About Edgemoor

Edgemoor Research Institute (“Edgemoor”) facilitates the development and analyses of proposed and existing policies regarding the collection and access to registration data, including personally identifying information.  Edgemoor serves the public interest by creating and promulgating concepts and tools that provide precise specification of data collection, labeling and access.  Edgemoor brings together stakeholders from around the world, including non-profit, for-profit, government, end-users, and other stakeholders, to share knowledge and establish voluntary technical solutions to complex data-related public policy challenges.

In each area of research, there will be a distinct framework that embodies concepts underlying possible policies and allows for real-time examination of potential changes. Policymakers, researchers, and organizations that may be affected by proposed changes will be able to fully understand the implications of those changes before they are codified into legally binding agreements or access control policies.

Many public policies regarding the collection and dissemination of personal data are formulated in terms of requirements for the various parties.  The details of what data is to be collected and precisely which parties may have access to the data are often specified only indistinctly.  Moreover, the justifications for the policies are often implied or based on assumptions without quantified justification.

Policy bodies and organizations that collect or access registration data will use these concepts and tools to formulate their own policies and to interact with their counterparts to compare and reach consensus on policies.

Based on the outcome and interactions with other organization, additional research on the creation and use of quantifiable metrics of efficiency and effectiveness.  In particular, the precision frameworks developed by Edgemoor will provide a basis for analyzing how proposed changes in policies might affect these metrics.

Privacy regulations, e.g., the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and similar regulations in other jurisdictions, play an important role in data collection and dissemination policies.  One of Edgemoor’s goals is to provide the urgently needed tools to compare and analyze policy requirements for governments, policy-making bodies, and organizations that collect, disseminate, and request data.

Our Work

Edgemoor’s initial effort is Project Jake.  Project Jake focuses on the Registration Data Directory Service (RDDS) – commonly known as WHOIS – that allows for accountability, ownership data, and general contact information related to domain name registrations.

Learn More about Project Jake

Learn more HERE about our model and framework for sharing registration data efficiently, legally, and cost effectively.

Learn more about ERI's goals

Click HERE for our PDF, “Changing the Model: Rethinking registration data collection and disclosure”

Legal Structure

Edgemoor Research Institute, incorporated in 2020, is a 501(c)(3) corporation.

Board of Directors

Dr. Stephen Crocker, PhD

Director, President, CEO

Steve Crocker is an Internet pioneer who helped developed the protocols for the Arpanet and created the Request for Comment (RFC) series that document Internet protocols.  He has worked in research, government and business for the past fifty years.  He has specialized in network security research.  He was the founding chair of ICANN’s Security and Stability Committee, was a member of the ICANN board and chair of the board from 2011 to 2017.  Dr. Crocker holds a B.A. in math and a PhD in computer science from UCLA.  For the past three years he has been working with a small group to develop the framework for expressing and analyzing registration data directory service policies.

Scott Bradner

Director, Secretary

Scott Bradner was involved in the design, operation and use of data networks at Harvard University since the early days of the ARPANET. He was involved in the design of the original Harvard data networks, the Longwood Medical Area network (LMAnet) and New England Academic and Research Network (NEARnet). He was founding chair of the technical committees of LMAnet, NEARnet and the Corporation for Research and Enterprise Network (CoREN).

Mr. Bradner served in a number of roles in the IETF. He was the co-director of the Operational Requirements Area (1993-1997), IPng Area (1993-1996), Transport Area (1997-2003) and Sub-IP Area (2001-2003). He was a member of the IESG (1993-2003) and was an elected trustee of the

Internet Society (1993-1999), where he was the VP for Standards from 1995 to 2003 and Secretary to the Board of Trustees from 2003 to 2016. Scott was also a member of the IETF Administrative Support Activity (IASA) as well as a trustee of the IETF Trust from 2012 to 2016.

Mr. Bradner retired from Harvard University in 2016 after 50 years working there in the areas of in computer programming, system management, networking, IT security and identity management.  He still does some patent related consulting.

Cedarampattu (Ram) Mohan

Director, Treasurer

Ram Mohan has over 20 years’ experience in technology, leadership and entrepreneurship within both publicly listed and private companies. He was the COO and a founding management team member at Afilias, one of the most renowned domain name registry companies in the world, and recently sold the company to Donuts, Inc. Previously he worked at Infonautics Corp., First Data Corporation, Unisys Corporation and KPMG. He served on the ICANN board of directors from November 2008 to October 2018. He has advised several governments on internet security and internet globalization issues. Ram is an inventor on eleven patents for his work in Internet technology.

Sarah Deutsch

Director

Sarah Deutsch is a practicing attorney with considerable experience on Internet policy, intellectual property, privacy and related legal issues. Sarah worked for over 23 years at Verizon Communications as Vice President and Deputy General Counsel in its Legal Department. She managed the company’s global intellectual property practice and team of legal and technical personnel responsible for trademarks, domain names, copyrights, patent licensing and unfair competition issues. Sarah has extensive experience in Internet policy issues, and served as the primary subject matter expert in the Legal Department responsible for Internet issues since the mid 1990s.  She has extensive experience in IP, online liability issues, privacy, cyber-security and consumer protection issues and was the first attorney to oversee Verizon’s Privacy Office, including managing its Chief Privacy Officer, privacy attorneys and staff. She was a Lecturer of Law at Harvard Law School, teaching a class in online privacy in 2019.

Sarah was one of five negotiators for the U.S. telecommunications industry in the negotiations that led to the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. She also served as a Private Sector Advisor to U.S. Delegation to the WIPO Copyright Treaties and to the G8 Cybercrime Conference. Sarah was the 2014 recipient of the Managing IP In-House Counsel Award at the American Women in Business Law Awards. In 2009, she received the Public Knowledge President’s Award for Extraordinary Dedication to Protecting the Free Flow of Information Over the Internet. Sarah currently serves on the Board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the National Center for Health Research. Sarah holds a J.D. from American University, Washington College of Law and a B.A. from Emory University.

Dan Lynch

Director

Dan Lynch, 79, is a private investor and retired. He is a co-founder of CyberCash, Inc.. He also founded Interop which highlights the technology of the Internet. As a member of ACM and ISOC, Lynch is active in computer networking with a primary focus in promoting the unfettered spread of the Internet.

He was Director of Computing Facilities at SRI International in the mid to late 70’s. He formerly served as manager of the computing laboratory for the Artificial Intelligence Center at SRI, which conducts research in robotics, vision, speech understanding, automatic theorem proving and distributed databases. While at SRI he performed initial development of the TCP/IP protocols in conjunction with Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN).

As Director of Information Processing Division for the Information Sciences Institute in Marina del Rey (USC-ISI) Lynch led the Arpanet team that made the transition from the original NCP protocols to the current TCP/IP based protocols. He directed this effort from 1980 until 1983. It was the last corporate job he ever had.  Things were happening out in the world and he wanted to be in that new game.  A few “educational” stumbles occurred before he started Interop in 1986.

Lynch received undergraduate training in mathematics and philosophy from Loyola Marymount University in 1963 and obtained a Master’s Degree in mathematics from UCLA  in 1965.

Dan now lives full time in St. Helena, California where he is enjoying the life of a retired person.  He is really waiting until Spring is upon us in the Napa Valley.   Vegetable gardening is for feeding the body  and tenderly tending the cacti is his meditation.  He devotes much of his time serving on boards of non profits such as OLE Health Foundation, NapaLearns and CorStone.

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