--On Friday, September 07, 2012 10:33 +0100 Stewart Bryant
<stbryant(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com> wrote:
On 07/09/2012 07:49, Eliot Lear wrote:
An I-D will only be removed from the public I-D archive in
compliance
with a duly authorized court order.
Would
"An I-D will only be removed from the public I-D archive if
legally required to do so."
fix the ambiguity?
IMO, probably, But ask Jorge. Note, however, that this opens up
another ambiguity. If a DMCA notice, or something like it from
another jurisdiction, is received, that may not be a legal
requirement to take something down, merely a request that
presents us with alternatives between compliance and assuming
liability for not doing so. If this restated policy requires
ignoring such requests, that is a _big_ decision. It is also,
IMO, a dangerous and unsustainable one if we are going to
continue to permit anyone to post anything as an I-D as long as
it meets format requirements.
I still believe that this is the wrong answer -- that the IESG
(or someone) has to have discretion to take something down with
a minimum of fuss if circumstances arise that this nit-picking
about language doesn't anticipate. Example, which would
probably be covered by "legally required" but the next one might
not: Suppose someone posted a blatant example of child port as
part of an I-D. The law in some jurisdictions require that such
material be taken down (and possibly some other actions taken)
the moment we become aware of it (if not sooner). Want to
insist that the IESG wait for a court order when that court
order might come in the form of criminal charges with severe
penalties? Want to wait after that, until there is a conviction
(hint: that could easily result, much earlier, in a court order
to seize and take down, not the particular I-D, but our servers).
An even better answer might be to figure out why we need to
maintain a public archive of expired documents. As someone else
said, the ability to do diffs is a pretty weak reason. Even if
that were important, we could solve a huge fraction of the
actual requirement by adopting a model of:
-- I-Ds are fully public until they expire (six months,
when replaced, or, under still-unspecified conditions,
earlier)
-- Expired I-Ds are kept online and public for an
additional grace period of, say, three months. That
allows for easy diffs. If six months are needed instead
of three, so be it.
-- After that, they are available on individual
request at the discretion of the Secretariat, in
response to court orders (which give the Secretariat no
discretion), etc.
For most purposes, that changes the "removal" question into an
"early expiration" one -- both "early expiration" from the main
I-D directories and "early expiration of the grace period".
Just my opinion.
john