Just for the history of it: The GNSO Council had voted against studies - after we had thought we had put the whole WHOIS clarification process to rest with a majority vote - defining the WHOIS database according to its original functions: a technical reference tool. Then came the requests to look into some details again - basically security and law enforcement related - and some of us thought our votes had clarified what could be clarified - hen came the next step: why not clarify these questions with studies - and we should say which studies might be useful. To my surprise, this resulted again in a long list, which was re-organized and prioritized - but often not showing the real practical implications (as Milton gave an example). So I suggest to focus on essentials: privacy and openness (law enforcement has its own mechanisms, this is NOT in the ICANN mandate). Norbert = On Monday, 24 November 2008 01:18:08 Milton L Mueller wrote: > thanks for asking, Bill. > I think most of us were pretty much agreed that Whois studies were a > delaying tactic the U.S. successfully used to prevent the GNSO from taking > any action on privacy, and to give the IPR interests a new stick with which > to beat the privacy-proxy services of the registrars. Typically ncuc and > the registrars are against these studies altogether. for a while, the > registries were, too. however, verisign (either as a corp or perhaps due to > the personality of Chuck Gomes) is less privacy-friendly and more law > enforcement/trademark friendly than the other registries, and seems to have > turned them around. furthermore, GNSO politics have turned the idea of > proposals into a fairly complicated thing (ask Avri why). This caused the > GAC to ridicule the gNSO in Cairo and may even cause it to bypass it > altogether and go directly to the Board to ask for studies. my advice is, > push with the registrars for no studies; failing that, pick one or two that > actually contribute something new to the debate, such as: how many gTLD > registrants are actually natural persons? > > I had a very intense conversation/debate with William Dee of the EU about > this in Cairo. I asked him how empirical studies about, say, whether 24% or > 34% of the registrants in .com are natural persons in any way affects the > principle that natural persons must have their private info shielded > according to EU law. He couldn't answer that, of course. > > > Milton Mueller > Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies > XS4All Professor, Delft University of Technology > ------------------------------ > Internet Governance Project: > http://internetgovernance.org <http://internetgovernance.org/> -- Norbert Klein Phnom Penh/Cambodia PGP key-id 0x0016D0A9 If you want to know what is going on in Cambodia, please visit us regularly - you can find something new every day: http://cambodiamirror.wordpress.com (English) http://kanhchoksangkum.wordpress.com (Khmer)