Question: The whois workshop started today. Can you talk about that and what you hope to get out of it?
Twomey: Strongly suggest you take a look at the stuff we've put online. Whois has been an issue in the ICANN community for several years. It predates the DNS as a technical protocol. What we had today were presentations from different people about why whois is important to them and how they use it. We had presentations from ICANN about the contractual and technical requirement, the IETF on the proposed CRISP protocols, the registrars on the issues they see, ARIN on whois in address allocation, the OECD regarding consumer protection issues, and a presentation from a lawyer with an intellectual property practice about the uses that IP lawyers make of whois. Quite a range of people. A little like the old story of the people who touch the elephant -- you have a different view of the animal depending on what part you're touching. Different views about whois. Purpose of the session was to put those issues on the table.
Tomorrow we'll talk about the public policy implications of the issues we've put on the table. Starting a community discussion on whois with these presentations and discussions. For me, what was really powerful about today was viewing it as part of the whole reform of ICANN. Today was about making the different connections between constituencies, coming together to share experiences early in the prcess. We wanted to make this a joint discussion, a mutual exploration of the technical, legal, and privacy issues around whois that affect internet users.
Question: What are the problems? Why do this? What has been identified as the issues that need discussion? Is this about privacy?
Twomey: Not just privacy. A number of forces have to come together to bring this up at this particular time. Commercial pressures inside the registrars about who can have acccess to their customer lists. Issues from law enforcement about needing to see this data. Issues about who can see what data and how they can access it. Can you use automated processes? Bots, spiders? Can you have proxies for anonymous registrations? All of these issues have been emerging over the last few years. What we have is a range of people saying that whois is a problem, but a variety of views on what that actually means.
