UPDATE Sep 24, 2018: ICANN said today it is considering (beyond its role as a WHOIS data 'controller' and its role in contractual enforcement), to "be acknowledged under the law as the coordinating authority of the WHOIS system ... shifting the liability for providing access to non-public registration data to ICANN and establishing a globally scalable unified solution for access to non-public WHOIS data," adding, "it will be important to engage with the European Data Protection Board to test with them whether the approaches and interpretations of the law may ultimately provide a feasible solution meeting the needs of stakeholders seeking access to non-public WHOIS." (emphasis added)
1) ICANN & GDPR, EPDP F2F Meeting in LA, Sep 24-26
LA F2F Meeting wiki page: agenda with local (PDT) and UTC times, slides, documents, recordings. Meeting facilitators: David Plumb, Gina Bartlett and Toby Berkman of CBI.org.
Notes:
- ICANN CEO Goran Marby met with the EPDP working group Tuesday: Adobe Connect replay and MP3 audio replay.
- Data_Elements_Processing_Workbook_v0.4.4 (pdf) updated 9/25;
- Adobe Connect replay (video) & audio MP3 links on the meeting wiki page.
- Meeting Transcripts' links on meeting wiki page and GNSO Calendar.
F2F agenda (subject to change), times shown are local PDT:
Editor's note: links to EPDP meetings' transcripts are posted (usually within 24 hours) on the GNSO calendar. See also EPDP Team wiki, mail list, Temp Spec, EPDP Charter (pdf), GNSO's EPDP page, & weekly updates to GNSO Council.
EPDP Highlights for the week ending Sep 22 (emphasis and links added):
GNSO Council mail list:
Sep 18, 2018: "The BC/IPC [ICANN Business Constituency and Intellectual Property Constituency] recently sent a letter [pdf] to ICANN org about the accreditation and access model. This letter seems problematic at this stage of the game. We discussed this issue ad nauseam during the EPDP Charter development and the Council has tasked the EPDP with addressing the Annex. To ask ICANN org to circumvent the EPDP undermines the policy development process and seems disingenuous to the Council's approval of the Charter. In addition, the EDPB's July 5 letter [pdf] states responsibility for designing an access model lies with ICANN and the registries/ registrars, not just ICANN as indicated in the BC/IPC letter. Will our BC and/or IPC councilors please shed some light on this?"--Darcy Southwell (RrSG).
Sep 19, 2018: "Darcy has asked an excellent question. As an outgoing councilor, I guess I can afford to be blunt here. What is going on? I quit the RDS PDP after two years of soul destroying work because it was blindingly clear we were going nowhere, and the Board was already working on a temp spec to override anything we were doing. IS the same thing going to happen with the EPDP? I am deeply concerned about the integrity of the multi-stakeholder process. Sorry for being direct, but time is precious."--Stephanie Perrin (NCSG).
Editor's note: the lone response from either BC or IPC councilors as of Sep 21, 2018, is here.EPDP Sep 18 meeting chat transcript (pdf): Milton Mueller (NCSG): "... confusing access with purpose again .... and again .... and again" .... Farzaneh Badii (NCSG): "... gating questions have to be answered. We are not answering them. Every meeting has turned into an access meeting ..." Stephanie Perrin (NCSG): "Another useful document on the DPIA process, endorsed by the Schleswig Holstein DPA (co-author) is available here ... targeted to GDPR compliance ... (file under
educational efforts, or what we ought to be doing at this point) ... Useful also in that it crosslinks to relevant standards."
EPDP Sep 18 meeting transcript (pdf, 49 pp.):
Milton Mueller (NCSG): "Yes, Kurt [Pritz], these comments are primarily directed to you as the chair of this committee. We've just spent half of our meeting on an extraneous agenda item. I don't know how we got – how this got prioritized. I think it’s very evident from the discussion that it should not have been prioritized. And I’m – I really think that we need to have better management of our agenda. We have to focus on the things that are essential to the temp spec and that is what data is collected, what are the purposes and what data is going to be redacted in public Whois. It’s simply unacceptable for us to keep getting distracted from these fundamental issues onto things that are secondary and that may not even be controversial once we've decided what data elements are actually going to be collected and what are going to be disclosed. So can we get off Appendix C? Can we just drop it? It’s not getting us anywhere. It’s a waste of time and I think I still don't understand how we even got on this." p.19
Kurt Pritz (EPDP Chair): "Okay, Milton ..."
[Editor's note: Kurt Pritz, the inept EPDP Chair appointed by the GNSO Council, is a major contributor to the EPDP working group's dysfunction. Maybe the LA F2F meeting facilitators (CBI) can ameliorate some of the effects of Pritz's dysfunction.]
