Please be advised
that ICANN has received an application for evaluation of new registry services
regarding Whois from Telnic, the operator of the .tel registry which is expected
to launch later in 2007.
On 27 April,
2007, ICANN Services staff received an application from Telnic who requested an
alteration to its contract in order to comply with the UK Data Protection Act
(1998), an implementation of the EU Data Protection Directive (95/46/EC). Telnic
has not provided notification of an investigation, litigation, regulatory
proceeding or other compliance action that might affect its compliance with its
agreement with ICANN regarding the collection, display or distribution of
personally identifiable data via Whois. It has carried out informal
consultations with stakeholders and the UK Information Commissioner.
This evaluation
process is completely separate from the Draft
ICANN Procedure for Handling Whois Conflicts with Privacy Law
(http://gnso.icann.org/issues/whois-privacy/whois_national_laws_procedure.htm)
The draft Procedure was developed by the GNSO Council in November 2005
and adopted by the ICANN Board in May 2006. The ICANN staff developed an
implementation draft of the procedure and invited public comments (December 2006
– January 2007) on it. The procedure will be finalised pending any input from
the Government Advisory Committee.
The Telnic
request is at step 2.4, ‘Preliminary Determination’, of the Registry Services
Request process. (Process diagram here: http://www.icann.org/registries/rsep/workflow.html,
process policy here; http://www.icann.org/registries/rsep/rsep.html)
The process has not identified significant security or stability issues or
competition issues that might bar the implementation of the new registry
service.
The next step is
that the service request will be posted for public comments and sent to the
ICANN Board for a decision on implementation.
Registry Services
Evaluation Process: http://www.icann.org/registries/rsep/
Telnic Cover
letter: http://www.icann.org/correspondence/price-to-pritz-25apr07.pdf
Telnic Registry
Request Service: http://www.icann.org/registries/rsep/telnic-whois-proposal-27apr07.pdf