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2016-12-18

News Review: ICANN WHOIS Domain Name Data Accuracy Varies Widely

News Review | ©2016 DomainMondo.com
Domain Mondo's weekly review of internet domain news:

 What is WHOIS? "WHOIS (pronounced as the phrase "who is") is a query and response protocol that is widely used for querying databases that store the registered users or assignees of an Internet resource, such as a domain name, an IP address block, or an autonomous system, but is also used for a wider range of other information. The protocol stores and delivers database content in a human-readable format. The WHOIS protocol is documented in RFC 3912."--Wikipedia.org. See also WHOIS Search | ICANN WHOIS: "ICANN's WHOIS Lookup gives you the ability to lookup any generic domains, such as "icann.org" to find out the registered domain owner."

Feature • ICANN published a report on syntax and operability accuracy of WHOIS data in gTLDs (generic top-level domains), which follows reports published in June 2016 and December 2015. Read the Report (pdf). ICANN developed accuracy tests to answer questions about the syntax (format and content) and operability (e.g., does an email sent to the email address provided in the WHOIS record go through?) of a sample of WHOIS records. Key Findings: (1) Nearly all WHOIS records contain information that can be used to establish immediate contact: In 97 percent of records, at least one email or phone number meets all operability requirements of the 2009 RAA; (2) Approximately 90 percent of email addresses, 72 percent of telephone numbers and 97 percent of postal addresses were operable.

Results by region:
source: ICANN.org
ICANN will host a webinar to review methodology and findings of the report: WEBINAR: WHOIS Accuracy Reporting System December 2016 Report | ICANN.org: Webinar Date: 12 January 2017; Time: 16:00 - 17:00 UTC; Join via Adobe Connect; View Dial-In Information; The webinar will be conducted in English. Recordings will be published in the knowledge center of the WHOIS website at: http://whois.icann.org/en/knowledge-center.

Results in the report have been provided to ICANN's Contractual Compliance team, which will assess the types of errors found and follow up with registrars on potentially inaccurate records. ICANN will begin work on the next WHOIS ARS report in January 2017, with a targeted publication date of early June 2017.

Other Internet Domain News:

 •  ICYMI this past week on Domain Mondo:

•  Trouble brewing? You’ll never find the right answers if you’re asking the wrong questions--
ICANN's WS2 jurisdiction subgroup is struggling over whether to ask a question--
"What are the advantages or disadvantages, if any, relating to ICANN's jurisdiction*, particularly with regard to the actual operation of ICANN’s policies and accountability mechanisms?"
*“ICANN’s jurisdiction” refers to (a) ICANN being subject to U.S. and California law as a result of its incorporation and location in California, (b) ICANN being subject to the laws of any other country as a result of its location within or contacts with that country, or (c) any “choice of law” or venue provisions in agreements with ICANN.

•  Must Read: SSAC Response to ccNSO Comments on SAC084 (pdf) highlighting added:


See also: SSAC Comments on Guidelines for the Extended Process Similarity Review Panel for the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process (pdf):
● Conservatism Principle: Because the root zone of the global DNS is a shared resource, the decision to add a label to the root should be governed by a conservative bias in favor of minimizing the risk to users (regardless of the language or script they are using and whether the label will be a gTLD or a ccTLD) and minimizing the potential for the need to make decisions that later must be changed or overridden in painful or incompatible ways. In order to minimize risk, doubts should always be resolved in favor of rejecting a label for inclusion rather than in favor of including it.
● Inclusion Principle: A TLD label should be added to the root zone only if it is known to be “safe” in terms of usability and confusability. This is particularly important for labels whose form as normally presented to a user contains non-ASCII characters because the number and kinds of possibilities for usability and confusability problems is much greater.
● Stability Principle: The list of permitted labels in the root zone should change at a rate that does not negatively impact the stability of the root of the DNS, and usually only in the direction of permitting an addition as time and experience indicate that inclusion of such a TLD label is both safe and consistent with these principles.

•   How Search Engines Are Killing Clever URLs [New gTLDs] | TheAtlantic.com: "... Although investors scrambled—and shelled out up to $185,000 a pop—for the chance to snatch up the new [generic top-level] domains and profit as gatekeepers, uptake among end-users has been underwhelming ..." See also: New gTLD Domains, the Walking Dead and Dying, ICANN FY15 Results | DomainMondo.com 02 July 2015.

 •  Analyzing IGF 2016 transcripts:
Source: Final Report from the 11th Internet Governance Forum | digitalwatch.giplatform.org (pdf)
•  55% of  domain names [in India] are .COM, management firm study finds| NewIndianExpress.com: "Among all Top-level domains (TLDs), .com extension is still the most popular extension in India, as 55 per cent of domain names are on the extension."

•  Why Russia's LinkedIn Ban Is Not About Internet Freedom | Forbes.com: "In line with many countries, Russia updated its requirements relating to personalization of local data with a new law that came into effect on September 1, 2015. This law, which requires local storage of personal data relating to Russian citizens to be stored on servers physically located within the Russian Federation, is analogous to similar laws which have been passed in many countries over the last few years. LinkedIn is one of the major international companies to fail to comply with this law, and as such the courts have ordered it be shut down until such time as it complies."

•  Home routers under attack in ongoing malvertisement blitz | ArsTechnica.com: DNSChanger causes network computers to visit fraudulent domains.

•  New gTLD .MUSIC: December 15, 2016, Letter (pdf) from Dechert LLP Attorney Arif Hyder Ali re: DotMusic Limited’s Reconsideration Request 16-5: the Council of Europe (CoE) Report DGI (2016)17--"... The CoE Report provides additional support for the BGC to accept DotMusic’s Reconsideration Request 16-5 and approve DotMusic’s application for .MUSIC. Given the Council of Europe’s global nature and remit and its participation in the GAC, we submitthat the BGC must seriously consider the report’s findings in relation to .MUSIC ..." 

• ICANN Public Comment Periods that close in January, 2017: