[NA-Discuss] Report of the WHOIS Study Hypothesis Group attached

[Ross Rader]

On Aug 28, 2008, at 7:53 AM, Danny Younger wrote:

> I'm part of the contingent that believes that further WHOIS studies  
> are a total waste of time.
>
> We don't need further studies to tell us that which is self- 
> evident.  We're not idiots.  We all can see what is going on.  We,  
> in this ICANN community, are the experts on this topic and certainly  
> don't need to pay others to investigate that which is glaringly  
> obvious.
>
> What we have here is nothing more than a stalling tactic.

Largely spearheaded by the United States Government.

Much community time has been wasted on this subject and I agree with  
Danny that the current course of action will do very little to resolve  
the issue to anyone's satisfaction - save those interests that are  
comfortable with the status quo.

If anything should be studied, it should focus on determining the  
degree to which current registrants (and no one else) is comfortable  
with the current whois disclosure policies. It may well be that this  
issue is not important to the registrant community and therefore, the  
status quo could be much more acceptable than we might think.

However, I don't believe this is the case. I think it would be very  
helpful for the At-large community to take a proactive stance on this  
issue instead of dancing to the USG and intellectual property  
community drums. A proposal which balanced the information privacy  
requirements of individual registrants with the disclosure needs of  
consumer protection interests *might* have a chance of being ratified  
as policy.

If the GNSO continues along its current track, I predict we will be  
stuck with the status quo for another five years, while the rest of  
the world implements more balanced privacy practices (i.e. the new  
Canadian whois policy went into effect earlier this year, and contrary  
to popular propaganda, the intellectual property world did *not* come  
to an end).

As a slight aside, a question to those that advocate study of this  
issue - what progress has been made over the last year to achieve the  
better understanding of the issues since the Council determined that  
"more studies" was the way to go.

/ross