On Wed, 10 Nov 2010, Ian Jackson wrote:
A written policy does a number of things:
For a guy who comes from a stable western democracy without a written constitution you place an awful lot of value on the written word. ;)
My position stands that it is unnecessary and unreasonable for us to dictate how member projects conduct their business beyond asking them to keep us away from liability.
I am, as they say, not a lawyer, but I would think a document saying that we don't permit these practices makes us liable when they happen because we have accepted that they are within our jurisdiction.
This is a common misperception that if you warn someone that something bad will happen, you have done your duty. However, if you put a sign on your house saying "vicious dog" and a crook gets bitten, you have actually made yourself liable by admitting you know the dog is vicious. You would not be if it was just your cute and cuddly dog that you innocently left in your house that happened to eat your home invader's right arm.
You can overthink and overlegislate but ultimately it can end up causing SPI as an organisation more harm than good. The duty of SPI's board is to protect the organisation from liability and problems arising, it is up to our member organisations and their members to act reasonably. So I say again that if we want to put out any kind of document of this nature, it simply be a statement that any SPI member organisation acting as an SPI member organisation commits to doing what it can to not put itself and therefore SPI in a position of liability, and we strongly recommend that you only hold your conferences in countries where the rule of law applies.
D - - David Graham [email protected] _______________________________________________ Spi-general mailing list [email protected] http://lists.spi-inc.org/listinfo/spi-general
