Dear Council members, 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.ht m) 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 Best regards, Maria Farrell