--On Monday, November 28, 2011 14:10 -0500 IETF Chair <ch...@ietf.org> wrote:
> Ted: > >> The IETF legal counsel and insurance agent suggest that the >> IETF ought to have an antitrust policy. To address this >> need, a lawyer is needed. As a way forward, I suggest that >> IASA pay a lawyer to come up with an initial draft, and then >... >> Sorry, can you expand on the threat model here? Are we >> developing one in order to defend against some specific worry >> about our not having one? Because it has become best >> practice in other SDOs? Because the insurance agent wishes >> to see something in particular? >... > Recent suits against other SDOs is the source of the concern. > The idea is t make it clear which topics are off limits at > IETF meetings and on IETF mail lists. In this way, if such > discussions take place, the good name of the IETF can be kept > clean. Russ, I haven't tracked the question of who is suing which SDOs and over what in recent years but my recollection from longer ago is that the antitrust ("anticompetitiveness" in other vocabularies) issues fell into three categories, all having to do with issues of conspiracies to do bad things: (i) what can be discussed under the umbrella of the SDO (ii) who can have a conversation with whom except under controlled circumstances (iii) who can do what to whom YOur note seems to address the first. Unless things have changed, it is almost pointless to do so without also addressing the other two. The document Sam and Dave suggested would help a lot here. But, before starting down this path, we should also be aware that the second and third issues tend to be expressed in terms of companies and industrial sectors. As an example of one such policy, "participants from two companies in the same industrial sector cannot meet and have a discussion unless neutral third parties (also defined in industry sector terms) are present" has been used, as have ones that divide participants up into "industry", "user/consumer", and "government" sectors and establish rules on that basis. Similarly, decision-making bodies in which participants from two or three companies in a particular industry are present but others are not are often considered suspect if not outright prohibited. So establishing an antitrust policy could easily take us away from the "participation as individuals" path and toward a "participation as representatives of companies" one, with all that implies. I'd encourage you, and the IAOC/Trust, to get legal advice as to whether initiating a public process to define such rules and then possibly deciding that they are inappropriate could not, itself, increase our vunerability. Modulo the above, I think your suggested procedure is reasonable. john _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf