ICANN's GNSO Council stumbled and bumbled its way to a nonresolution of the Whois privacy controversy today (Wednesday, All Hallows Eve). On the surface, nothing changed. Despite ICANN's inertia, however, the "status quo" Whois is gradually being eroded by a combination of market forces, which allow registrants to buy a modicum of privacy protection from registrars, and the ongoing threat of legal assaults on Whois from outside the United States. A growing number of ccTLDs and gTLDs can be expected to force ICANN to adjust its Whois requirements to the data protection laws of other countries, the most current example being the TELNIC case. This means that the status quo equilibrium left in place by ICANN's inability to act is tilting slowly in favor of privacy. At the same time, law enforcement and takedown measures are taking new directions, pioneered by the Anti-Phishing Working Group, that also work outside the ICANN process.   more »

As ICANN opened its in Los Angeles on Monday, the .uk registry released a short position paper on DNSSEC -- and focused on the issue of signing the root zone. Intentionally or not, Nominet's paper validates IGP's long-held contention that there are major public policy issues around DNSSEC. In it they highlight the need for a single trust anchor and warn against alternative solutions. They emphasize the need for the keys to be managed by ICANN/IANA and used by the root zone maintainer to sign the root, and, most importantly, the necessity of opening up root management through "enhanced cooperation."   more »