One of the longstanding issues in ICANN is the situation over
the WHOIS database. Every registrant, upon buying a domain name,
is required to input WHOIS data that will be made publicly available
to anyone who would run a search online. WHOIS data includes
the registrant's name and contact details including country,
e-mail address, contact numbers, etc. However, a significant
number of registrants refuse to input accurate data into the
WHOIS database. This poses problems on illegal cyber activities,
in which a person running a website of say, for example, a gambling
site, could not be easily reached for notices and complaints.
In other cases, consider a potential buyer of a domain name
that is taken (not available anymore). Normally, when you want
a domain name that is already taken, you go to WHOIS database
to get information on who had bought the domain name, when will
it expire, etc. However, since registrants are not inputting
accurate data, you would find it difficult to negotiate with
the current owner unless the registrar of the current owner
would broker the domain sales for you. This is why the WHOIS
accuracy issue
remains a problem to be solved for ICANN with the help of the
Internet community.
Overall, ICANN wants to maintain and protect the privacy of
the registrants. So it is now considering designing a process
in which registrants could safely input accurate data without
worrying about privacy issues. ICANN wants to respect the registrants'
wish for privacy but at the same time, it wants to be able to
get the necessary information about a registrant to prevent
illegal cyber activities and encourage a fairer e-commerce flow
in the Internet.
It is not expected that this is going to be resolved soon, but
ICANN wants the regular Internet users to participate in the
process, such that the users could report to ICANN or seek the
help of their registrars in case they find suspicious WHOIS
data.
ICANN on Wednesday will talk more about WHOIS data and how
to respond to the ongoing Internet threats.
ICANN
Seels to Protect Rights Owners with the IRT
By Arlene Paredes, Netpia
ICANN on Wednesday held a Consultation Session on Trademark
Protection & Malicious Behavior with the IRT (Implementation
Recommendation Team). The IRT was formed after the ICANN Board
requested the Intellectual Property Constituency to gather people
for IRT in March 2009. This session has been scheduled in view
of the rise of UDRP cases across the world. WIPO reports that
there has been a 7% increase in UDRP cases in 2008, with 27,000
domain names disputed since 1999. For this reason, trademark
protection is getting a lot of attention from ICANN and the
Internet community, especially since the launch of the new gTLD
program is underway.
UDRP is the process that domain users follow when faced with
problems on trademark protection or identity theft. The UDRP
guides the current domain owners and interested parties to secure
ownership of a particular domain name. Still, on the subject
of improving or updating the UDRP, the IRT believes that the
current statistics suggests that the UDRP is effective enough
in deterring more rights violations considering that there has
only been 27,000 domain names disputed out of 150 million registrations
within the same period.
Meanwhile, rights owners who had been victims of rights violations
were asked for the reasons on why their domain names got into
trouble in the first place. The reasons that were given were
the following: registrar failure, ccTLD technical system, serial
cyber squatters who are too difficult to stop. With the reasons
mentioned, the domain owners end up feeling frustrated as if
they have been cheated. It is therefore very important for rights
owners to choose their registrars carefully.
For its part, the IRT hopes ICANN will efficiently protect
the rights of others in an expanded domain name system, or when
the new TLDs are launched perhaps next year.
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