Thank you to Steve, Susan, Jimson and Tim for their work on this public comment. Attached are Google's proposed comments to the draft. We welcome any feedback or discussion on the points raised. Best regards, Andy On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 6:27 AM, Jimson Olufuye <jolufuye@kontemporary.net>wrote:

Thanks for the feedback Stephane.

Item 6 of the draft BC comment covers your concern with regard to compliance with local privacy law. Would you want to strengthen the statement in view of the gaps with the RAA?

I also share your view on the need for some congruence in policy for gTLD and ccTLD but I guess that might be an addendum to our BC comment on the EWG status report. What do you think?

Cheers,

Regards,

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-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [bc-gnso] FOR REVIEW: BC comment on Status Update from expert working group on gTLD Directory Services From: Stephane Van Gelder Consulting <svg@stephanevangelder.com> Date: Tue, February 18, 2014 12:34 pm To: Steve DelBianco <sdelbianco@netchoice.org> Cc: bc - GNSO list <bc-gnso@icann.org>

Thanks to Steve and the drafters for all this work.

I am speaking from memory on the EWG's report, as I have not had time ro re-read it, so apologies if these have already been raised. However, I do think there are some points the BC should consider:

Any contractual obligation placed on any part of the domain name supply chain (be it registries, registrars or registrants) MUST NOT contravene local law. This is especially true for data privacy issues, which are a major point of focus in Europe for example. The recent debates over the latest RAA (as a reminder, some European registrars are finding themselves unable to sign the RAA, and therefore unable to sell new gTLDs which pust them at a competitive disadvantage, because it goes against their local privacy laws: http://blog.blacknight.com/blow-fuse.html) show that any WHOIS work must also take these obligations into account. I am worried that the EWG does not seem to have taken more than a passing glance at ccTLD WHOIS obligations such as those placed on the French registry by the French national data privacy agency (CNIL). Looking at this more closely would highlight the need for opt-out clauses for those who'se national laws would prevent them enacting any EWG recommendations as-is.

In short, I think our message here to ICANN should also be: learn from the current RAA mistakes!

Another point I have made before is that I believe as representatives of businesses worldwide, we should continually nudge for this work to encompass ccTLD WHOIS as well. We have all heard before the many reasons why the EWG should not be doing so, but as businesses, do we really think it's OK to have such extensive work be done on gTLD WHOIS only? The level of confusion this risks generating for businesses that are not domain savvy, and may not understand that there are different rules for, say, .COM and .DE, should not be underestimated.

Thanks,

Stéphane Van Gelder Chairman and Managing Director/Fondateur SVGC.net

T (FR): +33 (0)6 20 40 55 89 T (UK): +44 (0)7583 457053 Skype: SVANGELDER www.StephaneVanGelder.com www.svgc.net ---------------- Follow us on Twitter: @stephvg and "like" us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/DomainConsultant LinkedIn: fr.linkedin.com/in/domainconsultant/

On 18 February 2014 04:22, Steve DelBianco <sdelbianco@netchoice.org>wrote:

...

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<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://www.icann.org/en/groups/ot...>, and described on this page<http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-11nov13-en.htm>. 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.

— Steve DelBianco Vice chair for policy coordination

-- Andy Abrams | Senior Trademark Counsel *Google* | 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 (650) 669-8752 <https://www.google.com/voice#phones>