ICANN reported on the results of its Registration Data Request Service (RDRS) in May of this year. The service is an ICANN project and is intended to disclose data at the request of individuals and legal entities with a legitimate interest in non-public registration data. RDRS was launched last December and is in a two-year testing phase.
The main thing that attracts attention in the May statistics is the record low number of requests for disclosure of personal data of domain name registrants in May. If in December last year (in the first full month of the service’s operation) it was 173, and in January 2024 – 290 (the maximum result so far), then in May – only 156. 46 requests were sent by law enforcement agencies, but copyright holders, previously very active - in February, for example, 117 requests were received from them - suddenly they suddenly lost interest: in May they requested data on registrants only 37 times.
The number of calls to the service has also been reduced to a minimum - it should be understood that not every call ends with a formal request for data disclosure. If in December 2023 the number of requests was 2349, then in April it was already 1435, and in May it dropped to 1393. Moreover, only a quarter of all requests concerned domain names managed by registrar companies that joined the support of the RDRS.
The proportion of requests granted and rejected has remained virtually unchanged for several months: in approximately 20% of cases, registrant data is disclosed, and in approximately 70% of cases it is not. The processing time for requests has decreased slightly: in May, if the request was granted, registrants’ data was disclosed in an average of 11.34 days (in April, this figure was two weeks); it was possible to receive a refusal somewhat faster - on average in 9.77 days.
The Domain Incite, reporting this news, offers two explanations for the decrease in the number of requests and requests. The first is that the service’s audience is disappointed in its capabilities and does not want to deal with it. The second explanation sounds more optimistic: the audience has understood the principles of the service and no longer loads it with obviously meaningless requests and requests. It can also be added that during May, three more registrar companies joined the support of the RDRS, and the share of domain names covered by the service increased from 57% to 59% of the total number in the world.
