[Rt4-whois] Questions on Recommendation 17

[Kathy Kleiman]

Hi Lutz and All,
At long last, I want to circle back to the Data Access Recommendation 
and ask questions that have been banging around in my head for awhile. I 
wanted to wait awhile until after our marathon editing sessions and the 
holidays.

But first, a huge congratulations to Susan for the Facebook initial 
public offering. I am so hoping you are one of the hundreds of new 
millionaires I am hearing about on the news! (No need to tell us... 
that's private data :-) )

Here are my questions to Lutz and all advocating the Data Access 
recommendation (in its two versions) now in our report and listed below. 
As I understand it, we are recommending a "dedicated, multilingual 
website" to provide thick Whois data (for thin gTLD registries, in one 
variation, and all gTLD registries in the other):
1. What is the underlying data structure of this website? Is all the 
information going to be gathered into and run out of a California 
database run and owned by ICANN?

2. Alternatively, might it be a website run by ICANN offering links to 
the registries and registrars who hold the full Whois data?

3. Do you think this would become the place in which all people search 
for all gTLD whois data? If so, could there be a scalability problem if 
all people (law enforcement, domain name purchasers, etc) go to one 
website for all Whois searches? Is there some liability to ICANN should 
such a site go down?

4. Are we advocating a particular policy/technical solution or is the 
implementation open to discussion in the GNSO and other policy groups 
within ICANN?

Report section below. Thanks so much for any and everyone's answers to 
the questions above -- addressed to Lutz as the founder of this 
recommendation.

All the best,
Kathy
p.s. Data Access recommendation:
"Data Access – Common Interface
17. To improve access to the Whois data of .COM and .NET gTLDs, the only 
remaining Thin Registries, ICANN should set up a dedicated, multilingual 
interface website to provide thick WHOIS data for them.

ALTERNATIVE for public comment:
To make WHOIS data more accessible for consumers, ICANN should set up a 
dedicated, multilingual interface website to allow "unrestricted and 
public access to accurate and complete WHOIS information". Such 
interface should provide thick WHOIS data for all gTLD domain names."

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