Registrars Constituency

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Registrars Constituency Policy Update
Denise Michel, VP Policy Liz Gasster, Senior
Policy Counselor Margie Milam, Senior Policy
Counselor
October 2009
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Items Addressed

• Explanation of new GNSO structure
• GNSO reform update (OSC / PPSC)
• GNSO workload / prioritization
• Whois Misuse study
• Registrant rights/responsibility
• Board request re TM protection implementation
  plan

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New GNSO Structure
October 2009
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Key Goals

• Adopting a Working Group Model
• Focal point for policy development
• More inclusive, representative, effective
• Revising the PDP
• More effective and responsive to policy
  development needs
• Enhancing Constituencies
• Procedures, operations to be more transparent,
  accountable and accessible.

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Key Goals cont.

• Improving Communication and Coordination
• With ICANN Structures
• Including the Board.
• Restructuring the GNSO Council
• Smaller, more focused strategic entity
• Strengthened management and PDP oversight.

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New GNSO Council Structure
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Current Status and Next Steps

• New Bylaws and Stakeholder Group charters are in
  place
• Council representatives have been determined (8
  new)
• GNSO Council has approved Implementation
  Transition Plan
• Nominations for Council were held, have closed
  elections to happen in Seoul

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Current Status and Next Steps

• New Council Procedures recommended
• Public comments closed 16 October
• To be voted on in Seoul
• Policy and Operations Work Team efforts will
  continue after Seoul on key aspects
• Creating new Policy Development Process
• Creating new Working Group Model

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GNSO Policy Process Operations Steering
Committees
October 2009
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GNSO Participation Workload
October 2009
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Introduction
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Working Groups/Teams Analyzed
GROUP A Working Groups Acronym Used
Post-Expiration Domain Name Recovery Working Group PEDNR
Fast Flux Working Group FF
Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy-Part A Working Group IRTP-A
Registration Abuse Polices Working Group RAP
Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy Part B Working Group IRTP-B
Group B GNSO Improvement Work Teams Acronym Used
Communications and Coordination Team CCT
Constituency and Stakeholder Group Team CSG
GNSO Council Operations Team GCOT
Policy Development Process Team PDPT
Working Group Team WGT
Restructure Drafting Team RDT
Note 1 The periods of attendance/participation
data vary by group with some having records
starting in early 2008 and a few having data as
late as September 2009.
Note 2 Data assumptions and technical notes are
contained in the Report Appendix the summary and
raw data are included in an accompanying Excel
workbook.
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Question What is Group Bs percentage
attendance at conference calls/meetings counting
any participant from each Constituency?
GROUP A Percent Attendance by Constituency
GROUP A RrC RyC BC IPC ISPC NCUC Others
PEDNR 92 54 77 38 0 23 85
FF 100 93 63 17 0 37 100
IRTP-A 100 79 93 82 0 0 61
RAP 94 100 94 88 0 0 82
IRTP-B 100 100 100 100 0 0 100
Group A Avg Attendance 98 85 81 56 0 33 82
() Includes At-Large, Nom-Com Appointees, GAC,
Individuals
() At least one person attended each
meeting/conference call from the Constituency
Note As long as any participant from that
Constituency was present at a session, no absence
was counted. Conversely, if no one from that
Constituency was present, an absence was
recorded.
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Question What is Group Bs percentage
attendance at conference calls/meetings counting
any participant from each Constituency?
GROUP B Percent Attendance by Constituency
GROUP B RrC RyC BC IPC ISPC NCUC Others
CCT 73 93 100 20 7 0 0
CSGT 69 92 23 100 46 54 92
GCOT 29 100 76 0 94 18 18
PDPT 100 100 53 47 67 27 87
WGT 90 50 10 80 30 40 100
RDT 80 80 60 100 40 80 100
Group B Avg Attendance 71 89 57 62 51 37 72
() Includes At-Large, Nom-Com Appointees, GAC,
Individuals
() At least one person attended each
meeting/conference call from the Constituency
Note As long as any participant from that
Constituency was present at a session, no absence
was counted. Conversely, if no one from that
Constituency was present, an absence was
recorded.
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Final Thoughts
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WHOIS STUDIES UPDATE
October 2009
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WHOIS - Definition

• WHOIS -- provides public access to contact
  information for Registered Name Holders
• Requirements are in ICANN agreements
• Required data (thick WHOIS) nameservers and DNS
  configuration data, registrar, start date,
  expiration date, and registrant contact
  information, technical contact and administrative
  contact.
• Thin WHOIS -- only data sufficient to identify
  the sponsoring registrar, status of the
  registration, and creation and expiration dates
  for each registration.

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Sample WHOIS record
Domain servers in listed orderNS.ICANN.ORG
A.IANA-SERVERS.NET C.IANA-SERVERS.NET
B.IANA-SERVERS.ORG D.IANA-SERVERS.NET
Registered Through GoDaddy.com, Inc. Domain
Name icann.org Created on 14-Sep-1998 040000
UTC Expires on 07-Dec-2012 170426 UTC Last
Updated on 13-Aug-2009 151010 UTC

• Registrant
• ICANN
• 4676 Admiralty Way Suite 330
• Marina del Rey, California 90292 US
• Phone[phone] Administrative
  ContactICANN
• 4676 Admiralty Way Suite
• Marina del Rey, California, 90292
• Phone[phone] / FAX[phone]
• Emaildomain-admin_at_icann.org Technical
  ContactICANN
• 4676 Admiralty Way Suite
• Marina del Rey, California, 90292
• Phone[phone] / FAX[phone]
• Emaildomain-admin_at_icann.org

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Why are WHOIS studies important?

• WHOIS policy has been debated for many years
• Many competing interests with valid viewpoints
• Law enforcement, IP owners, others want easy
  access to accurate contact information
• Individuals and privacy advocates are concerned
  about privacy protection and abuse of public info
• Governments want their legal regimes to be
  followed
• Providers are reluctant to absorb new costs,
  Registrars earn revenue from privacy services
• Few policy changes to WHOIS (prohibition against
  use for marketing, conflicts procedure)

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Goals of WHOIS studies

• No PDP underway now
• GNSO Council hopes that study data will provide
  an objective, factual basis for future policy
  making
• Variety of topic areas selected are targeted at
  informing key policy issues of concern
  providing information such as possible causality
  in increasing spam and other harmful acts useful
  info about registrants use of proxy and privacy
  services, etc
• Technical consideration of alternatives,
  especially in light of the growing number of
  international registrations

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WHOIS StudiesOverview

• The GNSO Council has identified several broad
  WHOIS study areas
• Misuse of public WHOIS data
• Registrant identification study (previously
  misrepresentation)
• WHOIS proxy and privacy services study
• Display of non-ASCII character sets in WHOIS
• Compilation of current and potential WHOIS
  service requirements

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1. Misuse Studies

• Will study extent of misuse of public WHOIS data
  to generate spam or for other illegal or
  undesirable activities. Two approaches
• Descriptive Study will survey registrants about
  specific acts they have experienced that they
  believe occurred using WHOIS contact data survey
  registrars about how WHOIS can be queried and
  survey others about reported incidents from
  cybercrime, research and law enforcement
  organizations.
• Experimental Study will measure a variety of
  harmful acts by classifying messages sent to test
  domains registered by a representative sample of
  registrars. Will compare harmful acts associated
  with public vs. non-public addresses and examine
  impact of public WHOIS and anti-harvesting
  measures.
• RFP released 27 September responses due in 60
  days

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1. Misuse (contd)

• 2 types of studies may compensate for limitations
  inherent to each
• Cant measure of all queries that lead to
  misuse
• Difficult to track harmful acts. Was WHOIS data
  exploited?
• Difficult to reliably assess anti-harvesting
  measures
• Difficult to trigger or measure harmful acts in
  experiments

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Registrant Identification Study

• previously misrepresentation
• Looks at how registrants are identified in WHOIS
• Will study extent to which domains used by legal
  persons or for commercial purposes
• Are not clearly identified as such in WHOIS and
• Are correlated to use of privacy and proxy
  services
• Also using RFP approach, posted 23 October,
  responses due 22 December

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Registrant Identification contd

