The WHOIS Review Team (WRT) has been constituted under the Affirmation of Commitments by the United States Department of Commerce and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers dated 30 September 2009 (AoC).
Under paragraph 9.3.1 of the AoC, ICANN commits to organising "a review of WHOIS policy and its implementation to assess the extent to which WHOIS policy is effective and its implementation meets the legitimate needs of law enforcement and promotes consumer trust."
Accordingly, the Scope of the Whois Review Team is to assess the extent to which existing WHOIS policy and its implementation:
- is effective,
- meets the legitimate needs of law enforcement, and
- promotes consumer trust.
The WRT will identify and document ICANN's existing WHOIS policy.
The WRT will identify and document ICANN's implementation of its Whois Policy.
It will define and identify law enforcement, and the term "legitimate needs of law enforcement."
It will define consumer trust and analyse what factors promote consumer trust in the context of the Whois.
It will identify the areas, if any, in which the interests above may be in conflict with each other.
It will assess applicable laws and analyze issues possibly including:
- contractual obligations vs. national law obligations
- differing global laws and ICANN obligations
It will review the extent to which ICANN's existing WHOIS policy and its implementation are effective in meeting the legitimate needs of law enforcement and promotes consumer trust.
This assessment will include an evidence-based approach, and seek to identify good practice in other areas of the domain space (as a benchmarking tool).
The assessment will keep in mind overarching principles set out in the AoC in relation to ICANN's policy, ie that "decisions made related to the global technical coordination of the DNS are made in the public interest and are accountable and transparent" (paragraph 3(a)) "promote competition, consumer trust, and consumer choice in the DNS marketplace" (paragraph 3(c)), and that the outcomes of ICANN's private coordinating process should "reflect the public interest...and not just the interests of a particular set of stakeholders" (paragraph 4). These principles set the context for the reviews (of which the WRT is one) performed under the AoC.
The WRT will undertake an analysis and determination of ICANN's performance against the AOC requirement that ICANN implement measures to maintain timely, unrestricted and public access to accurate and complete WHOIS information, including registrant, technical, billing, and administrative contact information, and what impact such requirement have on the legitimate needs of law enforcement and promoting consumer trust.
