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Re: Can employers forbid you from talking about IETF activities?

2001-05-30 10:10:03
Very simply, the press has no right (that I know of) to demand that anyone respond to press reporters' questions, though I suppose reporters have the right to publish the fact that people will not talk to them. Yet, even this seems to me to be out of bounds in most cases, unless it is an official statement of a company that the company does not wish to make a statement.

I expect that stating that "Joe Blow of XYZ Corporation", as a named individual, "refuses to answer a reporter's questions because of company policy" is out of bounds unless the statement comes from a company official as an official statement of the company.

There are lots of reasons why people do not like to talk to Press Reporters, and there is no reason for them to be absolutely accurate in citing the reasons why they do not wish to speak to reporters and be reported. So, if someone tells you that their company forbids them to speak to you, what tells you that this answer is even close to the truth (for reporting purposes).

How likely is it that they are just throwing up a smoke screen to conveniently (and politely) end the conversation? On what basis can a reporter claim any validity for such a response?

So, as I see it, the press does have free speech rights,
but but so do interviewees have free silence rights;-)...
(Silence of course being a form of Speech;-)...

And, in any case, the open work of an IETF working group is openly available in the open discussions on open mailing lists and in open WG face meetings, and in openly published IETF DRAFTS.

Cheers...\Stef




At 08:20 -0400 30/05/01, pete(_at_)loshin(_dot_)com wrote:
I write about IETF-related topics for a number of publications and websites.
Most IETF participants are incredibly helpful and responsive when I ask them
questions about the work they are doing, particularly authors of RFCs and I-Ds.

However, there are (infrequent) exceptions, usually employees of large
companies who believe that their contracts forbid them from speaking to the
press, under any circumstances. These folks usually say something like, "My
company won't allow me to say anything about the RFC I wrote" and refer me to
their public relations staff.

RFC 2418, "IETF Working Group Guidelines and Procedures", states:

   Participation is by individual technical contributors, rather than by
   formal representatives of organizations.

I take that to mean that IETF activities are separate from employment
activities.

Further, as an open organization, IETF activities are not supposed to come
under non-disclosure agreements or receive intellectual property protections.
So there should be no reason why an individual could not talk about what he or
she does within the IETF.

As IETF standards track specifications continue to gain importance to the
world at large, IETF participants need to understand their obligations and
rights to discuss these activities with outsiders--whether from the business
world, the academic world, or "the media".

The alternative, IMO, is to have IETF participants who are employed by
industry companies such as Cisco and Microsoft viewed as official
representatives of their companies rather than as individual (and independent)
participants.

Please discuss.

-pl


--
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| Pete Loshin             http://www.loshin.com               |
| pete(_at_)loshin(_dot_)com         +1 781/646-6318                     |
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| Senior Editor-at-Large  Information Security Magazine       |
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