• Review sample of domains looking for names or
  organizations that are either patently false,
  appear to identify a natural person, an
  organization engaged in non-commercial activities
  or a privacy or proxy service for further
  analysis.
• Results will quantify domains registered to
  natural vs. legal persons and domains used for
  commercial vs. non-commercial purpose,
  distributed by gTLD, geo region and proxy/privacy
  use.
• Failure to clearly identify as a legal person

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Registration Identification contd

• Challenges
• Study can only provide empirical data, there is
  still debate about what uses are impermissible
  (e.g. use of proxy services by legal persons)
• Difficult to identify licensees of domains
  registered by proxy services
• Large numbers of ambiguous owners (legal vs.
  natural persons) could skew results
• Disagreement re commercial use

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WHOIS Proxy and Privacy Services

• Study the extent to which privacy and proxy
  services are abused to
• Obscure the source of illegal or harmful
  communication or activity and
• Delay source identification
• Plan to pursue a similar RFP approach
• TOR drafting not yet begun
• Hope to complete by end of year

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4. Display of non-ASCII character sets

• Proposal recommended examination of various
  client interfaces to assess implications for the
  accuracy and readability of WHOIS contact
  information
• A new SSAC-GNSO Technical Working Group will
  consider display specifications for
  internationalized registration data (WG tasking
  may pre-empt WHOIS display study)

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5. WHOIS Service Requirements

• May 2009 request from GNSO Council
• Staff tasked to collect and organize a
  comprehensive set of requirements for the WHOIS
  service policy tools
• Intended as an accurate and neutral compendium to
  help Council consider alternatives
• Status and update will be covered in Part II of
  this presentation.

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Next steps and ways to get involved

• Attend the Internationalized Registration Data
  (IRD) workshop in Seoul on Wednesday 28 October
  at 15.00
• Contribute to the SSAC-GNSO IRD Working Group
  just being convened
• Staff will release study information as analyses
  are complete several months
• The GNSO Council and staff will then consider
  which studies to conduct

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Additional Information

• GNSO Council Resolution in Mexico City, March
  2009https//st.icann.org/gnso-council/index.cgi?0
  4_mar_2009_motions
• WHOIS misuse RFP announcement
  http//www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement
  -28sep09-en.htm
• WHOIS registrant identification RFP announcement
  http//www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement
  -23oct09-en.htm
• GNSO Council Resolution on WHOIS Service
  Requirementshttps//st.icann.org/gnso-council/ind
  ex.cgi?07_may_motions
• ICANN Board Resolution regarding display and
  usage of internationalized registration data, 26
  June 2009http//www.icann.org/en/minutes/resoluti
  ons-26jun09.htm6
• Updated cross reference table for Whois studies
  under consideration
• http//gnso.icann.org/issues/whois/whois-requeste
  d-studies-chart-25sep09-en.pdf
• Internationalized Data Registration Working Group
  charter
• http//gnso.icann.org/drafts/internationalized-da
  ta-registration-wg-draft-charter-27sep09.pdf

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Registrant Rights Charter Additional
Responsibility
October 2009
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Background on the RAA Amendments

• March 2009- the GNSO Council approved a set of
  amendments to the RAA
• May 2009- ICANNs Board of Directors approved the
  RAA amendments
• Sept 2009- the GNSO Council created a joint
  GNSO/ALAC drafting team to conduct additional
  work related to the RAA to
• Develop a Registrant Rights Charter
• Identify Topics on which further amendments may
  be desirable

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Drafting of Registrant Rights Charter

• Section 3.5 of the RAA
• In the event that ICANN gives reasonable notice
  to Registrar that ICANN has published a webpage
  that identifies available registrant rights and
  responsibilities, and the content of such webpage
  is developed in consultation with registrars,
  Registrar shall provide a link to the webpage...

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Next Steps

• Drafting Team to develop the charter using the
  information contained in the Summary of
  Registrant Rights Document
• Drafting Team to identify topics on which further
  amendments may be desirable
• Deadline of 9 November for Suggestions
• Drafting Team Meeting in Seoul
• Wednesday 28 October 2009 - 1730 - 1900
  Sapphire 4 (L3)

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Board Request on Trademark Protection
Implementation Plan
October 2009
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Thank You