Fergie's Tech Blog

Secret, Closed WHOIS Meeting Excludes Privacy Advocates?

Via ICANN Watch.

Secret, Closed WHOIS Meeting Excludes Privacy Advocates
posted by Mueller on Friday May 20 2005, @05:18AM

Today (Friday, May 20) a secret meeting is taking place in Washington DC. WHOIS is on the agenda. Called by Bruce Tonkin, Chair of the ICANN GNSO, it will include virtually every business-related constituency in ICANN: ISPs, Intellectual Property interests, Marilyn Cade's Business Constituency, and various US government agencies: Department of Justice, FBI, Department of Commerce and Federal Treade Commission - all strong and intransigent advocates of preventing any privacy protection for WHOIS data. Registrars and registries in limited numbers will be there.

Conspicuous by their absence is the Noncommercial Users Constituency and any other civil society representatives of privacy rights. This is an unfortuantely typical example of how policy making gets done in ICANN. Behind the scenes, the major players get together with the US Government and cut a deal. The formal policy making process is bypassed, it is just a charade.

IMPORTANT ADDENDUM: We wish to make it clear that ICANN management/staff did not initiate this meeting and was NOT initially invited to it either, and as far as we know has no plans to attend. It is the interest groups behind GNSO, particularly Marilyn Cade, who turned this meeting into an exclusive bargaining session.

posted by Fergie @ 5/22/2005 10:28:00 AM