[Rt4-whois] Questions on Recommendation 17

[Seth M Reiss]

Let's let the AoC speaks for itself.

"ICANN additionally commits to enforcing its existing policy relating to
WHOIS, subject to applicable laws. Such existing policy requires that ICANN
implement measures to maintain timely, unrestricted and public access to
accurate and complete WHOIS information, including registrant, technical,
billing, and administrative contact information."

Doesn't say that ICANN should play the operation role and it doesn't say
that ICANN should not. ICANN is required to implement measures to effect an
adequate result.  I do recall discussing a portal, not sure if that was in
terms of ICANN operating the portal or ICANN contracting a third party to,
or maybe discussing both.

Seth 

-----Original Message-----
From: rt4-whois-bounces at icann.org [mailto:rt4-whois-bounces at icann.org] On
Behalf Of Kathy Kleiman
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2012 5:20 AM
To: Lutz Donnerhacke
Cc: rt4-whois at icann.org
Subject: Re: [Rt4-whois] Questions on Recommendation 17

Hi Lutz,
Thank you for the detailed answers below. I am still working through 
them and urge others to review them closely as well.  I would very much 
like to see the "all-whois" website you have been running since 1996 -- 
would you be willing to share the link?

There does seem to be a difference in how we view the AoC. I never saw 
as **requiring ** ICANN to have an operational role in running websites, 
and I don't remember such discussions in our meetings (did I sleep 
through something?) I do remember discussing that ICANN -- with Whois 
data as with so many other areas -- is responsible fo creating and 
overseeing policies that implement the wording and goals of the AoC.

I tend to have a sense that policy-making bodies are not great 
operational bodies, and know there has been great push-back against 
ICANN in other areas (e.g. the DNS-Cert discussion of 2010).

I will send back more detailed comments shortly.  Thank you for this 
discussion online and, hopefully, in CR as well. And thanks for the link 
to your website!
Best,
Kathy

:
> On Fri, Feb 03, 2012 at 01:59:05PM -0500, Kathy Kleiman wrote:
>> 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):
>
> No, we are recommending a "dedicated, multilingual website" to provide a
> "centralized access to all whois data regardless of the underlying data
> structure".
>
>> 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?
> No. The website traveresed the data structure down the chain of whois
> servers (starting at whois.iana.org). It does not store nor copy the whois
> data, besides some short time caching.
>
> It's similar to DNS: A recursive resolver does not copy and stores all the
> DNS records worldwide, but is able to obtain the necessary data on the
fly.
>
>> 2. Alternatively, might it be a website run by ICANN offering links to
the
>> registries and registrars who hold the full Whois data?
> No. The results should be present directly on this particular website in
> order to fulfill the requirements of the AoC literaly:
>
>    maintain timely, unrestricted and public access to accurate and
complete
>    WHOIS information, including registrant, technical, billing, and
>    administrative contact information.
>
> In order to overcome the problems, shown by user experiance report, the
> website needs to be multilingual not only in terms of the user interface
but
> also in the presentation of the gathered data.
>
> Of course, the website needs to show the sources and the way how the
> information was obtained, where it is really stored and why. That's the
> minimal requirement from (my) understanding of (European) data protection
> laws.
>
>> 3. Do you think this would become the place in which all people search
for
>> all gTLD whois data?
> Yes, that's the intention of the proposal.
>
>> 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?
> Yes, that's the reasoning behind the proposal: The AoC urges ICANN to
> provide such an unrestricted access. Unfortunly many registries does rate
> limit the access or does not provide all the required data.
>
> ICANN - as the operator of the proposed website - has the power to enforce
> it's own policies by using it's own contracts with the parties in
question.
>
> This way the proposal collapses the differences between real world and AoC
> at a single point within the organisation which is able to solve the
problem.
>
>> 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?
> We - as a group - are limited to the such a proposal and might add some
> personal reasoning (like this).
>
> Personally I do run such an "all-whois" website since 1996 and do have
some
> ideas how it should be implemented and which operational policy should be
> enforced. But that's outside of our scope.
>


-- 



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