[ALAC] Analysis of WHOIS AoC RT Recommendations.

[Alan Greenberg]

For clarity, I am just extracting the parts that I am replying to.

At 04/09/2012 06:35 PM, Salanieta T. Tamanikaiwaimaro wrote:
>>Recommendation1: To make Whois a Strategic Priority
>>The commissioning of the Review by ICANN is an indication of the 
>>strategic importance and manner in which the Review Team was 
>>constituted. However, ICANN needs to  monitor and evaluate the 
>>implementation process. As far as the GNSO is concerned they have 
>>following advice from the GAC undertaken to do four studies namely 
>>the Whois Misuse Study; Whois Proxy and Privacy Abuse; Whois 
>>Registrant Identification and Whois Proxy & Privacy Relay and 
>>Reveal Study which the Report says is due for completion in 2012. I 
>>am not sure what the status of the Studies are but I can only 
>>hypothesize that to the extent that this would affect existing 
>>consensus Policies, then parts of the PDP may apply. However, if 
>>the existing consensus policies address in principle areas that may 
>>require a PDP process then we should be open to that. I understand 
>>that this may be a negligible caveat.
>
>It is correct that addressing the substantive Whois issues may well 
>require (well, almost surely require) GNSO policy development, that 
>is not the subject of this Rec. It is solely that the ICANN go on 
>records as saying it is important and conveying that message out to 
>the GNSO as well as other parts of the wider ICANN community.
>
>By the way, do you know when in 2012 the studies are due to be 
>completed. I would be most interested in reading the Reports.

Don't off-hand know.  Would have to do some research first.

>>Recommendation 9 Data Accuracy: Track Impact of Whois Data Reminder 
>>Policy and Possible Replacement
>>
>>The Report clearly outlines the fact that the Whois Data Reminder 
>>Policy so without a doubt there is need to review and revise the 
>>Policy. I would say, yes GNSO much initiate discussions. To save 
>>time there may be things within the Reminder Policy that do not 
>>need to be debated again although there is always the exception. 
>>There are many models of doing things and Registrars can select 
>>what works for them and it would help to at least outline a few 
>>generic ones. At the moment, I can deduce that the focus has been 
>>based on the actual "data" and if one methodology does'nt work, 
>>there should be enough innovation to suggest alternative methods 
>>that can be either customer centric or otherwise.
>
>The current WDRP is a Consensus Policy and as such must be adhered 
>to by registrars. The report suggest that we first try to develop 
>metrics to gauge's its effectiveness. If that is not possible, or 
>implicitly if the metrics say it is not effective, a new policy 
>shouldbe developed.
>
>This Report very bluntly mentions the failure of the WDRP. In terms 
>of metrics, I would have thought that the NORC study would have 
>teased these out already.

The NORC study is looking at Whois accuracy, not how it changes over 
time with respect to WDRP. These days, we try to make sure that when 
a new policy is implemented, we can get some metrics to track it (not 
always possible of course). When the WDRP was put in place, we had no 
such concept. So registrars send out the notices and registrants get 
them, but we do not know how many registrants adjust their Whois info 
in response to the reminder. That is the thrust of the recommendation.

Alan