Groups want explanation for lack of thick whois in contract.
Three ICANN entities have signed a letter (pdf) blasting ICANN for its “closed doors” decision to renew the .com agreement with Verisign without requiring thick whois.
“Thick whois” refers to a whois in which the registry manages/holds registrant information, rather than each individual registrar.
The letter was sent by the At-Large Advisory Committee, the GNSO Business Constituency, and the GNSO Intellectual Property Constituency.
The letter states:
…The decision to renew the .com agreement without requiring migration to the thick Whois structure contradicted the reasoned and virtually unchallenged views of numerous public commenters, including our three groups, and did so, not only without a “detailed explanation” of why these views were rejected, but without any explanation whatsoever.
For the Board to take final action on the .com agreement in private, five days prior to a long-scheduled public forum session on the topic, is highly objectionable, and marks a failure to
meet the standards of accountability and transparency to which ICANN also committed itself in the Affirmation of Commitments.
The groups also claim that ICANN violated its pledge to conform the .com renewal to the terms of the registry agreements with the five next largest gTLD operators. The letter says that four of those five agreements require this whois. The hundreds of new TLDs coming online in future years will also have thick whois.
Of course, no public comments about the agreement — including about the price hikes — were seriously considered. It was just part of a rubber stamp process.
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