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DNSO Names Council Whois Survey


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The ICANN Domain Names Supporting Organization (DNSO) is conducting a study of the Internet domain-name system's Whois system, which provides information about registrations of domain names. The DNSO invites you to participate by filling out the following survey and clicking the "SUBMIT FORM" button at the bottom.


Whois Survey

Purpose

The purpose of this survey is to:

1. solicit input from as many people as possible concerning the use of Whois service, and

2. assess whether changes should be considered to the current Whois policy adopted by ICANN.

The questions are designed to focus on the purpose, use, and accuracy of the Whois service to establish the appropriate balance between competing interests. The comment period is open NOW until the 14th August 2001.

Background

The Whois service comprises registrants' domain name registration information stored in the databases of either ICANN Accredited Registrars (the source for .com/.net/.org domain names) or at the registry of the appropriate country code or other Generic Top Level domain. The Whois is a publicly searchable resources and are used to determine the identity of domain name registrants and the technical and administrative contacts associated with the domain name or Internet Protocol address block (which identifies the network to which a computer is connected). The Whois search facility is used by various users for multiple purposes, including:

1. to identify the availability of a particular name in which someone is interested
2. to determine if there are similar names already in use,
3. to identify and verify online merchants,
4. to identify online infringers for enforcement of intellectual property rights,
5. to source unsolicited email and sites that may be inappropriate for children, and
6. to identify contacts in the investigation of illegal activity, including consumer fraud, child pornography, etc.

Whois also provides a crucial resource for network administrators who may need to contact other network system operators in resolving network problems or to determine the perpetrators of spam or hacking attacks. In its multiple capacities, the Whois plays a critical role in building user confidence in the operation of the Internet and Internet activities.

The Whois database consists of an individual or a company name, and address, the dates on which the domain was created, when it expires and when it was last updated. It includes the name of the administrative contact and its address and technical contact with address, contact numbers and technical information, such as Name Server details that are used to resolve a name into an IP address. The IP address identifies the associated computer connected to the Internet.

Today, it is estimated that well over 70% of domain names are registered by businesses or organizations. Names are also are registered by individuals who are holding names to resell, or possibly use in the future. It is the disclosure of data about individuals' registrations that has raised privacy issues.

Under the ICANN Accreditation Agreement, a registrar or third party can list its own contact details in lieu of registrants' personal information, provided that it accepts liability for any harm caused by wrongful use, and that it promptly discloses the identity of the true holder upon reasonable evidence of actionable harm. In this way, it remains possible to pursue allegations of illicit or improper activity. The ICANN accreditation agreement also requires registrars to adopt reasonable measures to prevent predatory use of data beyond the stated purposes in the registration agreement. For example, these include measures to prevent mining of a database for domain name holders' contact details for use in unrelated advertising, sales and marketing or for third party resale.

Since the introduction of competition in .com, .net and .org, the formerly centralized Whois lookup has been dispersed into the record systems of approximately 80 ICANN Accredited Registrars.

This survey seeks to establish your views, please answer all questions and use the free text area on the Summary page to inform us of any additional comments you may have.

Please supply your email address, so we may send you a copy of your responses and publish them on the Whois public comments selection, to ensure an open and transparent process.

Questions

Type of respondent

1. Which of the following terms best describes your status as a respondent to this survey?

    (Please provide, where applicable, an indication of the size of your organization, either the number of employees or staff, or the number of members):

  Category

Size
(Employees/Members)

a.  Commercial business user
b.  Non-commercial organization user
c.  Governmental organization user
d.  Individual or household user  
e.  Domain name registrar and/or registry
f.  Internet access provider or network operator
g.  Other:  

2. Have you registered any domain names? yes no

If "yes":

a. How many ccTLD domain names have you registered:  
b. How many gTLD domain names have you registered:  

What was the general purpose of your registration:

a. commercial
b. governmental
c. personal
d. noncommercial organization
e. other

3. How often do you use the Whois service on average?

a.  never
b.  occasionally
c.  weekly
d.  once or twice a day
e.  many times a day

4. Which of the following most accurately describes the use of Whois that is most important to you or your organization:

a.  To determine if a specific domain name is unregistered/available?
b.  To find out the identity of a person or organization who is responsible for a domain name or web site I have encountered while using the Internet
c. To support technical operations of ISPs or network administrators, including tracing sources of spam or denial of service attacks
d. To identify the owner of a domain name for consumer protection or intellectual property protection purposes
e. To gather names and contact information for marketing purposes
f. To support government law enforcement activities (other than intellectual property)
g. Other (please briefly describe):

