Hi Lutz and All, At long last, I want to circle back to the Data Access Recommendation and ask questions that have been banging around in my head for awhile. I wanted to wait awhile until after our marathon editing sessions and the holidays. But first, a huge congratulations to Susan for the Facebook initial public offering. I am so hoping you are one of the hundreds of new millionaires I am hearing about on the news! (No need to tell us... that's private data :-) ) Here are my questions to Lutz and all advocating the Data Access recommendation (in its two versions) now in our report and listed below. As I understand it, we are recommending a "dedicated, multilingual website" to provide thick Whois data (for thin gTLD registries, in one variation, and all gTLD registries in the other): 1. What is the underlying data structure of this website? Is all the information going to be gathered into and run out of a California database run and owned by ICANN? 2. Alternatively, might it be a website run by ICANN offering links to the registries and registrars who hold the full Whois data? 3. Do you think this would become the place in which all people search for all gTLD whois data? If so, could there be a scalability problem if all people (law enforcement, domain name purchasers, etc) go to one website for all Whois searches? Is there some liability to ICANN should such a site go down? 4. Are we advocating a particular policy/technical solution or is the implementation open to discussion in the GNSO and other policy groups within ICANN? Report section below. Thanks so much for any and everyone's answers to the questions above -- addressed to Lutz as the founder of this recommendation. All the best, Kathy p.s. Data Access recommendation: "Data Access – Common Interface 17. To improve access to the Whois data of .COM and .NET gTLDs, the only remaining Thin Registries, ICANN should set up a dedicated, multilingual interface website to provide thick WHOIS data for them. ALTERNATIVE for public comment: To make WHOIS data more accessible for consumers, ICANN should set up a dedicated, multilingual interface website to allow "unrestricted and public access to accurate and complete WHOIS information". Such interface should provide thick WHOIS data for all gTLD domain names." --