[anti-abuse-wg] Spam under protection. Believe it or not!

Ron,

On Sep 28, 2015, at 1:26 PM, Ronald F. Guilmette <rfg at tristatelogic.com> wrote:
> If anything I've said constitutes "misinformation", please specify what
> that was, specifically.  (I believe that everything I said was completely
> and 100% accurate, like for example my statement that ICANN is effectively
> run by the registrars.

This is not accurate. I can definitively state that ICANN is not "effectively run by the registrars". ICANN has many, many masters, the interests of quite a few of which are directly in conflict. To assert that one stakeholder is running ICANN means you simply don't understand how ICANN works.

> the Powers That Be (e.g. ICANN) have already and long ago
> decided that they simply don't WANT the problem(s) solved.

This is untrue (at least in the case of ICANN, assuming ICANN is a "Power That Be").

> Has there ever been a single decision taken by ICANN which they felt
> they could get away with (i.e. without being sued to hell and back) that
> WAS NOT in the economic interests of the domain registrars?


I doubt you'll find many registrars that believe the government/law enforcement-requested changes that went into the 2013 RAA were in their economic interests.

> This whole sordid scheme about anonomous donmain registrations is a
> case in point.

You may wish to argue this point with those interested in privacy (e.g., EFF) and other civil society organizations who are on the "we don't need Whois" side of the interminable Whois wars.

> But the
> idea sailed through the ICANN approval process.

Do you know how ICANN works? I can't think of _anything_ that "sails" through the "ICANN approval process."

> More to the point, does
> there exist *any* "quality control" (for lack of a better term) on
> ICANN decisions?  Are any of them ever reviewed after they have been
> made and implemented, you know, to see if any of them are failures and
> should be recinded?

ICANN has reviews of pretty much _everything_ we do. We have reviews on accountability, transparency, Whois, security, stability, resiliency, competition, consumer trust, every one of the community structures, the board, major programs including the new gTLD program, etc.  ICANN has more reviews than any organization I know of. Really.

> why can't (or why
> shouldn't) this exact type of anti-fraud system be applied also to
> domain name registrations?

Because it does not work in every country and ICANN gets heavily criticized if it does things that disadvantage a stakeholder group.

> this kind of idea will
> surely never even find its way onto the agenda of any ICANN meeting,

There will be a number of sessions at the Dublin ICANN meeting on approaches to address domain name abuse. For example, on Wednesday October 21 from 10 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. entitled "Role of Voluntary Practices in Combating Abuse and Illegal Activity" with speakers from the anti-abuse community. There is also a session on the ongoing effort to create a framework for Registries to address domain name abuse as is required in specification 11, section 3b of the current Registry Agreement (not sure when that meeting is going to be held).

> The entirely predictable result is massive and ongoing
> fraud in WHOIS records... which ICANN works overtime to try to dismiss,
> cover-up, sweep under the rug, and to make extremely tedious and difficult
> to even report to them.

This is, of course, also untrue.

Regards,
-drc
(ICANN CTO, but speaking only for myself)

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