Over the previous week, Afilias registry took two contradictory decisions regarding regulation of the service Whois. At the beginning of the week, Afilias had informed all its registrars that from May 25 they would have to remove all personal data of domain name registrants from public Whois records. The information would only be available to the law enforcement upon request. The aim was to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that will become binding throughout the EU in May. According to Domain Incite, the decision would have affected over 20 Afilias-managed domain zones.
Several days later, though, the company issued a clarification that in fact rescinded the decision. Afilias representatives said the previous instructions to the registrars contained “mischaracterizations.” They said that the registry will keep the format of Whois records until ICANN completes talks with EU Data Protection Authorities (DPA). As earlier reported, ICANN President Göran Marby forwarded a letter to DPAs of all the 28 EU member states asking them to find a compromise solution that both meets the GDPR requirements and preserves the functioning of Whois.