Stephanie Perrin (NCSG): "... In many ways Alan [Woods, RySG] has just made my point. We are going in circles, folks. I hope some people have now taken the training but unfortunately the training is, while it’s very good I think, for length of time that takes to do it ... it does not help us do a privacy impact assessment on the framework that we're dealing with. And the problem, as I see it, is that the bylaws to which Alan keeps referring ... require a privacy impact assessment. Everybody’s assuming that the bylaws as ICANN has set them up, are some kind of gospel. They don't comply with data protection law. We have been told by the DPAs point blank over years, that it's not up to ICANN to set itself up as a law enforcement data dump. I’m paraphrasing there ... the purposes of third parties are not the purposes of ICANN and ICANN cannot write itself bylaws that provide that ... If we’re going to be going in circles you might as well go back and do a privacy impact assessment of the entire registration data service because this isn't working ..." p.24
EPDP Sep 20 meeting chat transcript (pdf): Amr Elsadr (NCSG): "I'm in favor of attempting to answering the Charter questions, as opposed to
redlining the temp spec." ... Kristina Rosette (RySG):+1 Amr (answering charter questions and not redlining TS) ... Milton Mueller (NCSG): "Please, let's not redline Temp Spec" .... "our ultimate objective is to replace the temp spec with a real policy, have we forgotten that?" ... farzaneh badii (NCSG): "why are we thinking about section by section. lets think about charter questions, the data elements, answer questions and then see which sections of temp specc has to be revised." Milton Mueller (NCSG): "exactly, Farzy." Amr Elsadr (NCSG):@Farzi: +1 .... Milton Mueller (NCSG): "An access method is outside the gating question" ... Ashley Heineman (GAC): "I agree Milton" ... Thomas Rickert (ISPCP): "Kurt - I think Milton made an excellent point when he said that you can only
have a discussion about redaction once you know what you collect in the first place" ... Ashley Heineman (GAC): "... I think the charter questions provide a good framework for our discussions" ... Milton Mueller (NCSG): "I am going to leave the call ... this is a waste of time" ... Thomas Rickert (ISPCP): "... Today, I am quite frustrated because we do not seem to be making any progress at all."
EPDP Sep 20 meeting transcript (pdf, 45pp.):
Milton Mueller (NCSG): "Yes I’m just – there’s some kind of strange process going on here but I
thought I had made the point [p. 35] that we cannot discuss access to nonpublic Whois data until we know what the data is and what is public and what is nonpublic. And here we are having a discussion of access to these data elements that we don't even know and we don't know what's public and nonpublic. Why is this happening? Did I miss something in the discussion? It seemed like you agreed with me, Kurt, that there was a logical order to the discussion of these elements. Are we discussing what we’re going to discuss when we’re in Los Angeles? Or are we having this discussion in a real sense? I’m just completely lost here." p.40Milton Mueller (NCSG): "Yes I’m just – there’s some kind of strange process going on here but I
Kurt Pritz (EPDP Chair): "Thanks, Milton. I think there are several topics in Appendix A, other than
redaction, that require discussion where redaction isn't necessarily on the critical path. And so what …" p.40
Milton Mueller (NCSG): "… redaction is not on the critical path when you're talking about access to nonpublic Whois data and redaction tells you what's public and what's not public? How can you say that?" p.40
Kurt Pritz (EPDP Chair): "I wasn’t referring to access, I was referring to some of these other things that are in Appendix A ..." p.40
Kurt Pritz (EPDP Chair): "I wasn’t referring to access, I was referring to some of these other things that are in Appendix A ..." p.40
Mark Svancarek (BC): "... I really reject the idea that we must define all data elements to be redacted before we can talk about the concept of reasonable access ..." p.41
James Bladel [RrSG]: "... I keep feeling like we just continue to get wrapped around the access issue and ... it’s unfortunately just not something we can take on in the scope of the time that we have. And I think that that’s one of the reasons why the GNSO Council designed the charter the way they did. So I think we just need to kind of note it, flag it, and move on. Thanks." p. 42
Editor's note: The continual diversions to access and 3rd party purposes and interests, particularly by Facebook's Margie Milam and Microsoft's Mark Svancarek (BC EPDP members), together with the inept EPDP Chair's dysfunction, is fast sinking any chance of this EPDP working group addressing 3rd-party "access" to redacted WHOIS registration data, due to a lack of time, if nothing else. But again, that may be the strategy of the IPC (Intellectual Property Constituency) and BC (Business Constituency) in order to put more "pressure" on ICANN management and the ICANN Board to adopt and implement a "unified accreditation and access model" more to IPC and BC's liking, without input from this EPDP working group. See BC/IPC Sep 7 letter (pdf) to ICANN CEO Goran Marby.
