Response by the registries Constituency to
Motion 1 of the GNSO, 20 July 2006

Ref:  Motion 1 approved by the GNSO Council on 20 July 2006.  Step 1 of this motion says, “Each Council member that voted in favour of the definition (and any Advisory Committee liaison) may provide a brief explanation of the reason for supporting the resolution and their understanding of its meaning.”

In accordance with the gTLD Registries Constituency (RyC) Articles of Operation, each RyC Council member voted to support Definition 1 as directed by the RyC membership so there does not seem to be any value in individual explanations from RyC Council representatives.  But there may be value in explaining the RyC understanding of the meaning of Definition 1 of the purpose of Whois that was approved by the Council on 12 April 2006.  The following information is provided for that purpose.

Prior to the Council vote on 12 April 2006, the RyC approved support for Definition 1 with the clearly communicated assumption that Definition 1 would not preclude providing access to Whois data to law enforcement agencies and other organizations that have a legitimate need for that access.  In fact, in a RyC teleconference meeting before 12 April 2006, before final direction was confirmed for RyC Council representatives to vote in support of Definition 1, the following question was asked: “Does Definition 1 preclude granting access to Whois data by law enforcement and other organizations that have a legitimate need for that access?”  The RyC members of the GNSO Whois Taskforce answered ‘no’ to this question.  Based on that understanding, RyC Council representatives were directed to vote in support of Definition 1.
It is also important to note that this position is consistent with RyC statements made over the past several months regarding Whois access.  Three of these statements are quoted below from publicly available documents as noted:

• “There are adequate techniques, such as tiered access, that can make WHOIS data available to law enforcement agencies and others that need the data.” [RyC constituency statement in Section 4(e) of the Final task force report on the purpose of Whois and of the Whois contacts dated 15 March 2006 and posted at http://gnso.icann.org/issues/whois-privacy/tf-report-15mar06.htm]
• “The Registries Constituency supports a balanced approach to solving the Whois dilemma.  We recognize that there are multiple uses of Whois that need to be recognized and accommodated including those of intellectual property users and law enforcement agencies.”  [Statement of Sponsorship by the gTLD Registry Constituency for the ‘Privacy Conference - Building Bridges on ICANN's Whois Dilemma’ held in Vancouver, B.C. on 29 November 2005 and posted at Statement of Sponsorship by the gTLD Registry Constituency.]
• “We recognize that certain parties (e.g., law enforcement, IP) may at times need to have better access to Whois. We suggest that a technical solution be identified  which allows legitimate parties to search for the information they need, without requiring registries to turn over all data they have in the Whois (i.e., current bulk access).  IRIS could be considered as a potential technical solution.”  [gTLD Registry Constituency Statement for Whois Task Force 1 that can be found at http://gnso.icann.org/issues/whois-privacy/Whois-tf1-preliminary.html#GTLDRegistriesConstituency.]

It is our hope that this explanation removes much of the misunderstanding and in some cases misrepresentation by third parties with regard to the RyC’s position regarding Definition 1 of the purpose of Whois and in particular with regard to public Whois access.