I accept this friendly amendment.
Cheers,
Berard
Motion made by John Berard & seconded by Debbie Hughes (With Friendly Amendment Proposed by the RySG)
Whereas:
In October 2007, the GNSO Council concluded that a comprehensive and objective understanding of key factual issues regarding the gTLD WHOIS system would benefit future GNSO policy development efforts (
http://gnso.icann.org/resolutions/).
On 5-Nov-2008, the Council convened a group of Councilors and constituency members to draft a resolution regarding studies, if any, for which cost estimates should be obtained. The Whois Study Drafting Team further consolidated studies including those from the GAC (
http://www.icann.org/correspondence/karlins-to-thrush-16apr08.pdf). The Team determined that the six studies with the highest average priority scores should be the subject of further research to determine feasibility and obtain cost estimates.
On 04-Mar-2009, Council requested Staff to conduct research on feasibility and cost estimates for selected Whois studies and report its findings to Council. (See Motion 3,
http://gnso.icann.org/resolutions/#200903).
On 23-Mar-2010, Staff presented a report on the feasibility and cost estimates for the Whois “Misuse” and Whois “Registrant Identification” Studies, finding that each study would cost approximately $150,000 and take approximately one year to complete. (
http://gnso.icann.org/issues/whois/whois-studies-report-for-gnso-23mar10-en.pdf). The Whois Registrant Identification study would gather info about how business/commercial domain registrants are identified, and correlate such identification with the use of proxy/privacy services.
On 8-September-2010 the GNSO Council approved a resolution requesting staff to proceed with the Whois “Misuse” Study, which would explore the extent to which publicly displayed WHOIS data is misused,
http://gnso.icann.org/resolutions/#201009.
On 5-October-2010, staff provided feasibility and cost analysis for a Whois Privacy and Proxy “Abuse” study,
http://gnso.icann.org/issues/whois/gnso-whois-pp-abuse-studies-report-05oct10-en.pdf. This study would compare broad sample of domains registered with a proxy or privacy service provider that are associated with alleged harmful acts with overall frequency of proxy and privacy registrations. This study was estimated to cost $150,000 and take less than a year to complete.
On 11-February-2011, staff provided a feasibility and cost analysis for a Whois Proxy and Privacy “Relay and Reveal” study,
http://gnso.icann.org/issues/whois/whois-pp-relay-reveal-studies-report-11feb11-en.pdf, which would analyze relay and reveal requests sent for Privacy and Proxy-registered domains to explore and document how they are processed. The staff analysis concluded that it was premature to conduct a full study, and recommended that a pre-study “survey” be conducted first, to determine if launching a full study is feasible to do.
Resolved:
Council defers consideration of the WHOIS Registrant Identification Study until the 28 April 2011 meeting and requests that any applicable motions in that regard be submitted not later than 20 April 2011.
Further resolved, that the Council request that the Board authorize additional funding for FY 2012 for Whois studies, to make up the any shortfall of $130,000 between the amount of “at least $400,000” that was allocated for Whois studies in FY 2011 (and remains unspent), and the total amount needed to conduct the Whois Misuse Study ($150,000); the Whois Registrant Identification Study ($150,000) if subsequently approved; the Proxy/Privacy “Abuse” Study ($150,000); and the Proxy and Privacy “Pre-study” ($80,000), total of $530,000.
Further resolved, in recognition that there is a substantial amount of coordination needed to direct this research, that staff be given the discretion to manage the studies serially or in parallel, with a goal of expediting completion of the studies as efficiently as possible.