Maybe UCANN school ICANN on whois (Linux Journal) [LWN.net]

Maybe UCANN school ICANN on whois (Linux Journal)

Posted Oct 25, 2007 18:13 UTC (Thu) by markhb (guest, #1003)
Parent article: Maybe UCANN school ICANN on whois (Linux Journal)

From the Doc Searls article:

Motions 1 and 3, best as I can tell, call for minimal action.
Motion 2 calls for a complicated process that is obviously given the uniform enthusiasm of IP lawyer advocacy of it in public comments aimed toward turning whois into a whatis that is quite other than what it was intended for in the first place.

Best as I can tell, that is a complete misreading of the motions. Motion 1 is essentially to move ahead with the recommendations of the committee report to implement the "OPoC" change mentioned by the posters above. Motion 3, which is a fallback that "may" be withdrawn if Motion 1 succeeds, says the following:

(i) That, with regret, the GNSO Council advises the ICANN staff and Board of Directors of the lack of general consensus on the key issues and solutions pertaining to gTLD WHOIS, and;
(ii) That due to this lack of consensus the GNSO Council recommends that the Board consider "sunsetting" the existing current contractual requirements concerning WHOIS for registries, registrars and registrants that are not supported by consensus policy by removing these unsupported provisions from the current operating agreements between ICANN and its contracted parties, and;
(iii) That these provisions be sunset no later than the end of the 2008 ICANN Annual General Meeting and;
(iv) That such provisions will remain sunset until such time that consensus policy in this area has been developed to replace the sunset provisions, at which point they will be eliminated or modified.

(Emphasis added.) I'm not sure how much of the WHOIS contractual requirements are "not supported by consensus policy," but that certainly doesn't sound like "minimal action" to me.

Motion 2 essentially directs the Council to direct its staff to come up with a proposal for further study within 90 days. That, to me, sounds like the most minimal action that a bureaucracy could possibly undertake.

All quotes and descriptions drawn from pp. 9ff of the PDF linked by Doc Searls. IANAL, but to me, Doc Searls' reading of the document in this regard is grossly inaccurate. YMMV.

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