Fwiw,
On Mar 19, 2015 5:16 PM, "Joel M. Halpern" <jmh(_at_)joelhalpern(_dot_)com>
wrote:
I read "local law" as meaning the law where the interaction is taking
place.
As did I.
While that can get very complicated for electronic interaction, for the
example you chose to cite it is very clear. If Charlie Hebdo's cover
violates local law where you are reading it, you have chosen to ask for
more trouble than just a discussion with the IETF harrasment ombudsman.
Indeed.
Spencer
Yours,
Joel
PS: While one can indeed decline the advice of attorney, one needs to be
very sure of the reasons for the advice, and the implications of declining,
before doing so.
On 3/19/15 6:05 PM, Dan Harkins wrote:
Hi Pete,
On Thu, March 19, 2015 2:31 pm, Pete Resnick wrote:
On 3/19/15 2:54 PM, Michael StJohns wrote:
Version -06 of draft-farresnickel-harassment has this small phrase
that was added in this version:
Any definition of
harassment prohibited by an applicable law can be
subject to this set of
procedures.
This was added at the behest of the attorneys that did the legal review.
I find "prohibited by an applicable law" to be somewhat problematic
and overreaching.
This should be removed. If something is a violation of applicable
law, then the folks responsible for that law should deal with it, not
us. We should be dealing with harassment that impinges on the IETFs
creation of standards and not with harassment that has little or no
nexus with the IETF.
You have misread the sentence (for which I don't blame you; see below).
It is not talking about dealing with acts that are violations of local
law. What it says is that the procedures in this document *can* be
applied to an act that falls under the definition of harassment that
appears in a local law. That is, if a local law says that harassment
includes commenting on the stripe pattern of someone's shoes, a person
*may* bring a complaint of harassment to the Ombudsteam and ask that
these procedures be used.
Is this bringing our standards down to the lowest common denominator
in the world? Your example is (intentionally, I presume) trivial but not
by much. Let me try a real world example:
If I am sitting in the lobby of the IETF hotel reading Charlie Hebdo
and
the cover has something someone finds offensive and that might, in fact,
be a violation of a law in their home country am I subject to becoming
a Respondent? Even if it's not a violation of the law but the person
feels
like he or she has been harassed by viewing the cover of my magazine
am I subject to becoming a Respondent?
I did not think that the wording was particularly clear, but it is the
wording that the attorneys felt would be legally useful.
Sometimes it's OK to politely decline to take an attorney's advice.
regards,
Dan.