[Chapter-delegates] Internet Society Appointments to theNTIA/IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group

Tue Jul 8 02:46:38 PDT 2014

Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> On 7 July 2014 09:45, Christian de Larrinaga <cdel at firsthand.net
> <mailto:cdel at firsthand.net>> wrote:
>
>     This is a curious argument. I've seen it on AT Large lists as if
>     it actually means something useful.
>
>
>
> No need to insult points of view with which you disagree.
Please do not try to shake the tree by personalising arguments based on
real observations of conversations from a number of different people and
organisations.
>
>     As a registrant I have exactly the same interest in keeping my
>     whois registration record in working order because I want to know
>     if there is a problem and have a public point of contact for
>     people to reach me.
>
>
>
> And a great many other registrants, myself included, share that view.
> However the sentiment is not universal, which is where the differences
> arise.
>
> There is, for instance, a significant component of the Non-Commercial
> Users Constituency within ICANN's GNSO that believes that a registrant
> has the right to keep their contact data private and hidden from you.
> They do not share your interest in having accessible, working contact
> information.
>
>  

I would distinguish between "technical" contact information which should
be accessible, from ownership and or administrative contact data.  I
don't have a problem with owner / admin data being escrowed for instance. 

There are jurisdictions where this is both safe and competent to protect
privacy and law enforcement.
>
>     As a user I want to be able to reach the domain administrator so I
>     can report problems and cross reference registration data.
>
>
> On that we absolutely agree.
>
> But what if that other domain administrators do not want to be
> reached? What if they don't care about the kind of problems you would
> report? What if they are deliberately trying to avoid you?
>
I would distinguish between illegal or harmful uses from inconveniences
because you can't check who is behind a service.

Whois is not a business register nor can it represent a trademark
registry any more than can a DNS record. Trying to retrofit this stuff
without a ground up restoration is a road to madness.

> The fact remains that there is a significant component of the world of
> registrants that cares more about their privacy than your ability to
> contact them.

There are good reasons for this in many cases. In fact there are legal
protections and in some cases constitutional protections that need to be
respected to keep some information private. WHOIS policy should not run
directly into some of these issues. ICANN has no remit or scope to
change these things.

ICANN must not impose policy on  more competent institutions.

> There are other registrants who want to typo-squat or use fraudulent
> domain names so they can pretend they're the Red Cross and solicit
> funds from you.

That is criminal and is a matter for police action. WHOIS may be one
convenient resource for policing but the reality is there needs to be
multiple lines of enquiry. WHOIS is not by any means designed or capable
of being a sole source of data to trace activities over data networks. 

AT Large should be promoting for the examples you cite, law enforcement
education and encouraging jurisdictions to clarify their regulatory
environment for managing these issues so people using zones domiciled
administratively in those jurisdictions are clear about the environment
they are operating under. 

> It is highly unlikely that these I suggest that the interests of those
> registrants absolutely do not coincide with yours as a user.
>
Registrants are users of other domains too.

The big picture is that criminal or bad behaviour is available to people
with or without a domain name on the Internet. Being a registrant in the
DNS conveys no particular distinction on potential criminality or anti
social behaviour. It can enable some specific ways to conduct oneself
badly of course but that impacts "good registrants" just as much as it
does "good or bad users".  In fact with the sort of policy attention
being proposed to split users into registrants and non registrants even
if they are the same person the onus and impacts on registrants looks
increasingly dire. A situation that will further discourage users from
taking control over their own Internet devices and resources.

If we want Internet for everyone then the policy should be to encourage
users to be registrants, not the reverse.

> It also does not appear that you are domainer, who buys and sells
> domains primarily as commodity for a significant source of income, The
> subset of registrants who share that characteristic have different
> interests in ICANN than you or I, for reasons that have nothing to do
> with accurate contact information,

Domainers are a problem but not because they are necessarily criminal.
If they don't keep domain information up to date that could be for much
the same reasons as any other registrant which can often be that they
have to use registrar tools and those are often pretty awful and their
interest in any one domain name is marginal. 

But that state is a result of how ICANN has designed the DNS "market". 
It and predecessors SAIC etc has encouraged perhaps inadvertently a
series of speculative bubbles. 
>
> In ICANN At-Large we have identified quite a few issues -- some of
> them significant -- where the interests of end users and registrants
> are not aligned.
to quote a relevant aside by Fade during the London meetings on ICANN
activities being asked to talk about "user" role. "ICANN doesn't do
that". He then went on to talk on stage about how users "pay for
everything" and are therefore central to the ICANN mission. 

But that doesn't change the fact that ICANN is an industry body. It does
registry, registrar and  a little in registrant work. What ICANN does is
structure registries and registrars to take money from registrants to
pay for itself and the supply chain.  Users who are not registrants have
no voice because they do not pay into the ICANN money-go-round.

The answer to building a broader and more effective participation is for
as many people on the Internet as possible be registrants in the DNS.
That is what is needed to make Internet for everyone just as much as it
is needed to force a greater voice for users in the round in data
network policy making.

Any policy that makes it more onerous and less attractive for users to
be registrants is counter productive. We should be arguing for users to
be freed from these walled cyber gardens not picking on registrants as
the problem when in fact the problem lies with the ICANN policy process
and representation of registry and registrar operators.

> These differences are indeed relevant to some, and indicate that
> registrants cannot be thought to be surrogates for end users in
> matters related to ICANN accountability.
That is a very slippery slope.

Let's please keep ICANN as narrowly focused as possible on management of
Internet resources and leave social, economic and competition policy to
competent bodies.
> - Evan

Christian
-- 
Christian de Larrinaga

@ FirstHand
-------------------------
+44 7989 386778
cdel at firsthand.net
-------------------------
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