Author: Sophie Hey

Since GDPR came into force the question of the future or Whois has been asked. In May the ICANN Board adopted 27 of the 29 recommendations from Phase 1 of the Expedited Policy Development Process for gTLD Registration Data (EPDP). What’s next?

Recently, WIPO announced that as of 1 August 2019, they will provide domain name dispute resolution services for .CN and .中国 (China) country code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD).

During the first half of 2019 three reports on combatting harms and wrongdoing online were published.

On 24 April the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) released their 2018 Annual Report: Once Upon a Year. The IWF is an independent self-regulated organisation with a vision to eliminate child sexual abuse online. The remit of the IWF is to remove child sexual abuse content hosted anywhere in the world, and non-photographic child sexual abuse images hosted in the United Kingdom.

ICANN is planning to renew four ‘legacy’ TLD contracts (.ORG, .INFO, .ASIA, .BIZ), which it has issued for public comment following renewal negotiations with the registry operators.

A special working group charged with coming up with changes to the Whois service that bring it in line with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) published its initial report on 21 November 2018 and opened it up for public comment. The Initial Report responds to the call to answer a set of questions and determine if the Temporary Specification for gTLD Registration Data should become a General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)-compliant ICANN Consensus Policy as is, or one with modifications.