Use of the Whois

5. What should the purpose of the Whois service be (place in order 1-7 where 1 is the most important):

a. Rank:     to identify the availability of a particular name in which someone is interested
b. Rank:     to determine if there are similar names already in use
c. Rank:     to identify and verify online merchants
d. Rank:     to identify online infringers for enforcement of intellectual property rights
e. Rank:     to source unsolicited email
f. Rank:     to identify contacts in the investigation of illegal activity
g. Rank:     other (specify):

6. Which of the following best describes your attitude towards access to the data contained in the Whois service?

a.   I am most concerned about protecting the privacy of domain name registrants
b.   I am most concerned about effective identification of who is behind a specific domain for consumer protection or intellectual property protection purposes
c.   I am most concerned about ensuring that Whois supports the resolution of technical problems on the Internet
d.   No opinion
e.   Other (specify):

7. Have you ever been harmed or inconvenienced because the Whois data you received was inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date?

a.   Yes, I have experienced inaccurate data.
b.   No, the data has been accurate.

What percentage of the Whois records you relied on proved to be inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date on average:

a.  Less than 5 percent
b.  5 - 25 percent
c.  25 - 50 percent
d.  More than 50 percent

If appropriate, please describe the harm or inconvenience caused by the inaccurate data:

How do you think an improvement can best be achieved?

Data elements stored in the Whois

8. Currently, Whois records in .com, .net, and .org are composed of the following data elements:

A. The name of the second-level domain being registered and the top-level domain it is under;
B. The IP addresses of the primary and secondary name servers for the registered domain;
C. The host names of the name servers;
D. The identity of Registrar;
E. The date of the original registration;
F. The expiration date of the registration;
G. The name and postal address of the registrant;
H. The name, postal address, e-mail address, voice telephone number, and (where available) fax number of the technical contact for the SLD; and
I. The name, postal address, e-mail address, voice telephone number, and (where available) fax number of the administrative contact for the SLD.

Would you describe these data elements as

a. Adequate for your purposes
b. Inadequate for your purposes
c. Unnecessary for your purposes

8.1 If you answered "Inadequate," What other data elements would you like to see included to promote public confidence in Internet activities?

8.2. If you answered "Unnecessary," What other data elements would you like to see suppressed from public disclosure?

9. Please indicate which of the data elements listed in A-I above are, in your view, of valueless, essential, or desirable:

A. The name of the second-level domain being registered and the top-level domain it is under;

  essential
  desirable
  valueless

B. The IP addresses of the primary and secondary name servers for the registered domain;

  essential
  desirable
  valueless

C. The domain names of the name servers;

  essential
  desirable
  valueless

D. The identity of Registrar;

  essential
  desirable
  valueless

E. The date of the original registration;

  essential
  desirable
  valueless

F. The expiration date of the registration;

  essential
  desirable
  valueless

G. The name and postal address of the registrant;

  essential
  desirable
  valueless

H. The name, postal address, e-mail address, voice telephone number, and (where available) fax number of the technical contact for the SLD; and

  essential
  desirable
  valueless

I. The name, postal address, e-mail address, voice telephone number, and (where available) fax number of the administrative contact for the SLD.

  essential
  desirable
  valueless

Searchability

10. Should the publicly accessible Whois database allow for searches on data elements other than domain name?

  Yes
  No

If "Yes", please specify from fields A-I above that you think should be usable as search keys.

  A   |   B   |   C   |   D   |   E   |   F   |   G   |   H   |   I

Should other enhancements to searchability (e.g., Boolean searching on character strings) be provided?

  Yes
  No

If "Yes", how should the cost associated with such enhancements be paid for?

11. Do you use Whois in cctlds?

  Yes
  No

12. Do you think that the data elements used in .com, .net, and .org should be available uniformly in country code top-level domains?

  Yes
  No

Why or why not?

Uniform data format to Whois

13. Do you support the concept of uniformity of Whois data format and services?

  Yes
  No

What, in your view, is the best way to achieve uniformity both in format and search capability across Whois services?

Centralized portal access to Whois

14. Do you support the concept of centralized public access to Whois - e.g., a "one-stop" point of Whois to access information:

  Yes
  No

(a) Across .com/.net/.org?

