Thank you Amr, for such a long and detailed response... and for taking the time amidst vacation. I/we will study your words below closely. Have a wonderful vacation!

Kathy

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Hi Kathy,

Thanks for your continued interest in the work being done by this WG, and apologies for the slow response. I am on holiday with my kids at Disneyland Paris right now, and am not regularly checking my email. Being one of several NCSG members who actively participated in this WG, I will try to briefly provide my own personal perception regarding the "thick" Whois PDP WG's initial report. Roy Balleste, Marie-Laure Lemineur and Avri Doria could provide more insight as well, which I would personally appreciate.

On page 4 of the report, there is a list of 11 topics listed for consideration by the WG's charter. Sub-teams were created for each topic, each with their own mailing list and meeting schedule, independent from the rest of the WG. To my knowledge, NCSG had very little if any contributions to the sub-teams listed apart from the one concerned with "Impact on privacy and data protection" in which we really exerted the majority of our collective effort. However, two submissions were made by NCSG (one by each of the constituencies) in January addressing every one of the topics listed for consideration as each constituency saw fit, and you will find some of those comments reflected in some of the sub-team findings (although not all). Still…, the NCSG initial feedback is on-the-record and can be found here for those who would like to go over them, or any of the other statements submitted by other constituencies/SGs and ALAC.

I do not personally agree with the bottom line recommendation of this report to proceed with a transition of current "thin" registries to "thick", as well as implement this as a rule for all new gTLDs beyond the last round of new gTLDs (which will also all be adopting a "thick" Whois model as per the applicant guidebook). It seemed to me that this was, however, the obvious expected outcome by most of the WG members from the outset of the WG's deliberations and am not surprised by the final outcome.

I would definitely say though that section 5.5 (starting on page 25) of the report with the findings of the Impact on Data Protection and Privacy sub-team appropriately reflected the concerns we, as NCSG members, expressed (amidst the lack of concern expressed by other folks of course). I personally see more of a noncommercial influence on this part of the report than others. I do have to say that while working on this sub-team, I was pleasantly surprised to find folks from other SGs/constituencies very agreeable in accepting noncommercial concerns, and including them in the sub-team findings. The sub-team coordinator, Don Blumenthal, also did a great job of moderating the discussions that included a lot of debates.

I generally found the folks from the Registries to be the most on this WG to share common concerns with us in NCSG. I also found it unfortunate that we had so much disagreement on this topic with the folks from At-Large. I personally see a very little difference between the interests of users and those of registrants, especially where Whois and privacy is concerned. It seems that the folks from At-Large don't agree with me. I think that if we would like to make progress on this topic in the future, we should probably work on both those fronts.

This email is no where near as brief as I intended it to be when I started, but I will close with this; if we do submit a public comment, we might want to focus less on detailing the opinions we have on specific policy issues. We've done this several times already during the course of this WG. I would lean more towards brief overviews on those, with more elaborations on the principles we hold that explain our policy positions. Folks from NCSG who attended the WG meeting in Beijing did a pretty good job of doing that, and I personally appreciated it. I would appreciate input from others on this though.

Thanks.

Amr

On Jun 23, 2013, at 9:40 PM, Kathy Kleiman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Dear NCSG Members of the Thick Whois WG,
Thank you for your time and efforts on this Working Group.  As we review the initial report, it would help to have your guidance:
- What do you agree with?
- What do you disagree with?

Feel free to share what you think your victories were (hooray!) and what you think still needs to be done to make this Initial Report - and the next steps it urges for GNSO policy - better and tighter.

My and our thanks for all your work in the past, and your work to come, on this WG!
Kathy



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Begin forwarded message:

From: Glen de Saint Géry <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [liaison6c] Public Comment: Thick Whois Initial Report - GNSO Policy Development Process
Date: June 22, 2013 12:35:13 AM PDT
To: liaison6c <[log in to unmask]>

 
 

Thick Whois Initial Report – GNSO Policy Development Process

Comment / Reply Periods (*)
Comment Open Date: 21 June 2013
Comment Close Date: 14 July 2013 - 23:59 UTC
Reply Open Date: 15 July 2013
Reply Close Date: 4 August 2013 - 23:59 UTC
Important Information Links
Brief Overview
Originating Organization: GNSO
Categories/Tags: 
  • Policy Processes
Purpose (Brief): 

The Generic Names Supporting Organization ("GNSO") Thick Whois Policy Development Process Working Group tasked with providing the GNSO Council with a policy recommendation regarding the use of 'thick' Whois by all gTLD Registries has published its Initial Report[PDF, 1.21 MB] for public comment.

