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Re: "Controlled" vs "Managed" (Re: ASCII diff of ISOC-proposed changes to BCP)

2005-02-11 09:37:50

For myself, I find the arguments on both sides of "controlled"
and "managed" to be compelling -- perhaps because I am not a
lawyer.

However, I am conscious that the words we write down are scrutinized
and used by people the world over -- not always to our benefit,
and often without any of the context that caused us to write
them [*].

So, if the token really doesn't mean anything (per Jorge) because
the import is in the text of the document, perhaps the right
answer is to just *drop* that clause.

"This document describes the structure of the IETF Administrative
 Support Activity (IASA) as an [delete] activity housed within the
 Internet Society (ISOC)."

That makes the entire abstract:

"
This document describes the structure of the IETF Administrative Support
Activity (IASA) as an activity housed within the Internet Society
(ISOC). It defines the roles and responsibilities of the IETF
Administrative Oversight Committee (IAOC), the IETF Administrative
Director (IAD), and ISOC in the fiscal and administrative support of the
IETF standards process. It also defines the membership and selection
rules for the IAOC.
"

I think this is still clear about where responsibilities lie; the
document defines them in more detail; there is less possibility
for misconception (by using either "controlled" or "managed",
depending on your perspective).


Leslie.

[*] A specific example, in a contribution to ITU re. e164.arpa:

As can be seen from:
        http://www.iana.org/arpa-dom/e164.htm
the domain “e164.arpa” is delegated to:
        Internet Architecture Board (IAB)
        c/o IETF Secretariat
        Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI)
        1895 Preston White Drive
        Suite 100
        Reston, Virginia 20191-5434
The IAB has no legal personality of its own, nor does the IETF. So it
would appear that the legal entity which can control changes to the
entries under “e164.arpa” is the Corporation for National Research
Initiatives (CNRI).

The whois entry is written this way because the IAB has no (other)
mailing address.  It does *not* mean that CNRI is in control of
the e164.arpa domain, but that's what this expression apparently
means to people.

It's this sort of thing that leads me to (personally) prefer the
use of the term "controlled", if we're going to use a term. But,
if that term introduces misconceptions on the legal side, I'd
rather just drop the whole thing.




Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:


--On 11. februar 2005 07:03 -0500 Margaret Wasserman
<margaret(_at_)thingmagic(_dot_)com> wrote:

So, with my ISOC Board hat on (a hat which none of the ISOC Board members
are legally allowed to take off), I am not inclined to ignore legal
advice from ISOC's corporate counsel.  Maybe the IETF Chair could ask the
IETF lawyer (Jorge) whether changing the word from "controlled" to
"managed" has any bad legal implications for the IETF?


I asked Jorge, and here's what he said:

this is a political point rather than a legal one.
The precise nature of the control/management is described
elsewhere, so this is just a characterization rather than
operative (executable) language.


So based on that advice, I'm not inclined to make a fuss over the
term..... but somewhat surprised that ISOC's lawyer thinks it's
fuss-worthy.

                      Harald


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