[At-Large] [WHOIS-WG] Fwd: WHOIS Policy Review Team Final Report

Lutz Donnerhacke lutz at iks-jena.de
Tue May 15 07:32:26 UTC 2012


On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 06:38:43AM +0200, Patrick Vande Walle wrote:
> Speaking of regulating privacy providers, I do not understand why the
> review team did not suggest to allow registrars only to provide these
> privacy services as an integral part of their registration service.

The RT did found, that there is currently no regulation - not even a
definition - of proxy and privacy services.

While doing a review, the team is not allowed to making policy, but to point
out the gaps in the current situation.

The hopefully starting policy development process will provide multiple
suggestions (incl. yours) and decide following the well established
processes.

> another bunch of new players. If the registrars are serious in their
> privacy services, there might even be no need for proxy services at all.

Privacy and proxy differs fundamentally:
  - Privacy does hide special contact details, but not the registrant itself.
  - A proxy (as seen by ICANN) does not even exist: The proxy service *is*
    the registrant - taking the data literally. The "real registrant" signed
    a contract with the proxy (i.e. a lawyer), but this does not appear in
    the contractual relationship accessible to ICANN.

You might consider the following example: A company wants to launch a new
brand or product and therefore registers the corresponding domain names.
Using a privacy server the name of the company will still visible. Using a
proxy service, some unknown agent will "own" the domains.



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