  Yes
  No

(b) Across all gTLDs (i.e. including the new TLDs.)?

  Yes
  No

(c) Across all TLDs? (i.e. including country code TLDs)?

  Yes
  No

If appropriate, what, in your view, is the best way to achieve the level of centralized public access that you support?

15. Who should bear the cost burden of implementing centralized public access?

 
a. Those who use the service should pay for it
b. It should be paid for by ICANN
c. Registrars should support it as a public service
d. Should be part of the domain registration fee as it is today.
e. Other

Sale and marketing of customer data

16. Should registrars be allowed to engage in resale or marketing uses of the registration contact information?

Yes
Yes, but only with the express permission of the registrant (opt-in)
Yes, but only after the registrant has had the opportunity to opt-out
No

Bulk access/mandatory sale of customer data/manipulation and adding value to customer data

The current provisions with regard to the mandatory sale of Whois data, and uses that can be made of the data obtained through bulk access, are contained in the Registrar Accreditation Agreement at sections 3.3.6 and following, Third Party Bulk Access to Data.

These provide for the mandatory sale of customer data on certain specified conditions. These conditions are discussed in terms of a contract between the registrar and a third party seeking access to the data. The data may not be used for mass unsolicited emailing, but can by inference be used for mass mailing (3.3.6.3), "other than such third party's own existing customers". In addition, the "Registrar's access agreement shall require the third party to agree not to use the data to enable high-volume automated electronic processes that send queries or data to the systems of any Registry Operator or ICANN accredited registrar, except as reasonably necessary to register domain names or modify existing registrations". (3.3.6.4)

The agreement says that the registrar "... may enable Registered Name Holders who are individuals to elect not to have Personal Data concerning their registrations available for bulk access for marketing purposes based on Registrar's 'Opt-Out' policy, and if Registrar has such a policy Registrar shall require the third party to abide by the terms of that Opt-Out policy; provided, however, that Registrar may not use such data subject to opt-out for marketing purposes in its own value-added product or service." (3.3.6.6)

The text allows the Registrar discretion

  • to prohibit, or
  • to permit under conditions he chooses,

the use of the registrants' data

  • to condition the subsequent use of the data (3.3.6.5), and
  • to have a privacy policy, or not, (3.3.6.6)

but unless the registrar takes positive steps to have a privacy policy different from the Registration Agreement, the registrant's personal data is available as the Agreement prescribes. "Personal data" refers exclusively to data about natural persons.

17. Do you think that:

a. These provisions should be maintained in the gTLD environment?

  Yes
  No

b. These provisions should be extended to apply to other TLDs (subject to any comments in 12)?

  Yes
  No

c. As a user would you welcome information from your chosen service provider introducing you to the additional services they may be able to provide?

  Yes
  No

d. These provisions should be changed?

  Yes
  No

If so, how?

Question for registrars, ISPs, and hosting companies

18. Where non-disclosure of the name and address is requested by the Domain Registrant, the ICANN Accreditation Agreement allows for a name and address of a third party to be used where the third party has an agreement with the Registrant, does your company offer this service to its customers?

  Yes
  No

Question for the public

19. To protect your privacy if you were offered the opportunity to use the name and address of a third party to act as your agent, would you register domains in the name of the third party rather than your own name.

  Yes
  No

Other Comments:

Please consider the following:

20a. What, in your view, is the most important personal privacy interest applicable to the Whois database?

20b. What, in your view, is the most important consumer protection interest applicable to the Whois database?

20c. What, in your view, is the most important law enforcement interest applicable to the Whois database?

20d. What, in your view, is the most important interest with respect to protection of minors applicable to the Whois database?

20e. What, in your view, is the most important network operational interest applicable to the Whois database?

20f. What, in your view, is the most important competitive or economic interest applicable to the Whois database?

20g. What, in your view, is the most important interest with respect to intellectual property rights that is applicable?

20h. What other interests, besides those listed above, should be considered with regard to the Whois database?

Free text area for any other comments:

21a. Your e-mail address so we may send you a copy of your responses:

21b. Your name and organization:



Your comments will be published for public review, not associated with your identity in item 21. Your e-mail address (item 21a) will be used to send a copy of your responses back to you, but will not be provided to third parties without your permission. Your name and organization (item 21b) may be published as part of a list of responding parties.

 

 


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