[WHOIS-WG] WEIRDS and Whois

Sun Jan 20 13:08:06 UTC 2013

Hi Holly,

I have been lurking on the WEIRDS list for some time now, and
occasionally posting comments. Some of John's points are correct,
although missing the bigger picture of the work being done. The WG
charter clearly mentions both names and numbers, as well as
differentiated access. It the group came up with only a part of the
requirements being addressed, that would be a failure. 

The WEIRDS WG is tasked among others, to draft a specification for
querying and responding to queries in a predictable format. The returned
data will be presented in  JSON format and in an organized way, rather
than the plain, free flow, ASCII we have today. WEIRDS will not develop
specifications for the authentication mechanisms, because they already
exist. They are part of the HTTP suite of standards. How both parts will
interact still needs to find an agreement within WEIRDS.

I have to disagree with most of what John says about thee names
community not being involved. There are many folks from the [cc|g]TLD
community on the list. For many ccTLDs, differentiated access is a vital
part. Actually, I note that the few test implementations of the WEIRDS
specs are for names. Names and number communities have different
requirements and expectations. Hence, finding common ground still
requires more work.

Indeed, the IETF is not the place to discuss the policy aspects. It will
only provide a technical framework to implement it, *if so desired*.
Note that the "differentiated access" part is purely optional, as least
technically. As I suggested some time ago, the ICANN community needs to
start discussing the policy side.

While I encourage anyone to join the WEIRDS list, be preprared to be
snubbed by people who will claim that your lack of technical input makes
your other contributions moot. The legend that the IETF is run by
volunteers is true only in the sense that the IETF does not pay the guys
to develop standards.Most posts originate from people using their
professional e-mail address during office hours. I have no issue with
that, although it does not really look as if they work on standards
during their free/family time.

Patrick

On 20/01/13 05:31, Holly Raiche wrote:
>
> HI Everyone
>
> I'm not sure if you all have been following the exchanges involving
> John Levine, but I am now rather disheartened about Whois and accuracy.
>
> The green/blue text is mine.  What John is saying essentially, is that
> the WEIRDS Working Group is not going to produce something that can
> address the legitimate privacy concerns raised by Whois. (Maybe that's
> the reason the GNSO statement on Whois is as negative as it is - on
> privacy grounds, noone should have to reveal any details about
> themselves - and they understand there will be no movement towards a
> better outcome.)
>
> So what we seem to have now is a Board that has not really adopted the
> Whois Final Report (see this
> blog) http://news.dot-nxt.com/2013/01/16/deja-whois#comment-7143., RAA
> negotiations stuck on what is meant by registrars verifying the data
> accuracy, and the possibility of a technical solution to the privacy
> issue disappearing over the horizon!
>
> It's beginning to feel as if we are going backwards on the issue - but
> I'm happy to be corrected.
>
>
> Holly 
>
>
>
>>> From what you are saying, the messages given at Toronto aren't going to 
>>> happen.
>
> The IETF is 100% run by volunteers, and is open to anyone willing to show 
> up and do the work.  Most of the work is done on mailing lists and by 
> submitting and reviewing draft documents online, so the barriers to 
> participation are very low.
>
> Nevertheless, of the many people who insisted it was very very very 
> important that WEIRDS produce a spec for names, approximately none of
> them 
> are on the WIERDS mailing list or have done any work.  Thie tells me, and 
> the rest of the IETF, that in fact the ICANN community does not consider 
> this to be an important problem.  (If it's not important enough for
> you to 
> work on it, it's not important for us, either.)
>
>> I hope, therefore, at the Beijing meeting, you - or someone from the 
>> group - will give a presentation
>
> Sorry, I have actual work to do for real clients and a $0 budget for
> ICANN 
> junkets.  If someone thinks it's worth putting together a talk for 
> Beijing, the drafts and the list archives are not hard to find.
>
>> What is being developed by the IETF is the WEIRDS protocol which, 
>> amongst other things, will allow differentiated access to Whois data. 
>> This will allow those who want to exercise their legitimate right to 
>> privacy to do so, ...
>
> Sorry, no, that's not what WEIRDS is doing.
>
> For one thing, WEIRDS is really about redoing WHOIS for IP addresses.  As 
> the group was being chartered, a bunch of people showed up, loudly 
> demanded that we do names as well, and then predictably disappeared 
> without doing any work.  (Not quite all, one or two guys are toiling
> away, 
> but given how poorly the names community understands the issues, I doubt 
> there will be much progress.)  So WEIRDS is unlikely to produce anything 
> for names.  We knew this would happen, so the charter specifically allows 
> the IP address work to go ahead while the names spin their wheels.
>
> Even if it does, the differentiated access is nothing new.  Try
> looking up 
> six names in a row at Godaddy's WHOIS server, and you'll find that it 
> starts providing much less info in each response, unless you're
> connecting 
> from an IP for which they've relaxed the rate limits.  The WEIRDS stuff 
> just provides a cleaner way to do what existing WHOIS servers do with 
> per-IP rate limits and CAPTCHAs.
>
> And please keep in mind that the IETF has exactly zero interest in
> getting 
> involved in policy disputes, so we'll design a way that a client can pass 
> credentials to a WEIRDS server, but not what the server does with those 
> credentials.  This project is to provide a spec that the RIRs and perhaps 
> name registries can use to do what they do now, but in a way that scales 
> better and is easier to script.

-- 
*/Patrick Vande Walle/*
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