Some preliminary notes from listening to the WHOIS hearing’s live webcast: Testimonial was heared from Tim Trainer (IACC), J Scott Evans (INTA; former GNSO Council member and IPC chair), Rick Wesson (registrar constituency CTO), and Mark Bohannon (Copyright Coalition on Domain Names). All witnesses supported the bill.
Besides the usual “whois is important” statements, Rick Wesson testified about his fraudit system, and pointed out that registrars have no business incentives to verify contact data supplied to them as long as they are paid. He seemed to suggest that additional lelgislation was needed in order to create such incentives. (I may have mis-heared him on that point, though.)
J Scott Evans repeatedly said that ICANN efforts on WHOIS accuracy were busy discussing procedure, not substance. I wonder how he came to that conclusion — Task Force 3 is, after all, chaired by a member of the IPC, and (I’m hearing) currently attempting to reach out and collect input on available accuracy verification mechanisms. Outreach seems stalled, though, because relevant contact information is lacking.I’m planning to re-listen to the webcast once it’s available; I may have more then.
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