No Such Weblog

Some discussions on the WHOIS task force brought up a relatively fundamental question: Who does actually make use of the bulk access provisions from the Registrar Accreditation Agreement? For what purposes are these data being used in practice? I'd welcome any pointers.

At IcannWatch, Ted Byfield has taken up my brief comments on the ERC's Second Implementation Report and its suggestions about the GA's future. Bad enough, Ted gets much of this wrong: The ERC does indeed move into the right direction, as I wrote.

It looks like Verisign registrar is finally fixing its WHOIS services. See this file for the current state of affairs.

The Transfers Task Force is going to hold an open telephone conference today at 2:30 p.m. EST; details here. If you want to participate in the call, you most likely want to look at the latest proposal (note this remark).

Dotster has sent a letter to ICANN, complaining about the board's decision to permit WLS. The argument goes like this: Section 4.2.4 of the RAA says that "new and revised specifications and policies may be established" concerning "principles for allocation of Registered Names". WLS changes these principles. Thus, the board's decision constitutes new policy which would require appropriately documented consensus. Dotster says that no such consensus exists (certainly true), and that it would like to bring this to the Independent Review Panel. Since no Independent Review Panel exists, Dotster is not obligated to comply with the new policy. Consequently, WLS must be stayed.

It seems like the ERC's approach to setting up the future ccNSO may have caused some irritations among ccTLD managers. See this message from Peter Dengate Thrush to Alejandro Pisanty for details.

You may have noticed that this weblog has changed URLs: Due to slightly absurd side effects of a change in hosting arrangements, this site now resides at log.does-not-exist.INFO. For the time being, the old URL will continue to work and will redirect you to the new one.

A recent exchange of opinions on the GA mailing list sheds a spotlight onto the fact that ICANN's mission is not yet clearly specified, even this deep into the reform process. More precisely, the ERC's output so far doesn't seem to provide the criteria needed to decide whether or not certain implementation details are a good idea in order to implement ICANN's mission.

In a posting to the GA, Stuart Lynn responds to a planned Names Council resolution on ICANN's (or, for that matter, IANA's) demand to get zone file access to ccTLDs' zones before any changes concerning these ccTLDs are made to the root zone. According to the ccTLDs, IANA's current practice is threatening stability. According to Lynn, it's not.

ICANN has posted a status report on the formation of the ccNSO assistance group (which carries a date of September 13 - for whatever reason). The status report characterizes the group (which includes individuals with a large variety of backgrounds) as providing the ERC "with additional qualified and experienced hands and minds to help complete its work". This particular assistance group's job seems to be the "creation, structure and operation of the ccNSO". The obvious reaction is most likely to ask why this entire thing isn't left to the current ccTLD constituency. That reaction does, however, miss the blueprint's design goal for a ccNSO: "The CNSO is not intended to be just an elevated ccTLD constituency, but is rather a policy-development body." The composition of the assistance group is certainly in line with that objective. However, it's not at all clear why even the ccTLDs' "representatives" (not really) to this group were appointed. Alf Hansen (.no) offers some thoughts on this. (BTW, the GA is amazingly useful today.)

Let's add some information to the current debate on zone file checking: There is a variety of free tools available which performs many checks like the ones mentioned in IANA's FAQ on TLD zone file access. Examples include dnswalk, dlint, doc.

Unless IANA is actually using one (or several) of the tools listed above in order to check TLD zone files, it would most likely be a great service to the community if they'd publish the software they are currently using to check zone files - I don't believe they are inspecting TLD zone files manually. Such a tool could be helpful to those who (as opposed to large ccTLDs) still edit zone files manually.

Names Council Chairman Bruce Tonkin has just posted an issue paper on domain name deletions. The topic is also going to be on the agenda for the GA meeting in Shanghai.

Go Daddy offers domain name registrations which replace the registrant's actual WHOIS information by "Domains By Proxy, Inc" int he registrant field and in all the contact fields. From a formal point of view, this looks like an application of section 3.7.7.3 of the RAA: Domains By Proxy is the Registered Domain Name Holder, and and licenses the use of the domain name to the "actual" registrant. By doing so, Domains By Proxy accepts "liability for harm caused by wrongful use of the Registered Name, unless it promptly discloses the identity of the licensee to a party providing the Registered Name Holder reasonable evidence of actionable harm."

Oscar Robles-Garay just forwarded this proposed policy change from the address world to the Names Council's whois Task Force. The suggested policy change: ARIN is going to include point of contact information with their WHOIS bulk data. Access to bulk data is tied to an Acceptable Use Policy: The ARIN WHOIS data is for Internet operational or technical research purposes pertaining to Internet operations only. It may not be used for advertising, direct marketing, marketing research, or similar purposes. Use of the ARIN WHOIS data for these activities is explicitly forbidden.

Says Stratton Sclavos: The digital infrastructure built over the last decade provides the opportunity for untold economic and societal benefits, but it will only reach its true potential if it can be trusted. However, what's even more important than a net which can be trusted (this is a non-trivial notion...) is trustworthy behaviour on the network's edges.

From the DNSO Secretariat: 26 September 2002, The Names Council noted and confirmed the election of Alejandro Pisanty from Latin America/Caribbean region, as the ICANN Board member.

CENTR has released comments on IANA zone-file access. This is a response to the recently-published IANA FAQ on the same topic.

Silicon.com reports that .uk registry Nominet may be facing a lawsuit over proposed changes to its WHOIS service. Links of interest: Nominet's own description of the planned changes; a site campaigning against the proposal (with more links). (Via Internet Democracy Project.)