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GAC Advice

The GAC provides advice to the ICANN Board on policy matters where there may be an interaction between ICANN’s policies and various laws, international agreements and public policy objectives. GAC Advice is communicated to the ICANN Board through either a Communique or a formal piece of Correspondence.

2008-04-16-WHOIS-6

GAC Advice

Reference No. :

2008-04-16-WHOIS-6

First Delivered via :

N/A

Consenus:

Consensus met

2008-04-16-WHOIS-6

Date/Source Document

16 April 2008

GAC Recommendations for WHOIS Studies

Communication

In view of the recent adoption by ICANN of a procedure for handling conflicts with national privacy laws, the GAC also urges ICANN to address the following questions in the WHOIS study:

12. Since gTLD registries and registrars conduct business globally, which laws in which jurisdiction appropriately apply to their transactions and in particular to their WHOIS contractual obligations?

13. What are the legal jurisdictional issues raised by gTLD registries and registrars that adhere to local law applicable to domain name registrations and WHOIS requirements, but may then be in contravention to other legal jurisdictions where they conduct business?

14. May a gTLD domain name registrant who is a legal resident of one country apply for a domain name in another and claim to be under the legal jurisdiction of the latter and not the former?

15. How can conflicts of laws be resolved in a global domain name space?

Date/Source Document

16 April 2008

GAC Recommendations for WHOIS Studies

Communication

The GAC recommends that a further study be directed toward answering the following questions:

  1. To what extent are the legitimate uses of gTLD WHOIS data curtailed or prevented by use of proxy or privacy registration services?
  2. What is the economic impact of restrictions on some or all of the legitimate uses of WHOIS?
  3. Are technical measures available that could effectively curtail misuse of data published on WHOIS databases while preserving legitimate use and open access to the databases?

  4. Are there methods employed by registrars to detect fraudulent domain name registrations? If so, how successful are they and what do they do with that information?

  5. What is the percentage of domain name registrants who are natural persons versus legal persons (or entities)?

  6. What is the percentage of domain name registrations that are registered for and/or are used for commercial purposes versus those registered for non-commercial or personal use? If possible, the data should be broken down by geographic (e.g. by continent) locations.

  7. What is the historical trend and current percentage of the registrars’ and their affiliates’ proxy and privacy registrations in relation to the total number of domain name registrations in gTLDs?

  8. What is the percentage of registrars and all affiliates that offer proxy or privacy registrations?

  9. What are the relative percentages of legal persons and natural persons that are gTLD registrants that also utilize proxy or privacy services?

  10. What are the relative percentages of domain names used for commercial versus non-commercial purposes that are registered using proxy or privacy services?

  11. What is the percentage of domain names registered using proxy or privacy services that have been associated with fraud or other illegal activity versus the percentage of domain names not using such services that have been associated with fraud or illegal activity?