Recent Posts
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Masochistic mug urgently wanted for thankless, pay-free ICANN leadership role
ICANN still hasn’t found itself a volunteer to head up the next round of no-doubt contentious discussions about Whois policy.
Today it put out its second call for a chair of the Expedited Policy Development Process working group, which is continuing to square the circle of keeping Whois data compliant with data protection law whilst also allowing cops and IP lawyers access to the data.
The EPDP was supposed to have concluded a few months ago with the end of the second phase of talks, but a couple of issues were left unresolved, leading to the creation of a third phase, being spun as “Phase 2a”.
The first issue still to be discussed is if and how registries and registrars should be obliged to make a distinction between the data of private individuals, which is protected by law, and legal entities, which isn’t.
The second is whether it would be possible to have a uniform system of anonymized email addresses across Whois records.
They’re not exactly the most controversial of topics under the Whois umbrella, but they’re not easy asks either.
And the role of chair is time-consuming, uncompensated, with few perks.
ICANN wants somebody who is neutral and, unstated but perhaps more importantly, perceived to be neutral. The chairs of the previous two phases have been policy heavy-hitters Kurt Pritz and Janis Karklins.
It also wants somebody with “considerable experience in chairing working groups”, which immediately drains the pool of potential applicants.
If previous phases of the EPDP are any guide, the successful applicant will have to herd the cats through dozens of hours of teleconferences — the more-complex phase two had 74 meetings, most of which were two hours long.
For their efforts, the chair gets no money, and because of coronavirus travel restrictions they won’t even get paid junkets to international face-to-face meetings.
And if the output of the next phase is anywhere as near as divisive as phase two, they probably won’t win much praise either.
That’s perhaps why ICANN has extended the deadline for expressions of interest from last Friday to November 23.
Applicants go here.
Do not forget poor Rafik Dammak who had to take over as chair when Phase 2 ran into overtime and Janis needed to leave.
Indeed. Another old pro.