Fwd: small HR victory in ICANN

[Meryem Marzouki <marzouki@ras.eu.org>]

Début du message réexpédié :
> De : "Milton Mueller" <Mueller@syr.edu>
> Date : 13 avril 2006 00:35:30 HAEC
> À : <marzouki@ras.eu.org>
> Objet : small HR victory in ICANN
>
> You may want to forward to your HR caucus list, which I am not on.
>
> http://www.circleid.com/posts/historic_vote_on_whois_reformers_win/

This is good news (see the article linked). It's about the vote by  
ICANN on WHOIS purpose definition. There were two proposed formulations:

(ADOPTED) "The purpose of the gTLD Whois service is to provide  
information sufficient to contact a responsible party for a  
particular gTLD domain name who can resolve, or reliably pass on data  
to a party who can resolve, issues related to the configuration of  
the records associated with the domain name within a DNS nameserver."

(REJECTED) "The purpose of the gTLD Whois service is to provide  
information sufficient to contact a responsible party or parties for  
a particular gTLD domain name who can resolve, or reliably pass on  
data to a party who can resolve, technical, legal or other issues  
related to the registration or use of a domain name."

Adopted formulation is indeed better: narrow, while not preventing  
the possibility, if needed, to indirectly contact the domain owner  
e.g. in case of legal problem (court case, etc.). In many countries,  
this adopted formulation will imply that more information on the  
domain owner can only be obtained through a court, or any other legal  
mean that allow at least minimal procedural guarantees.

The other formulation was problematic for 2 reasons:
1/ w.r.t. to whois purpose and role, which should be kept on minimal,  
only for technical resolution of problems
2/ HR issues and specially privacy and FoE, specially when combined  
with UDRP procedure.

Meryem