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The Whois workshop is intended to build upon the workshop held at ICANN's meeting in Montreal and the discussion that has occurred within the ICANN community on Whois and related privacy and other issues. As noted by Paul Twomey, this workshop will focus on identifying the priority WHOIS issues to be addressed by ICANN and discussing applicable best practices."

The workshop will take place on Wednesday morning of the ICANN meeting from 08:30 to 12:30. Webcasting and scribing will be provided. A web archive of presentation materials will be available in advance of the workshop.

The workshop will consist of five sessions, of which four will focus on current issues and investigations (including the issues outlined in Twomey's memo), and the fifth will consider next steps and ongoing work. The sessions will include presentations, followed by comments/reports from a panel, and then a public comment and question/answer period. Additional details and materials will be available on this page in the near future.

Whois Workshop Agenda (updated 14 October 2003)
Moderated/Chaired by Mike Roberts

08:30 - Opening Remarks

08:35 - Internationalization Issues

The introduction of non-ASCII strings into DNS registrations at the second level raises several new issues for searches and presentation of 'whois' data. For example, will search still be possible if one doesn't know the language of registration? If a user of the data speaks one language, and the registration occurs in a different one, will the user be able to understand and interpret the data that come back? These, and other, issues need to be addressed as part of an additional look at most of the other "whois" questions, since ASCII characters in the name and ASCII (historically English) in the data may no longer be obvious assumptions.

1. Presentation: Overview by John Klensin, IETF Liaison to ICANN Board Presentation (PPT)

2. Comments/Reports from Panel

• Professor Hualin Qian, ICANN Director
• Ram Mohan, Afilias Presentation (PPT)
• Charles Shaban, Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization (TAGO) Presentation (PPT)
• Dr. Wen-Sung Chen, (TWNIC) Presentation (PPT)

3. Public Discussion

09:30 - WHOIS Data Element Review

What registrant data elements currently are captured and displayed as part of the domain name registration process? Which elements do major user groups consider essential? What additional information/fact finding is needed to help registrars/registries meet these needs with the greatest accuracy, least cost, and in compliance with applicable privacy, security, and stability considerations?

1. Presentation: Overview by Bruce Tonkin, Melbourne IT Presentation (PPT)

2. Comments/Reports from Panel

• Marilyn Cade, Business Constituency Presentation (PPT)
• Thomas Roessler, At-Large Advisory Committee
• Jane Mutimear, Intellectual Property Constituency Presentation (PPT)
• David Maher, Registry Constituency
• Brian Cute, NSI & Tom Keller, Schlund + Partner AG, Registrar Constituency Presentation (PPT)
• Kathryn Kleiman, Non-Commercial Users Constituency Presentation (PPT)

3. Public Discussion

10:45 - Break

11:00 - Registrant/User Classification & Current Practices

What is the feasibility of distinguishing different classes of domain name holders and/or different classes of users of Whois data such that the Whois information collected and displayed could reflect differing types of use and potentially different privacy and accuracy considerations? What are some of the ways gTLD and ccTLD registrars address accuracy and privacy issues, including data collection and verification measures, complaint procedures and investigatory methods for false information, and third party registration practices?

1. Comments/Reports from Panel

• Chris Disspain, .auDA (registrant classification)
• Hakon Haugnes, GNR (user classification) Presentation (PDF)
• Elana Broitman, Register.com (registrar practices)
• Bruce Beckwith, PIR (registry practices) Presentation (PPT)
• Keith Davidson, .nz (ccTLD registrar/registry practices) Presentation (PPT)

2. Public Discussion.

11:45 - Next Steps/Ongoing Work

1. Presentation: Briefing/Status Report on the GNSO Whois Steering Committee and constituency activities -- Bruce Tonkin, Acting Chair, GNSO WHOIS Steering Committee Presentation (PPT)

2. Public Discussion

12:20 - Closing Remarks - Paul Twomey, ICANN President and CEO

Speaker Biographies

Mike Roberts

Michael M. Roberts was the first President and CEO of ICANN, serving from October 1998 until March 2001. He is a policy consultant in the field of Internet technology, services and product development, with a specialization in research and education. Prior to taking on the start-up of ICANN, he was Vice President at EDUCOM, a consortium of 600 universities and colleges with interests in information technology, where he was responsible for networking and telecommunications programs, including the development of public policy positions in information technology on behalf of EDUCOM members. He was for a number of years staff director of the EDUCOM Networking and Telecommunications Task Force, a group of sixty universities and corporations with common networking interests. He was an organizer and the first director of Internet2, a project of more than one hundred American universities to plan, integrate and deploy an advanced broadband network and applications for research and education. He was also one of the founders and the first Executive Director of the Internet Society, whose purpose is to promote the use of the Internet and guide its further development as a foremost means of national and international communication.

