're considering and seeking input on the scope.

Again, many thanks to all for what has been a very busy and positive process.

Cheers,

Peter


From: Emily Taylor [mailto:emily at emilytaylor.eu]
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 09:21 AM
To: rt4-whois at icann.org <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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