ICANN wants to know if collecting certain Whois data is a violation of GDPR.
A court battle in Germany over the impact of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) continues.
ICANN filed a legal action against EPAG, a registrar owned by Tucows, on May 25–the same day GDPR went into effect. It asked for an injunction after EPAG informed ICANN that it would no longer collect the administrative and technical contacts for Whois.
EPAG’s argument is that these two contact types are not necessary because it’s still collecting the registrant information. In most cases, the admin and technical contacts match the registrant data, and in the other cases EPAG would be holding data on parties it doesn’t have a contractual relationship with.
The German court ruled against the injunction.
However, ICANN notes that the court did not say whether or not collecting the data would be a violation of GDPR. That’s the information ICANN wants, so the group has appealed the ruling.
An English language translation of the appeal has been posted to ICANN’s website.
If ICANN wants a definite ruling, they maybe should not have gone for injunctive relief. What clowns are advising them?
The paid-by-the-hour types, which seem to be smarter than their client.