[registrars] RE: WHOIS database research project

[Bruce Tonkin <Bruce.Tonkin@melbourneit.com.au>]

Hello Rick,

I recently attended a meeting in Washington (15 Aug 2001) hosted by the USA
Dept of Commerce to consider the requirements for Verisign to develop a
"universal" WHOIS registry as required in their ICANN registry licence
agreement for ".com", ".net", and ".org".

The attendees at the meeting included USA gov't reps, FBI, intellectual
property lawyers, registries (Verisign and Neulevel) and registrars
(Melbourne IT).

Here is my personal summary of the meeting:

The main views were:

Verisign
========
- intend to develop a universal WHOIS by end of 2002
- want to incorporate data from all gtld and cctld registries
- want to encourage development of an international information standard
- provide intelligent searching capability


FBI
====
- have been investigating various domain name hijacking cases
- need fast access to WHOIS data to allow law enforcement
- want a universal registry to handle cross-border issues
- want the data to be accurate (much of ".com" data is fraudulent)


ICANN Intellectual property constituency chair (Steven Metalitz)
================================================================
- want robustly searchable range of data elements
- current searches based on domain name inadequate, want to be able to
search on registrant name, address etc
- want accurate registrant and contact details
- want to identify domains held by the same registrant 


General issues include:
- need for cooperation between gtlds and cctlds
- types of searching
- privacy issues
- charges for the service
- concentration of information with one private company

It was clear to me that the IETF may be a more appropriate forum to deal
with the technical issues, and that the DNSO in ICANN may be the more
appropriate forum to discuss the policy issues.  The level of participation
by significant players (e.g registrars, cctld and tld registry operators etc
was close to non-existent).

Regards,
Bruce Tonkin