Crunch Whois privacy talks kick off
ICANN volunteers are meeting this week to attempt to finalize their recommendations on the future of Whois privacy.
Most members of the Expedited Policy Development Process working group have gathered in Toronto for three days of talks on what will likely become, in May this year, new contractually binding ICANN policy.
Discussions are kicking off pretty much at the same time this article is published and will last until Friday afternoon local time.
The EPDP group is due to publish its final report by February 1, leaving enough time for GNSO consideration, public comments, and an ICANN board of directors vote.
Its initial report, which recommended some big changes to Whois output, was published in November. Public comments on this report will lead to largely modest changes to the policy this week.
The timing is tight because Whois policy is currently governed by a one-year Temporary Specification, created by the ICANN board, which expires May 25.
The bulk of the work today will focus on formalizing the “purposes” of Whois data, something that is needed if ICANN policy is to be compliant with the EU General Data Protection Regulation.
The more controversial stuff, where consensus will be extraordinarily difficult to find, comes tomorrow, when the group discusses policies relating to privileged access to private Whois data.
This is the area where intellectual property and security interests, which want a program that enables them to get access to private data, have been clashing with non-commercial stakeholders, which accuse their opponents of advocating “surveillance”.
It’s not expected that a system of standardized, unified access will be created this week or by February 1. Rather, talks will focus on language committing ICANN to work on (or not) such a system in the near future.
Currently, there’s not even a consensus on what the definition of “consensus” is. It could be slow going.
Gluttons for punishment Observers can tune in to the view/listen-only Adobe Connect room for the meetings here.
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