Current Status: 

The Policy Development Process (PDP) Working Group has published its Initial Report [PDF, 1.21 MB] and is soliciting community input on the preliminary recommendations contained in the report.

Next Steps: 

Following review of the public comments received, the Working Group will continue its deliberations and finalize its report for submission to the GNSO Council.

Staff Contact: 
Marika Konings
Detailed Information
Section I: Description, Explanation, and Purpose: 

The Thick Whois PDP WG was tasked to provide the GNSO Council with 'a policy recommendation regarding the use of thick Whois by all gTLD registries, both existing and future'. Following its analysis of the different issues outlined in its Charter, including: response consistency; stability; access to Whois data; impact on privacy and data protection; cost implications; synchronization / migration; authoritativeness; competition in registry services; existing Whois applications; data escrow, and registrar Port 43 Whois requirements (see section 5 of the Initial Report), on balance the Working Group concludes that there are more benefits than disadvantages to requiring thick Whois for all gTLD registries. As a result, the Working Group recommends that:

The provision of thick Whois services should become a requirement for all gTLD registries, both existing and future.

The WG expects numerous benefits as a result of requiring thick Whois for all gTLD registries. Nevertheless, the WG recognizes that a transition of the current thin gTLD registries would affect over 120 million domain name registrations and as such it should be carefully prepared and implemented. In section 7.2 of the Initial Report, the WG outlines a number of implementation considerations. In section 7.3 of the Initial Report the WG also provides other observations that emerged from this discussion which while not directly related to the question of thin or thick did and should receive due consideration by other bodies.

The WG would like to encourage all interested parties to submit their comments and suggestions so these can be considered as the WG continues its deliberations in view of finalizing its report and recommendations in the next phase of the policy development process.

Section II: Background: 

ICANN specifies Whois service requirements for generic top-level domain (gTLD) registries through the Registry Agreement (RA) and the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA). Registries and registrars satisfy their Whois obligations using different service models. The two common models are often characterized as "thin" and "thick" Whois registries. This distinction is based on how two distinct sets of data are managed. One set of data is associated with the domain name, and a second set of data is associated with the registrant of the domain name.

  • A thin registry only stores and manages the information associated with the domain name. This set includes data sufficient to identify the sponsoring registrar, status of the registration, creation and expiration dates for each registration, name server data, the last time the record was updated in its Whois data store, and the URL for the registrar's Whois service.
  • With thin registries, registrars manage the second set of data associated with the registrant of the domain and provide it via their own Whois services, as required by Section 3.3 of the RAA for those domains they sponsor. COM and NET are examples of thin registries.
  • Thick registries maintain and provide both sets of data (domain name and registrant) via Whois. INFO and BIZ are examples of thick registries.

The GNSO Council requested an Issue Report regarding the use of thick Whois by all gTLD Registries at its meeting on 22 September 2011. The Issue Report was expected to 'not only consider a possible requirement of thick Whois for all incumbent gTLDs in the context of IRTP, but should also consider any other positive and/or negative effects that are likely to occur outside of IRTP that would need to be taken into account when deciding whether a requirement of thick Whois for all incumbent gTLDs would be desirable or not'.

Following the delivery of the Final Issue Report, the GNSO Council initiated a Policy Development Process at its meeting of 14 March 2012.

Section III: Document and Resource Links: 

Initial Report on the Thick Whois Policy Development Process [PDF, 1.21 MB]

Working Group Workspace - https://community.icann.org/x/whgQAg

Section IV: Additional Information: 
N/A

(*) Comments submitted after the posted Close Date/Time are not guaranteed to be considered in any final summary, analysis, reporting, or decision-making that takes place once this period lapses.

 
 
Glen de Saint Géry
GNSO Secretariat