The EPDP working group wasted almost the entire month of August compiling a "triage report" for the GNSO Council that could instead have been simplified to a survey completed in the first week of August, followed immediately with the EPDP Team addressing the Charter's gating questions. Instead the inept EPDP "leadership team" assisted by ICANN staff, forced the EPDP working group to engage in temp spec redlining exercises:
“I came into this thinking that the fastest way home was to sort of redline the temporary specification"--Kurt Pritz, EPDP meeting Sep 20, 2018, transcript, supra, p.10.In other words, Kurt Pritz thought he knew a better way than following the GNSO Council's EPDP Charter, which is why the EPDP team is behind schedule and "off track" as it arrives in LA this week for its face-to-face meeting. I have observed every meeting of this EPDP working group, and thus far, from all indications, it appears Pritz lacks the intellect, aptitude, and/or skills, to be an effective EPDP Chair. Until the Chair's dysfunction is addressed, this EPDP isn't likely to get much done.
More info and updates on last week's meetings in last week's News Review.
Note also:
ICYMI ICANN Lost Again in the Appellate Court in Germany:
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| Definition of "train wreck" -- a chaotic or disastrous situation that holds a peculiar fascination for observers. |
ICYMI ICANN Lost Again in the Appellate Court in Germany:
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| ICANN v. EPAG Domainservices, GmbH (a Tucows affiliate) |
- UPDATE Sep 24 POSTPONED: ICANN org 1-hour webinar
Wednesday, 26 Sep 2018, 15:00 UTC (11am EDT), on recent data protection/privacy activities of ICANN related to the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), via Adobe Connect (dial-in info). More info here. The webinar will be recorded and published here according to ICANN.--Webinar to be rescheduled per ICANN. - GNSO Council Meeting Thursday 27 September 2018 at 04:00 UTC. Agenda (pdf) Item 7: "Council Update – Temporary Specification for Registration Data Expedited Policy Development Process - Recurring Update (15 minutes)."
- EPDP Q&A re: EPDP on the Temporary Specification for gTLD Registration Data.
- What Domain Resellers Should Know About ICANN’s Temporary Specification | enom.com.
- Claimed Failure to Disclose GDPR’s Collateral Impact Leads to Class Action Against Nielsen Holdings--jdsupra.com.
- Hard Times With WHOIS? INTA Wants To Know--jdsupra.com.
- A Slice of GDPR in California?--jdsupra.com.
2) Other ICANN News
"the review team concluded that the New gTLD Program should be regarded only as a “good start,” and that a number of policy issues should be addressed before any further expansion of gTLDs."--Report, supra, p.6 (emphasis added)Editor's note: a good start? Hardly! New gTLDs are (for the most part) a BIG #FAIL, but ICANN's CCT-Review Team was unable or unwilling to honestly assess and acknowledge ICANN's Mistakes, Fiascos, and Horrible Implementation which resulted in this disastrous new gTLDs program. Recommendation: Relegate this CCT-Review Report to File 13. But did anyone really expect anything different from this Review Team handpicked by former ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé?
b. Root KSK Rollover: ICANN Board approved (with dissent) to change or "roll" the key for the DNS root on 11 October 2018 (first time the key has ever been changed)--ICANN.org. See also What To Expect During the Root KSK Rollover (updated 17 Sep 2018)(pdf).
d. GNSO Project List (pdf) 19 Sep 2018.
e. New gTLD .Merck: Merck KGaA’s written Submission (pdf) in support of Oral Presentation to BAMC on 4 Sep 2018.
f. is for FAIL: ICANN Reviews | glassdoor.com--what ICANN employees are saying about ICANN: "Sinking ship ... Senior management don't seem to have a clue ... Highly political and run by SJW's with ego problems ..."
3) Names, Domains & Trademarks
c. ccTLD .eu: Euro bureaucrats tie up .eu in red tape to stop Brexit Brits snatching back their web domains | register.co.uk.
d. Prepared especially for ICANN's Next Round? A Top Level Domain (TLD) Registry In A Box, don't you want your very own brand new gTLD?
4) ICYMI Internet Domain News
EU: "EU copyright rules would limit online freedom"--Mitchell Baker, Executive Chairwoman of Mozilla, Mountain View, CA, US--ft.com. But see also "French applaud EU copyright reform vote"--euractiv.com.
Internet Freedom
UK: "Politicians are threatening our right to have private discussions - we must not let them ban secret social media groups"--telegraph.co.uk.
Net Neutrality
US: FCC Chairman Ajit Pai Slams California Net Neutrality Bill--"The internet should be run by engineers, entrepreneurs, and technologists, not lawyers, bureaucrats, and politicians," Pai said. Pai is also citing a recent federal court of appeals ruling as evidence states lack the legal authority to reimpose net neutrality.
5) Most Read Posts this past week on DomainMondo.com:
-- John Poole, Editor • Domain Mondo