John Klensin

Dr. John C. Klensin is an independent consultant following a distinguished career as the Internet Architecture Vice President at AT&T, Distinguished Engineering Fellow at MCI WorldCom, and Principal Research Scientist at MIT. Prior to joining MCI in mid-1994, he was INFOODS Project Coordinator for the United Nations University and, before that, was at MIT for nearly 30 years, holding Principal Research Scientist appointments in several departments including Architecture, the Center for International Studies, and the Laboratory of Architecture and Planning. He served on the Internet Architecture Board from 1996-2002 and was its Chair from 2000 until the end of his term. He has served as IETF Area Director for Applications and was Chair, Co-chair, and/or Editor for IETF Working Groups focused on messaging and IETF process issues. Dr. Klensin now serves as IETF Liaison to the ICANN Board.

Ram Mohan

Ram Mohan is Vice President, Business Operations & Chief Technical Officer of Afilias Limited. At Afilias, Ram is charged with managing all of Afilias' technical operations which support the generic top-level domains (gTLDs) .INFO and .ORG, in addition to a number of country code domains.With Ram's guidance, Afilias was the first to implement an XML-based "thick" registry running on the new Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP), and was the first to complete the largest transition of a domain registry when it successfully transitioned .ORG from VeriSign Global Registry Services on behalf of the .ORG registry operator, the Public Interest Registry. Before joining Afilias in September 2001, Ram was at Infonautics Corp., a pioneering online database and content distribution company. He has held various leadership positions at Infonautics, including Interim COO, CTO and VP, Product Marketing. Ram is the founder of the award-winning CompanySleuth product, and created the Sleuth line of business at Infonautics. He helped architect Electric Library, the United States' most used online reference database in schools and libraries, and Encyclopedia.com, the first free encyclopedia on the Internet. Prior to joining Infonautics, Ram worked with First Data Corporation, Unisys Corporation and KPMG Peat Marwick in a variety of leadership, engineering and technology positions.

Charles Shaban

Charles Shaban is the Executive Director of the Regional office of Abu-Ghazaleh Intellectual Property (AGIP), member of Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization (TAGO). He is the chair of the Digital Office Committee (DOC) of the group. Chairman Talal Abu-Ghazaleh formed DOC with the specific mission to fully digitize the operations of the different TAGO companies. Further, Mr. Shaban is the Director of the PDI (Professional Development committee for IP), whose mission is to define the policies and work processes of the company. Mr. Shaban's international professional memberships, besides his involvement in ICANN (IPC and BC, recently chaired a WG in the IPC regarding IDN and IP issues) are: Board Member of the Multilingual Internet Names Consortium (MINC); Advisory Committee member of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C); Board member of the Jordanian Committee for the Intellectual; Property in E-Business, International Chamber of Commerce / Jordan (ICC / Jordan); Member in the International Trademark Association (INTA), appointed recently for the Registration Practice & DNS administration sub-committee for the years 2004-2005; Member in the Internet Society (ISOC); Member in the Arab Knowledge Management Society (AKMS); Member in the Arab Society for Intellectual Property (ASIP); Founding member and ex-board member of the Arab Internet Names Consortium (AINC).

Dr. Wen-Sung Chen

Current major positions:

(1) Executive Director and Board Member of TWNIC.
(2) Associate Professor, Department of Information Management, NKFUST
(3) Board member of APTLD (Asia Pacific Top Level Domain Forum)
(4) ICANN IDN committee member

Other details, please see: <http://www.twnic.net.tw/english/about/about_03_b.htm>

Bruce Tonkin

Bruce Tonkin is Chief Technology Officer of Melbourne IT, which is a global domain name registrar with offices in Australia, USA, and Spain. He oversees Melbourne IT's technical infrastructure and strategy, as well as evaluates new technologies for commercialization. Bruce has a background in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, and has worked in a range of roles relating to advanced computing and communications, both in Australia and USA at AT&T Bell Laboratories. Bruce has participated in industry self regulation initiatives including the regulation of the .au domain name space, and also represented business user interests in the regulation of the Australian telecommunications Industry. Bruce is currently Chair of GNSO Council, and also Acting Chair of the GNSO WHOIS Steering Committee.

Marilyn Cade

Marilyn Cade is the director of Internet Policy and Advocacy for AT&T; a global IP networking and communications company. In this role, she is responsible for advising and developing AT&T's policy for its own use of WHOIS for network resolution; dealing with spam; trademark; fraud investigations and marketing purposes; including new name registration; as well as the policies for services that support over the corporation's global customers. She is one of the elected reps of the Commercial and Business Constituency to the gNSO Council; and serves on the WHOIS Steering Group of Council. She co-chaired the first gNSO Council Whois Task Force. Marilyn's portfolio for AT&T includes global issues more broadly; and as such; she represents AT&T at many international fora; including the ITU; OECD; WIPO; ICC; as well as several trade associations with a global focus on policy issues that affect the Internet.

Thomas Roessler

Thomas Roessler is working as a mathematician at the University of Bonn (Germany). He has been involved with Internet policy issues since 1997, and has been active in the WHOIS debate since 2001 when he participated in the DNSO's WHOIS Task Force. Thomas is now an interim member of the At-Large Advisory Committee,and serves as the ALAC's liaison to the GNSO Council and its Whois Steering Committee.

