All,

Please note that ICANN today released an RFP to solicit costs and feasibility from independent researchers to conduct a WHOIS-related Privacy and Proxy Abuse Study which would methodically analyze a representative sample of gTLD domains associated with a variety of illegal/harmful Internet activities. By measuring how often these alleged and confirmed “bad actors” use Privacy/Proxy registrations, compared to the overall frequency of Privacy/Proxy registrations, this study would attempt to prove or disprove the following hypothesis:

A significant percentage of the domain names used to conduct illegal or harmful Internet activities are registered via Privacy or Proxy services to obscure the perpetrator’s identity.

Please see the following link for details:  http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-2-18may10-en.htm

Responses are due by 20 July 2010, and I will be analyzing them and providing a report to the Council shortly thereafter.  Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Best regards, Liz