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Registration Data Request Service (RDRS) Work Summary

The following summarizes the work of the ICANN org, Board, and community conducted to date on the Registration Data Request Service.

  • On 25 March 2021, the ICANN Board directed the ICANN CEO to conduct an Operational Design Phase(ODP) for recommendations 1 through 18 of the Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) Phase 2 Final Report, which had been approved by the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Council.
  • On 24 January 2022, the ICANN Board shared its concerns regarding the proposed SSAD with the GNSO Council.
  • On 25 January 2022, the ICANN org submitted the Operational Design Assessment (ODA), the final product of the ODP, to the ICANN Board. The ODA is meant to help the Board determine the operational impact of the implementation of the recommendations, including whether they are in the best interests of the ICANN community or ICANN (ICANN Bylaws Annex A, Section 9 (a)). The GNSO Council formed a Small Team to analyze the ODA and to help inform the Council on its discussions with the Board.
  • On 4 April 2022, the GNSO Small Team submitted a Preliminary Report to the Council recommending a proof-of-concept approach. This is "not necessarily a path to the end product… It is expected to be relatively easy and inexpensive to set up and implement. A proof of concept does not deal with edge cases and/or reproduce a user experience that is identical to what the SSAD is expected to do."
  • On 6 April 2022, ICANN org offered to outline an approach called the "WHOIS Disclosure System," which would simplify the process of submitting and receiving requests for nonpublic gTLD registration data for both requestors and contracted parties, and be cost effective. The org began working on a design for the proposed system in July.
  • On 9 June 2022, the ICANN Board agreed to the Council's request to pause the consideration of the SSAD-related recommendations and on 14 July 2022 accepted the GNSO Council's request to proceed with the WHOIS Disclosure System design paper.
  • On 14 September 2022, the WHOIS Disclosure System design paper was published and presented to the community at ICANN75. This was followed by two community webinars in October 2022.
  • On 17 November 2022, the GNSO Council informed the Board and ICANN org that the Council unanimously accepted the Addendum to the Preliminary Report (Addendum) prepared by the Small Team. The Addendum recommended to the GNSO Council that the ICANN Board and ICANN org should proceed with their decision-making process on the implementation of the System as quickly as possible. The Council also noted its expectation that the name of the System be modified before launch.
  • During a Special Meeting on 27 February 2023, the ICANN Board of Directors passed a resolution directing ICANN org to develop and launch a new ticketing system to handle requests for access to nonpublic registration data related to gTLDs.
  • During ICANN76, in an effort to more accurately describe the use of the system, it was decided to rename the WHOIS Disclosure System to the Registration Data Request Service.

This work is ongoing. This page will be updated as work progresses.

Last page update: April 2023

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Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."