Dear Council Members, As recently noted, the Whois service requirements report from July of 2010 has been tentatively added to the GNSO public meeting agenda. I have prepared the following note to provide some background for the discussion. The service requirements report is the result of a Council resolution in May 2009. It requested staff to compile a comprehensive set of requirements for WHOIS that includes: 1) known deficiencies in the current service and, 2) any possible requirements that may be needed to support various policy initiatives that have been suggested in the past. In compiling this report, staff has attempted to distil from current requirements and policy discussions the technical requirements that would be necessary to implement to correct deficiencies and implement various policy proposals. The report is a technical inventory and does not intend to define or suggest the policies or operational rules that should apply. As requested by the GNSO in its resolution of May, 2009, staff shared the initial draft with the GNSO Council and with the other SOs (ccNSO, ASO) and ACs (SSAC, ALAC and GAC) for their input. The Final Report is available at: http://gnso.icann.org/issues/whois/whois-service-requirements-final-report-2... Staff have conducted outreach webinars and workshops of this report, and the presentations can be found here: http://brussels38.icann.org/meetings/brussels2010/presentation-draft-final-i.... I am happy to answer questions on the list or in San Francisco. warm regards, -- Steve Sheng Senior Technical Analyst ICANN Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers P: +1 (310) 578 8607 C: +1 (310) 463 8430 www.icann.org