[At-Large] [RAA-WG] Fourth possibly final draft of RAA comments

[John L]

> On this subject, I suggested having an ombudsman-like scenario.  Someone or
> something that independently fixes problems.

The two parties to the RAA are ICANN and the registrar.  Is this an 
ombudsman to negotiate between them or between registrars and registrants? 
In the latter case, we're back to the third party beneficiary stuff.

> 2) WHOIS
> WHOIS should not be a publicly available database.

Registering a domain is not a license for registrants to harass Internet 
users anonymously.  The publicly available WHOIS is an essential facility 
to protect the vast, vast majority of at-large users who have never 
registered a domain and never will.

> Privacy laws do prevail in this circumstance.

Oh, then we agree, since as I would hope everyone was aware, the United 
States, where ICANN and the largest registrars are located, has no 
meaningful privacy laws.

Needless to say, consensus on this point in this group is unlikely any 
time in the near future.

R's,
John