Attached are draft BC comments and questions on the Status Update from the expert working group on gTLD Directory Services.

The EWG status update is here, and described on this page. Comments close 28-Feb, so today begins a 12-day member review period.

Thanks to BC members Jimson Olufuye, Tim Chen, and Susan Kawaguchi for this drafting work.

Jimson is the CEO of Kontemporary, a systems Integration and ICT Consultancy firm. Though less than 10% of the company revenue is from domain businesses, he has interacted extensively with gTLD and ccTLD WHOIS registry systems.

BC members are familiar with Susan’s many years of work to improve WHOIS, first with eBay and now with Facebook. Susan was appointed to the WHOIS review team two years ago and is now a member of the EWG on Directory Services.

Tim is CEO of DomainTools, whose products partly rely on whois data to help users understand who operates a given website or IP address, and to also make connections between domain names. DomainTools' clients include law enforcement, trademark attorneys, cybercrime investigators, brand protection agents, and a wide variety of professionals in the DNS industry.

All BC members are invited to REPLY ALL with edits (using TRACK CHANGES, please).

Note that the second half of this draft shows a dialog between Tim and Jimson regarding certain aspects of Directory Services. Based on member feedback, we will refine that section into additional points or questions for the EWG.

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Steve DelBianco

Vice chair for policy coordination