On Wed, 27 Aug 2003, at 09:16 [=GMT-0400], Milton Mueller wrote: > At the Whois Steering committee, teleconference August 7/8, 2003, > the Acting Chair, Bruce Tonkin asked each constituency to formally > review the draft table attached (see link below) and please provide > input to help select 5 top issues for further consideration in one or > more task forces. > > You can see the Draft Table referenced above at this URL (scroll down > once you get there): > > http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/whois-sc/msg00012.html > > NCUC's two representatives to the Whois Steering Committee are > Milton Mueller and Stephanie Perrin. We need to do this by September 4. It seems rather weird to have to pick 5 from these 20 questions. Some are very specific and already contain an implicit answer to other questions. So I would suggest to pick the questions that ask the right questions but do not also imply a wrong answer to a more fundamental question, as with no. 4 and 18 below. I see that the provisional choices of the NCUC are: 3, 4, 5, 15, 18 My comments and alternatives: 3 Good question. 4 (about pseudonymous registrations) concedes that the data of all or most registrants should remain available for everyone. For it would not make sense to study the mechanism of pseudonymous registrations, if there is no information (worth) anymore to hide in whois. So I don't like this one. Assuming it is impossible to make whois totally voluntarily on the part of the registrant, I think we should strive towards a whois that has fewer required fields, e.g. only name and postal address or only name and email address. This question is not helpful to get closer to this goal. So I say: Dump it. 5 I don't know the answer to this question, so it may be a good one. 15 asks what uses of whois are allowable, listing examples like spam fighting. I find 15 particularly sneaky. Does it make sense to list uses? I would rather say what people, bodies, authorities. Those can be identified. The police may see it. A spam fighter may not see it, because we have no way to determine if she is a spamfighter. Question 13 puts the same topic in a much better perspective. I suggest to swap 15 for 13. 15 has just 1 vote, 13 has 2. With 3 votes 13 may make it to the top 5. 18 (some registrants qualifying for exemption to provide certain data, and how to establish whether they qualify) is a non-question, since this cannot be implemented except by paperwork, which will make it too expensive. This question has, however, already taken the step of accepting a full public whois by assuming it. Bad question. 14 (limiting bulk access) I like. 7 (what with false/incorrect data?), maybe? It gives opportunity to discuss more topics, since it asks in what cases to allow inaccurate data. This question may also make it, if you vote for it. --