Kathy, this sounds great! Congratulations and thank you for pulling it 
all together. 

Best,

Frannie

[log in to unmask] wrote:

> Friends:
> Over the last few weeks, you have heard about our upcoming privacy 
> conference called "Building Bridges on ICANN's Whois Questions."  I am 
> writing to tell you it was a great success. 
>  
> It took place on Tuesday, 11/29.  At 2:30 PM as the conference opened, 
> the room was overflowing.  Over 100 people showed up from across the 
> ICANN spectrum -- Registrars, Registries, Country Code Registries, 
> Intellectual Property, ALAC, ICANN staff... and a few ICANN Board 
> members even peeked in between meetings on their crowded schedule.
>  
> We opened with Stephanie Perrin, Director of Research and Policy for 
> the Office of Canada's Privacy Commissioner, giving the keynote by 
> phone. She laid out the principles of data protection laws in Canada, 
> highlighted that they apply to ICANN's Whois service, and made very 
> clear that ICANN's rules for Whois, as they currently exist, violate 
> these data protection principles and laws.
>  
> She was followed by wonderful presentations from CIRA (.CA), Nominet 
> (.UK) and Japan Registry Services (.JP), with each speaker showing how 
> his/her ccTLD Whois service has changed to protect personal data in 
> compliance with their own national data protection laws.  Their slides 
> made clear that the personal data about domain name registrants, while 
> private and protected from abuse, is still available to law 
> enforcement and others pursuant to due process.
>  
> Two experts then discussed how privacy operates in other areas of 
> Internet and telecommunications.  Drew McArthur of Canada's #2 
> telecommunications company TELUS gave us a privacy quiz and showed 
> that telephone numbers and ISP data (including subscribers 
> name/address, email identity, etc) are all protected by privacy laws 
> and subject to disclosure only under "lawful access," as he called 
> it.  Chris Savage confirmed that even in the US, with no national data 
> protection legislation, we have unlisted phone numbers and significant 
> protection of privacy for those who use ISP, telephone and even cable 
> service.
>  
> The final panel was us -- ICANN constituency views.  David Maher of 
> the Registry Constituency said he wished the personal data was not 
> even there and supports restricted access to personal data.  Marcus 
> Heyder of the US Federal Trade Commission espoused the Intellectual 
> Property Constituency view that all the personal data should remain in 
> the Whois service and be completely accessible.  Speaking for NCUC, I 
> argued that we don't even need to collect a lot of this personal data 
> for Whois.  Since ICANN's mission and scope are narrow and technical  
> -- and we should only collect and display the technical data relevant 
> to this mission (and thus the existing technical data such as servers 
> + a technical contact).
>  
> Ross Rader closed the third panel with a very strong statement from 
> Registrars that ICANN's scope is very narrow and that the purpose of 
> the Whois service should be narrowly technical -- and specifically 
> involve a very clear "technical purpose" for the Whois service (a view 
> that strongly supports the protection of personal data).  Overall, we 
> got great reviews:  many people told me how much they liked the 
> Conference and many stayed all the way through. 
>  
> In closing, I would like to thank Milton, Carlos, the Executive 
> Committee and our Council representatives for their support of this 
> Conference.  Thank you!  Also thanks to all the Conference 
> sponsors: NCUC, Public Interest Registry (.ORG), Registry Constituency 
> and Cole, Raywid & Braverman (a Washington DC law firm).  Also thanks 
> to Milton and the Internet Governance Project for sponsoring a 
> wonderful Chinese dinner that brought together speakers and sponsors 
> (and helped further build bridges among the different sides).
>  
> Regards, Kathy (Kleiman)
> p.s. press stories and slides to follow.