The group of people formerly known as WHOIS Task Forces 1 & 2 met today for its first two-hour conference call after Council's decision to formally merge the groups. The group received a briefing on what happened in KL, spent too much time on debating whether the two Task Force chairs should continue as co-chairs (they will do so), and finally addressed "prioritizing."
That discussion didn't bring much new: Data users (who consistently speak of their "needs" when they mean their "desires") would prefer to study the feasibility of a tiered access approach before actually designing its requirements. Those who are in favor of a tiered access model would rather develop requirements for that model first, and have competent implementers study feasibility then.
There was agreement that conspicuous notice to registrants was low-hanging fruit (as in, has touched the ground); data users would prefer to invite legal experts to discuss this. This approach interestingly deviates from the approach taken on conflicts between applicable law and ICANN contracts, where data users consistently maintain that ICANN Task Forces are not suitable for analyzing the subtleties of national privacy laws around the globe.
These three areas (tiered access, possibly with sub-items, conspicuous notice, and conflicts between applicable law and ICANN contracts) are the priorities identified by the group. One of the challenges now consists in not starting from scratch on each of these recommendations, but making good use of the work done in the past six months.
Health advisory: Holding your breath is not recommended.
