Is WHOIS going to go away?

Sat Apr 14 22:26:47 UTC 2018

On April 14, 2018 at 19:00 rubensk at gmail.com (Rubens Kuhl) wrote:
 > 
 > 
 > On Sat, Apr 14, 2018 at 6:46 PM, <bzs at theworld.com> wrote:
 > 
 > 
 >     GDPR only has jurisdiction over individuals who are citizens of
 >     countries which are members of the EU. About 27 countries out of
 >     almost 200 in this world. And companies which manage that data and are
 >     also within the EU's jurisdiction.
 > 
 > 
 > 
 > Try finding a company in this area that does not have a subsidiary in the EU,
 > acquired an EU company, is based in the EU or has EU resellers. 

What area? Do you mean geographical or trade?

My company doesn't fit that description.

Non-ccTLD registrars and registries (and RIRs in this case) have a
certain contractual relationship with ICANN.

But ccTLDs seem a pretty good counter-example, I doubt CNNIC accepts
EU legal authority for .CN, there are probably over 150 examples like
that.

Do you imagine the EU will try to hold CNNIC to GDPR requirements?

 > 
 >  
 > 
 >     But that jurisdiction arises from an individual's EU nation
 >     citizenship.
 > 
 >     So why not just have a checkmark at domain registration which asks
 >     whether you believe yourself to be within the EU's jurisdiction and,
 >     if so, no WHOIS publication for you, or very limited.
 > 
 > 
 > For the companies that are subject to GDPR, they have to do this for every
 > natural person, not only the EU ones. 
 > 
 > So this checkmark could in fact be "The registrant is a legal person, not a
 > natural person". 

No, because EU regulation doesn't apply to anything even approaching a
majority of persons on this planet.

There are about 500M people within the EU, and arguably the
regulations can also extend to those doing business with companies
doing any business within the EU.

Nonetheless there are still about 7 billion people on the planet of
which around 3 billion or so regularly use the internet and maybe 300M
who own domain names, etc.

And the extent to which a company might be beholden to an EU
regulation such as this in the case of a non-EU citizen merely due to
EU legal jurisdiction over that company (or one of its subsidiaries)
is, to be kind, unsettled law.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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