Is 2018 the death year for WHOIS?



Is 2018 the death year for WHOIS?
Some may agree that WHOIS queries violate someone’s privacy and many may disagree. Doesn’t matter what everyone thinks, 2018 may be the death year for WHOIS.
But why am I and everyone else suddenly talking about this?
Well, it’s not all that sudden. May 25th this year, GDPR, General Data Protection Regulation of EU will take drastic measures for industries handling personal data including the industry of Domain Name registration and reservation.
Already the domain name industry started to scramble figuring out a way to comply with new regulations while running against the clock with the vague guidelines from ICANN and the EU.
New Privacy regulation
GDPR works to protect the privacy of the citizens and residents of the EU. They will not only handle the companies based in the EU but also every company that handles any information regarding the residents of the EU.
According to Thomas Rickert, Head of Numbers and Name Forum at Eco, that represents domain name registries and registrars, the goal of the new regulations is to unify and strengthen data protection for every citizen of the European Union.
The aim of these new regulations is to increase transparency and to minimize the data collection. The main two principals are privacy by design and privacy by default. This will ensure that when any company offers you any service, rather than an opt-out, privacy is a must by default.
GDPR is very strict with the new regulations. It is clear by the declaration that indicates: companies that violate these regulations, will be fined up to 4% of annual revenue or 20 Million euros. Besides, the responsible authorities can be sued over the violation of privacy to EU citizens.
Now, the domain name companies cannot but pay proper attention to GDPR.
Elliot Noss, CEO at Tucows stated that there will be an impact and GDPR would change the whole delivery process of proxy services, privacy, and public WHOIS.
It is clear that GDPR will affect WHOIS for sure including what data registrars collect about the clients and with whom they share the information.  
How will it affect the domain companies?
Each and every party that has a contract with the ICANN will feel the impact, including; registries, registrars, data escrow agencies, and even the ICANN itself.
ICANN has already set up ad hoc groups to justify and evaluate GDPR and to figure out how to respond to the situation. It created a data flow matrix in its domain name process and to let public comments reach them. After that, it’ll need a legal assessment to figure out the way to comply with GDPR.
Like, it might determine that some particular information needs to be gathered for providing a domain registration to a client. But is it necessary that the information is passed towards the registry? Or does it require publishing?
The default setting is data wouldn’t be processed or collected and that’s why ICANN and the contracted parties would need to have a valid reason before collecting or publishing the data.
Will 2018 be the year when WHOIS dies?
By the discussion above, it is clear that the new regulations will secure the information of the EU citizens. But outside the EU, WHOIS queries will not stop completely, at least not inthe next 1-2 years. So no worries for rest of the world.

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