Dear all In preparation for the San Francisco meeting, and as agreed in our last call, we have been trying to arrange slots with the SO/ACs during the ICANN meeting. In preparation for this, I had a conversation this morning with Patrik Faltstrom, the Chair of ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) this morning. These are the key points that he would like us to be aware of in preparation for our meeting with SSAC in San Francisco, and (I think) an interesting take on why the underlying protocol is relevant to our discussions. Patrik has reviewed this note, and is happy for me to share it with you. Key messages: - It is important that the RT, in its deliberations, draws a distinction between discussions over WHOIS service and the underlying protocol. This distinction is summarised in the staff paper to the Cartagena meeting Technical Evolution of the Whois Service, which also reviews potential successor protocols, IRIS and RWS. - SSAC's focus has been to try to separate the discussion of the protocol from the discussion of the service and the various policies that are attached to each one of the two. So far SSAC has the view that there has been slow progress as still too much of the discussion in ICANN mix the two. The IETF has reviewed the existing whois protocol and developed (at least) one successor, IRIS, as described in the staff report. - For the RT's purposes, the relevance of the protocol is its impact on policy and its implementation. A useful focus from SSAC's perspective would be to enhance understanding about why better protocols have not enjoyed widespread adoption, and what role ICANN might play in supporting migration. SSAC's key documents, included in the background materials are: SAC 023 -- Is the WHOIS Service a Source for email Addresses for Spammers? (23 October 2007) SAC 027 -- SSAC Comment to GNSO regarding WHOIS studies (7 February 2008) SAC 033 -- Domain Name Registration Information and Directory Services (20 June 2008) SAC 037 -- Display and usage of Internationalized Registration Data: Support for characters from local languages or scripts (21 April 2009) SAC 038 – Registrar Abuse Point of Contact (25 February 2009) Best wishes, Emily 76 Temple Road, Oxford OX4 2EZ UK telephone: 01865 582 811 mobile: 07540 049 322 emily.taylor@etlaw.co.uk www.etlaw.co.uk