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Evolution of WHOIS Services to Provide Better Experience

15 December 2022
By
Theresa Swinehart

Theresa Swinehart

SVP, Global Domains & Strategy

Theresa Swinehart is the Senior Vice President of Global Domains and Strategy. In this role, she works with the community, contracted parties, stakeholders, and policymakers to ensure broad and inclusive engagement, consensus-based policymaking through ICANN’s multistakeholder model, and effective, accountable policy implementation. Her responsibilities include policy implementation, review operation, and cross-functional strategic initiatives such as ICANN’s compliance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. An expert in global Internet governance, Theresa also serves as co-deputy to the President and CEO. Her extensive industry experience, including nearly 20 years as a key contributor to ICANN’s growth and development, gives her a valuable perspective on how ICANN organization can work efficiently and collaboratively to better serve the global Internet community.

Theresa rejoined ICANN after three years as Executive Director of Global Internet Policy at Verizon Communications, where she specialized in emerging issues as well as stakeholder and policy engagement. Prior to this, she served as ICANN’s Vice President of Global and Strategic Partnerships, leading a team responsible for partnership reform, global engagement and outreach, and the participation in international forums. Before ICANN, Theresa was Director of Global E-Commerce at MCI, where she was responsible for such issues as Internet service provider liability, data protection, and participation in Internet-related forums, including the formation of ICANN. 

Theresa has a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the University of California, Davis, a graduate degree in international studies from the University of Vienna, Austria, and a juris doctorate from American University. She served on the Internet Society’s Board of Trustees and Internet Governance Forum’s Multistakeholder Advisory Committee. Theresa began her career in international human rights. She is fluent in German and is conversant in French.

Access to generic top-level domain (gTLD) registration information is about to change for the better. New developments will assist Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)-accredited registrars and gTLD registries ("contracted parties") in fulfilling their ongoing obligations to provide access to nonpublic gTLD registration data, while improving the experience for contracted parties, data requestors, and other WHOIS users.

The ICANN community recognized the limitations of the WHOIS protocol and requested that the ICANN board direct ICANN organization (org) to develop and transition to a next-generation protocol for registration data more than 10 years ago. Registration Data Directory Services (RDDS), commonly known as "WHOIS Services," will continue to be provided by the contracted parties in accordance with ICANN consensus policies. The following three initiatives have reached major milestones recently and together form the basis of an improved WHOIS experience:

  1. The Public Comment on the proposed amendments to the base gTLD Registry Agreement (RA) and 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA), which specify operational requirements for providing RDDS via the Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP), closed last month. The amendments were the culmination of a long standing commitment to the Internet community to improve the WHOIS system by replacing the WHOIS protocols with a better underlying technology, RDAP. This was based, in part, on advice from the Security and Stability Advisory Committee in SAC051. Bottom line: users will still have access to domain name registration data through the WHOIS system, but moving forward, it will be provided by the RDAP protocol, making it more secure and enabling additional functionality.
  2. ICANN's new Registration Data Policy is also another step closer to implementation as the Public Comment period for the draft policy came to a close on 5 December. The new Registration Data Consensus Policy was developed by the ICANN community to enable the contracted parties to comply with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation and other applicable data protection laws, and to bring clarity to how each registration data element is handled. The new policy implements 34 policy recommendations from three ICANN board resolutions and revisions to 20 impacted policies and procedures, including an updated RDAP Profile.
  3. ICANN org is starting preparatory work in light of the board's anticipated January 2023 vote to move forward in implementing the new system to streamline the intake and routing of requests for access to nonpublic gTLD registration data. This follows a recommendation from the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Council that ICANN org's implementation of this system would assist the ICANN board in its dialogue with the GNSO Council on the outstanding policy recommendations related to a System for Standardized Access/Disclosure. The system is based on the design presented in the WHOIS Disclosure System design paper, which was produced at the request of a GNSO Small Team advising the GNSO Council. The new system is a test case for usage; participation is voluntary for ICANN-accredited registrars. Internet users and registrars can expect a more streamlined and easier process for requesting and granting access to nonpublic data. ICANN org's implementation of this system will not supplant or undermine the bottom-up, consensus-based multistakeholder policy development process. ICANN org will closely work with the GNSO Small Team and the community, if implementation work begins.

Taken together, these developments should prepare the ICANN community for the evolution of accessing public gTLD registration data, as well as requesting access to nonpublic gTLD registration data held by registrars.

Authors

Theresa Swinehart

Theresa Swinehart

SVP, Global Domains & Strategy
Theresa Swinehart

Theresa Swinehart

SVP, Global Domains & Strategy

Theresa Swinehart is the Senior Vice President of Global Domains and Strategy. In this role, she works with the community, contracted parties, stakeholders, and policymakers to ensure broad and inclusive engagement, consensus-based policymaking through ICANN’s multistakeholder model, and effective, accountable policy implementation. Her responsibilities include policy implementation, review operation, and cross-functional strategic initiatives such as ICANN’s compliance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. An expert in global Internet governance, Theresa also serves as co-deputy to the President and CEO. Her extensive industry experience, including nearly 20 years as a key contributor to ICANN’s growth and development, gives her a valuable perspective on how ICANN organization can work efficiently and collaboratively to better serve the global Internet community.

Theresa rejoined ICANN after three years as Executive Director of Global Internet Policy at Verizon Communications, where she specialized in emerging issues as well as stakeholder and policy engagement. Prior to this, she served as ICANN’s Vice President of Global and Strategic Partnerships, leading a team responsible for partnership reform, global engagement and outreach, and the participation in international forums. Before ICANN, Theresa was Director of Global E-Commerce at MCI, where she was responsible for such issues as Internet service provider liability, data protection, and participation in Internet-related forums, including the formation of ICANN. 

Theresa has a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the University of California, Davis, a graduate degree in international studies from the University of Vienna, Austria, and a juris doctorate from American University. She served on the Internet Society’s Board of Trustees and Internet Governance Forum’s Multistakeholder Advisory Committee. Theresa began her career in international human rights. She is fluent in German and is conversant in French.

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