WHOIS Review Update June 2017

Amendment to the Operations and Procedures (OP) policy – WHOIS Registrant Privacy Option. 

DNCL has been consulting on a review of the .nz WHOIS service. Thanks to everyone who provided us with feedback.  We wanted to hear your views, and we have listened to the feedback.

This update outlines where the review has ultimately ended up. Through the review, we’ve been working with the local Internet community including many stakeholders and other interested parties. We’ve also run five rounds of consultation to get direct feedback.

In late April our fifth public consultation closed. Comment was sought on proposed new policy wording around WHOIS covering three issues. 
1.    Introducing a Registrant Privacy Option
2.    Defining a process for requesting withheld data
3.    Amending the reference to ‘WHOIS’
We received 14 submissions. We were grateful for this ongoing level of engagement. 

At its recent meeting, the DNCL Board agreed to the final policy with some minor amendments to the policy consulted on following comments received.  

It was acknowledged that NZRS and Registrars would be impacted by the proposal to implement a Registrant Privacy Option for WHOIS.  DNCL discussed possible timeframes for implementation with NZRS and with registrars at the recently held Registrar Advisory Group meeting and provided their feedback to the Board.  Six months was the minimum timeframe required but some registrars commented that they would require a longer period. 

It was agreed that the revised policy around WHOIS would come into effect on 28 November 2017.  On this date, NZRS will have the changes implemented in the SRS and registrars will be able to offer individual registrants the privacy option but it will not be mandatory until 28 March 2018 when all registrars will be required to comply with this policy change. During the period between November 2017 and March 2018 DNCL will amend the registrar table on the DNCL website to show which registrars are offering the service.

The DNCL is currently developing detailed guides and FAQs for the current pre-implementation phase and again after implementation. 
You can see the changes below, both will be effective on 28 November 2017

Pending Principles and Responsibilities v1.1 here 
Pending Operations and Procedures v2.1 here

The archived FAQs for the Fifth WHOIS Consultation are available here