ICANN Tuesday
Today is Constituency/Supporting Organization day. The board is trying something new — splitting up and going to individual meetings for a long period, rather than trooping around as a group to a series of hour-long meetings. I went to the gTLD Registry Constituency meeting. Later we’ll get back together and compare notes before meeting in a public session with the Governmental Advisory Committee.
The big issues for this meeting include new gTLDs (as I mentioned yesterday), domain tasting, internationalized domain names, whois, and structural reforms (of the GNSO, of the Nominating Committee).
There’s a public comment period going on until the end of today on whois. This discussion has been going on for seven years or so within the ICANN context. The basic issue: should it be a condition of registering a domain name that the registrant’s personal information be made publicly available? Tomorrow, the GNSO Council will vote on three motions that have been suggested with respect to the whois policy development process. This document (p.9) sets forth the three motions.
The first motion would adopt a proposal to allow individual registrants to designate an Operational Point of Contact whose information would appear publicly. Requestors needing the registrant’s personal information would be required to give a good reason (as defined under applicable national law) to get that information, but would be able to reach the registrant through the OPOC.
The second motion would initiate more studies.
The third motion would say “you have until the end of 2008 to come to an agreement on how to both implement whois AND allow for individual privacy (and compliance with applicable laws). Otherwise, because the whois clauses in the contracts aren’t supported by consensus, they will be removed from the contract.”
Many of the participants in this process are simply worn out. The question is whether “we’ve had enough, and we can’t agree” should lead to (1) maintenance of the status quo, or (2) removal of the clause requiring public presentation of individual data.
There are many comments here. Add your own before the day ends.