Option 1

[kathy at DNRC.TECH]

  Tx to Milton, Stephanie, Manju, Tapani, Farzi, Mark Leiser, Kim von  
Arx and everyone else who commented on our dicussion of options for  
the EPDP.

As it's time to wrap up this issue so our EPDP members can present our  
view to the EPDP Group, I co-wrote the email Stephanie posted earlier  
today (attached below too). Best regards, Kathy
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fellow NCSG members,

We would like to work together to share our rationale for Option 1 –  
maintaining the status quo and not asking further follow-up questions,  
mandatory or otherwise, about legal and natural persons. While the  
EPDP phase 2a discussions have been an educational and interesting  
exercise, we are not under any obligation to change the existing  
policy, or further complicate it.

As we have all discussed, legal/natural person questions are very  
complicated for many of our members who are often noncommercial and  
non-profit organizations whose structure and ways of obtaining domain  
names do not resemble those of the large corporations other  
stakeholder groups represent. Our members may have many layers of  
privacy protection in less-well-known sections of the GDPR, other  
local law, Constitutions and international conventions.

We learned that recent studies show that 50% of gTLD domain name  
registrations are for natural persons – and at least 25% more have  
overlapping entity and personal data (e.g., the organization name has  
personal data in it and is thus protected as personal data).

Stephanie and Kathy shared their concerns for legal/natural person  
questions during our long work on the Proxy and Privacy  Accreditation  
Working Group.   We worked closely with the Registrars Stakeholder  
Group to protect registrant privacy – including Battered Women’s  
Shelters, family planning clinics, and girls educational institutions  
– all of which may be legal entities, but have protectable data due to  
obvious danger from disclosure in certain countries.   

/IN LIGHT OF THE COMPLICATED WORLD AROUND US, WE SUPPORT OPTION 1- THE  
STATUS QUO.  /We ask the NCSG to adopt this as our stance.  BASED ON  
THE EXISTING POLICY WHICH MAKES DIFFERENTIATION OF LEGAL/NATURAL  
PERSONS OPTIONAL FOR EACH REGISTRAR, WE BELIEVE WE ALREADY HAVE THE

-        BEST WAY TO FIGHT DNS ABUSE,

-        BEST WAY TO PROTECT INDIVIDUALS AND NONCOMMERCIAL ORGANIZATIONS, AND

-        BEST WAY TO FOLLOW GDPR AND OTHER APPLICABLE HUMAN RIGHTS AND  
FREE SPEECH LAWS

/THEREFORE, WE RECOMMEND NCSG “HOLD THE LINE” AND STICK WITH OPTION 1./

/As the Registrars wrote in their EPDP Statement on Thursday April 29:  
WE HAVE HEARD PLENTY OF VOCAL SUPPORT IN THIS GROUP TO  [DIFFERENTIATE  
BETWEEN LEGAL AND NATURAL PERSONS IN A MANDATORY FASHION], BUT TO DATE  
THE RRSG HAVE NOT HEARD ANY COMPELLING REASON TO CREATE POLICY THAT  
MAKES THIS DRAMATIC SHIFT TO THE DOMAIN REGISTRATION LANDSCAPE./

WE AGREE.  Nothing will stop other stakeholder groups from demanding  
further disclosure of data, and lobbying other parties including  
governments. WHAT WE CAN DO IN ICANN IS COME UP WITH THE BEST SOLUTION  
FOR US AT THIS TIME.

Many thanks to the members of our NCSG EPDP Team for your hard work.  
This has been a long road.  With new studies, new information and  
legal opinions, we think we have a clear and strategic path forward.   
We believe our position to be closely aligned with that of the  
Registrar Stakeholder Group, which they articulated on April 29 (see  
below).

Best, Kathy Kleiman and Stephanie Perrin

---------------------------------------------------------
The Registrar Stakeholder Group issued their position statement on  
Thursday (4/29):

The members of the RrSG EPDP team have participated in this process in  
good faith since day one and will continue to do so; however, we need  
to be crystal clear that members of our Stakeholder Group, whom we are  
here to represent, have voiced and recently reconfirmed their strong  
opposition to any policy coming out of this group that makes  
differentiation between natural and legal persons for domain  
registrations mandatory.

We have heard plenty of vocal support in this group to do just that,  
but to date the RrSG have not heard any compelling reason to create  
policy that makes this dramatic shift to the domain registration  
landscape. The Contracted Party can make the most accurate assessment  
of their own legal, technical, and commercial risks and obligations,  
and is the only party that can determine what level of risk they  
should assume. The scope of this EPDP Phase 2a is to consider if  
changes are required for the relevant Recommendation; it has become  
clear through this process that no such changes are required

To the extent this group can focus its energies on guidance to  
contracted parties which choose on their own to make this  
differentiation, we continue to believe that is a worthwhile exercise.  
We believe that guidance materials including educational information  
provided by ICANN in multiple languages would help contracted parties  
educate registrants and this would be a valuable effort.

That said, based on analysis done by our stakeholder group's members,  
we reject the notion that the majority of registered domain names are  
registered to legal entities. We further remind this team that we have  
not yet seen evidence that increased publication of registration data  
will address any of the problems which have been mentioned so far in  
this phase, and that the registration data is reliably and promptly  
available to those who do have a legitimate reason to access it.

Finally we note that this statement represents the official position  
of the Registrar Stakeholder group, and statements from members of  
other groups participating in the EPDP do not represent our group’s  
position.

/(Source: Transcript of EPDP-Phase 2A Team Call, 29 April 2021,  
Statement of Volker Greimann on behalf of the Registrars Stakeholder  
Group read into the record)/
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