National Communications Commission (NCC) officials are to meet with representatives from government agencies and industry groups today to discuss how the government should respond to the potential effect on access to WHOIS caused by the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is to take effect on Friday next week.
WHOIS is a protocol used to query databases that store the registered users or assignees of an Internet resource, such as a domain name, an IP address block or an autonomous system.
The Taiwan Network Information Center (TWINC), an NCC agency, is in charge of proposing responses to the new EU regulation, as well as assessing how the regulation would affect Taiwan in the short and long term.
The new regulation would apply to all business operators, and would be used to regulate how they gather personal data.
Companies deemed to have contravened GDPR would be subject to punishment by EU national data protection authorities.
The interim model proposed by ICANN would hide any domain registry operator’s personal data from the public, including their name, address, telephone number and e-mail address, the commission said.
TWINC manages domain names that end in “.tw,” a country-code top-level domain, which can be controlled by the nation itself, the commission said, adding that TWINC does not have any contract with ICANN.
Nevertheless, to comply with the new EU regulation, TWINC has covered the data of domain operators registered in EU member states, the commission said.
The WHOIS system allows users to find the names, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses of domain owners or administrators using a Web site’s address, NCC Department of Frequency and Resources Deputy Director Chen Chun-mu (陳春木) said.
Due to the new EU regulation, TWINC is to block the personal data of European domain operators under its management from being viewed by the public, unless it has secured the consent of operators to disclose such information, he said.
The commission said it would meet today with representatives from the Ministry of Justice, the Executive Yuan’s Consumer Protection Committee, the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Intellectual Property Office, the National Police Agency, the Institute for Information Industry, the Taipei Bar Association and the National Information Infrastructure Enterprise Promotion Association.
At the meeting, TWINC is to present its proposed responses to the effects caused by the enforcement of the new EU regulation.
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