Today the Registrar Stakeholder Group (RrSG) has joined its colleagues in the Registry Stakeholder Group, Eco Association of the Internet Industry and the Internet Infrastructure Coalition in raising its concerns with ICANN about GDPR.
The letter was drafted last week and got so much support from the registrar members that we could officially support it as a stakeholder group. Realtime Register B.V. was one of the supporters.
The letter to the ICANN CEO located here, can be described as “spicy,” or “\strong.” And I think it is with good reason. Since March 2016 a dedicated small group of registrars and registries have been pouring countless of hours of time in supporting ICANN with this complex issue called the GDPR, I cannot recall how many telephone conferences I had since March 2017 till this very day, but most likely an insane number for sure.
The problem?
ICANN contractual obligations force registries and registrars to publish the personal data in a public directory called the WHOIS. The GDPR does not allow data being used beyond its original purpose, which is the registration of the domain name.
When you order a product online; you provide the shop with information so they can deliver/ship your product. It is not up to the shop to publish all your data in a public directory and mention what product you purchased. You rather not have such data released for obvious reasons, not the whole world has to know what you bought last weekend, right?
This example I guess, highlights the entire issue with the WHOIS and the tension it creates with many data protection and privacy laws.
I understand if this letter might come on strong for some folks at the ICANN organization and perhaps some stakeholders within the ICANN community, but it is ten minutes to midnight for sure, and as contracted parties, we are all liable when it comes to the GDPR, and its massive fines, and not the ICANN community. Every hour we delay will cause more issues for us registrars and our customers.
Lucky enough a significant deal of the GDPR issues can be mitigated with the free Realtime Register privacy proxy services. And while that is convenient for our customers, not every registrar offers these services and as such, are entirely depended on solutions created by ICANN.
More information regarding our privacy services can be read here.
