In Wellington, the
GNSO Council voted
on the two WHOIS TF formulations regarding the purpose of WHOIS.
The
vote favoured a purely technical definition of WHOIS purpose (known
as formulation 1), rejecting both a definition (formulation 2) and a
compromise which factored in uses of WHOIS for consumer protection
and law enforcement.
The compromise
was crafted by Philip Sheppard as a GNSO Councillor. Efforts were made
to gain support and feedback from the NomComm members, who initially
were expressing interest in a balanced definition, but in the end, did
not vote to support the formulation 2, supported by the BC, ISPCP and
IPC Constituencies.
After the vote,
formulation 1, which received 18 votes in favour and 9 votes against,
has been referred back to the TF as a "working definition"
for the task force to use for its remaining work.
GAC members made it
clear to Council that they wanted to be involved with the
process. Marilyn Cade and other TF
members have now established a dialogue with the GAC working group
chair, and will urge the development of a process to ensure GAC input
to the Council between now and Marrakech.
The Formulations
1. "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."
2. "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."
ICANN meetings, Marrakech, Morocco