Jane Mutimear

Jane Mutimear is a partner in the London office of international law firm Bird & Bird. She has practised intellectual property law for over 12 years. Her practice is focussed particularly on litigation, including patents, trade marks, copyright and designs. Her client base stretches from large multinationals to small e-commerce start-ups and in recent years has found more of her workload being devoted to internet related issues, in particular advising clients on the protection of intellectual property protection on line. Jane has lectured and written on a wide range of intellectual property issues, including many internet related topics. She is currently President of the Intellectual Property Constituency of ICANN which represents the interests of intellectual property owners within the ICANN system.

David Maher

David W. Maher is a registered patent attorney and a partner in the Chicago office of the law firm, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal. He has extensive experience in intellectual property and entertainment law. Mr.Maher served for over 20 years as General Counsel to the Better Business Bureau of Chicago and Northern Illinois, Inc. and was the recipient of the Bureau's Torch of Integrity Award in 1999. He is Chairman of the Board of Public Interest Registry, a nonprofit corporation responsible for management of the registry of the .org top level domain. From 1999 until 2002, he served as Vice President - Public Policy of the Internet Society. He was also active in the formation of the new corporation, ICANN, which has global responsibility for administration of domain name and technical policies of the Internet.

Brian Cute

Brian Cute is the Director of Policy for Network Solutions. He joined Network Solutions in February 2003. Prior to joining Network Solutions, he served as Senior Counsel for Regulatory Affairs at Teleglobe Communications Corp., a Canadian international telecommunications and IP backbone provider.

Tom Keller

Thomas Keller is working for the Schlund + Partner AG, a large web hosting company and one of the biggest ICANN Registrars in Europe, with principal office in Germany. He has been involved into the process of building the registrar from the very beginning. For the last two years he represented the Schlund + Partner AG inside the Registrar Constituency. He is a member of the Technical Advisory Committee of DENIC as well as the European representative of the Registrar Constituency in the GNSO Council. hlund as a European registrar is directly affected by the conflict of European data protection laws and ICANNs contractual obligations for registrars in regard of whois.

Kathryn Kleiman

Kathryn Kleiman is a founding member of ICANN's Noncommercial Users Constituency, and was twice elected by its members to the Names Council. In this capacity, she served as a co-chair of Working Group B and a final editor of ICANN's Uniform Dispute Resolution Procedure. Kleiman served for six years as Director of the Association for Computing Machinery's Internet Governance Project, and also as co-founder and general counsel of the Domain Name Rights Coalition. She is the Internet law and policy specialist for McLeod, Watkinson & Miller in Washington DC focusing on the fair use and free speech aspects of the domain name system. Kleiman also practices telecommunications law, and prior to law school she managed private worldwide data networks and audited data security on Wall Street.

Chris Disspain

Chris, was for 18 years a corporate lawyer in the U.K. and Australia, and has experience in all aspects of corporate law including public and private companies, international trading and negotiation, take over mergers and acquisitions compliance and capital raising.

For over ten years he has held executive management positions and directorships in private and public companies in the U.K. and Australia. These companies have included those involved in mining, e-commerce and the Internet. He was appointed CEO of auDA in October 2000. auDA is the self regulatory body governing the .au domain space. On 1st July 2002 auDA introduced new domain name policy, whois rules and competition in the supply of domain names in Australia. He is a Director of the Asia Pacific Top Level Domain organisation, and Spokesman for the ccNSO Launching Group.

Elana Broitman

Elana Broitman is the Director of Policy and Business Development at Register.com, one of the initial registrars to be accredited by ICANN when the registrar sector was opened to competition. Elana is responsible for ICANN policy and liaison, as well as outreach to the US Government, other government bodies, and non-governmental policy groups. In this capacity, Elana has testified several times in the U.S. Congress, and has spoken at an E.U. Commission hearing. Elana also serves as Chair of the Registrar Constituency.

Bruce Beckwith

Bruce Beckwith joined the Public Interest Registry in December 2002 as Vice President of Operations. He has an extensive background in the domain name industry, having joined Network Solutions in 1997 when they were a combined registry and registrar, participated in the split between registry and registrar, the acquisition of NSI by VeriSign, and most recently with the registrar business unit. His roles at NSI included instituting the first Quality Assurance function, developing a robust channel management and support program, and handling all registrar policy issues for the past few years. Prior to his involvement in the domain name industry, Mr. Beckwith worked in the wireless and wired telecom industry, several independent software vendors, in education, and the government contracting markets. His expertise includes strategy development, crisis management, customer service, operations management, policy formulation, as well as the financial, sales, and marketing disciplines.

Keith Davidson

Keith Davidson is President of InternetNZ, a non-profit organisation fostering coordinated and cooperative development of the Internet in New Zealand. InternetNZ's mission is to promote and protect the Internet, ensuring that it operates in an open and uncapturable environment. Representing a membership including Internet service providers, web designers, academia, public information groups and Internet users,InternetNZ represents New Zealand on global Internet organizations, having the delegation for the .nz Country Code Top Level Domain.