[At-Large] [NA-Discuss] Community Input Requested on Two Draft Statements from ALAC to the ICANN Board

[Adam Peake]

>Speaking for CAUCE, we agree with all of Wendy's comments ...
>
>  > Trade WHOIS accuracy for WHOIS privacy. When inaccuracy is the way to
>>  preserve privacy, it's better than forced accuracy.
>
>   ... except this one.
>
>The vast majority of bogus WHOIS info is clearly not there for reasons of
>personal privacy, but rather to hide the identities of perpetrators of
>phishing, spam, and other kinds of fraud.


John, Wendy:

I think you're both equally right/wrong.

I am quite sure spammers, others trying to con, 
steal (whatever), abuse WHOIS.  But I am equally 
sure there are many (as many, as few? I am not 
able to guess) who provide inaccurate (or 
un-helpful) information for privacy reasons. We 
are generally advised not to put personal 
information online.  WHOIS is contrary to best 
practise.

It's in users best interests that WHOIS is 
accurate and WHOIS preserves privacy (give me 
privacy and I'll give you accurate information.)

About this part of the statement, I don't 
remember ALAC ever making such a strong claim:



>However we wish to note what we
>see as two crucial missing major activities in this area related to
>compliance:
>
>     * WHOIS Accuracy and Reporting. We all know that WHOIS is very
>inaccurate. This is a very serious problem and considerable effort needs
>to be made to improve this situation. Multiplying the number of gTLDs as
>is proposed when the existing database is inaccurate is just asking to
>make a big problem worse ­ and the existing reporting system is already
>not fit for purpose. ICANN is not living up to its obligations with
>respect to WHOIS ­ fixing this should be a headline compliance activity
>in the Operational Plan for 2008/2009. Whilst we are limiting our
>comments here to compliance activities related to the operational
>planning cycle, this should not be understood to mean that our concerns
>related to WHOIS are limited to data accuracy. Our previous statements
>on the policy aspects of WHOIS remain valid.
>


Think it needs re-writing so ALAC's established 
positions are represented.  (and can people stop 
using high ascii curly quotes etc in email? 
Plain text not possible?)

Thanks,

Adam


>R's,
>John
>
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