[Rt4-whois] FW: [weirds] fyi: WHOIS Policy Review Team Final Report

[Smith, Bill]

FYI - I sent this note to the Weirds list.

On 5/17/12 8:32 AM, "Smith, Bill" <bill.smith at paypal-inc.com> wrote:

>Thanks all for your comments on the WHOIS report. I've taken the liberty
>of forwarding a link to the WEIRDS ARCHIVE TO THE WHOIS Review Team. While
>our work is officially (from an ICANN perspective) completed, most if not
>all of us maintain an interest in and commitment to improving WHOIS
>(protocol, data, and service).
>
>While I can't speak for the team, your thoughtful comments are
>appreciated. I will note that the Report is now in the hands of the ICANN
>Board and additional comments may be submitted at
>http://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/whois-rt-final-report-11may12-
>e
>n.htm.
>
>On 5/17/12 6:40 AM, "Andrew Sullivan" <ajs at anvilwalrusden.com> wrote:
>
>>On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 01:33:57AM -0000, John Levine wrote:
>>> This is a surprisingly good report.
>>
>>It's interesting you say that.  I had exactly the opposite reaction.
>>There are problems both large and small.  The executive summary has a
>>bad definition of what a domain name is.  The report makes a number of
>>preposterous recommendations, like that ICANN should, for some reason,
>>start chasing all referrals in whois (because, apparently, people
>>don't know how to use whois and this will magically enable them to do
>>so), and attempts to extent ICANN's regulatory reach into areas where
>>it has no business (and where it will fail anyway).  It gets its
>>history wrong, and just ignores IRIS.  It makes the distinction among
>>the service, protocol, and data but does not attend to that
>>distinction throughout.  It points out, but offers no suggestions for
>>resolving, the basic inconsistency in what different communities want
>>from the registration data service.  Finally, it simply refuses to
>>engage with the question of whether the very limitations of the
>>protocol are a fundamental part of the problem.
>>
>>The latter is the most serious issue, in my opinion, because it leads
>>them to make recommendations that are just as unrealistic as the last
>>five times ICANN has blathered on about whois.  Fixing the protocol
>>limitations is simply a necessary condition for doing anything about
>>all the rest of it.  I sent them a public comment pointing this out
>>after they posted their draft report (I also sent them private mail
>>pointing out the number of technical errors in the report, most of
>>which they appear to have left alone.  One sometimes gets the feeling
>>that ICANN committees just don't care about technical precision, and
>>this report doesn't help dispel that feeling).
>>
>>I think the report is a shame.  It has taken several years and not
>>insignificant money to say a bunch of commonplaces, yet the report
>>doesn't really help do anything about the two most serious problems
>>with registration data: the protocols we have are poorly adapted to
>>serving the needs we have, and the set of needs we have is in any case
>>an internally inconsistent set.  The first is a technical issue, and
>>we here are in a position to do something about it if only we
>>understand what problems we need to solve.  The second is a basic
>>problem of public policy, in which different actors want vastly
>>different things from the same service.  One might have hoped that the
>>report would have provided a framework for figuring out how to make
>>those compromises, but it doesn't.
>>
>>> I'd encourage people to read it,
>>> at least the first section which summarizes the recommendations, and
>>> send a comment to ICANN.
>>
>>On this we agree.
>>
>>Best,
>>
>>A
>>
>>
>>-- 
>>Andrew Sullivan
>>ajs at anvilwalrusden.com
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>>weirds at ietf.org
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>