Re: Registration for remote participation


FWIW, I personally consider almost all so-called IPR in the IETF's
space to be BS, so I am entirely happy that we ignore such issues to
the fullest possible extent. (While recognising that we do have to
pretend to respect some of that nonsense, sadly.)

I am also personally unhappy when we pander to the pretence that
the relevant output of entities like the USPTO are "inventions."
I base my attitude on my personal perception that a very high five
nines of supposedly relevant patent claims that I have read are
just crap. I do not ask that anyone else (dis)agrees with me.

So, yes, some IETF participants do need to pay attention to that
gibberish, and I'm ok with living with their being impaired in
that manner, but only to the extent that that is a necessary evil.

IOW, let's prefer usability to idiocy.

S.

On 11/05/17 18:35, Stephan Wenger wrote:

Hi Andrew, please see inline.




On 5/11/17, 05:14, "ietf on behalf of Andrew Sullivan" 
<ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org on behalf of 
ajs(_at_)anvilwalrusden(_dot_)com> wrote:

On Wed, May 10, 2017 at 07:47:20PM +0000, Stephan Wenger wrote:


Iâ€™m in favor of validating the address, for example by sending some form 
of credential to it; without the credential, only listening/reading access 
is granted.  Doesnâ€™t have to be bullet-proof, but using 
example(_at_)example(_dot_)com shouldnâ€™t work.  This is obviously in 
order to obtain one semi-traceable record of the participant.


We don't do that for in-person participants, because we no longer even
collect the email address on the blue sheets.  (We do it for meeting
registration, of course, but we don't have a way to pair that with
participation in any given part of the meeting, so the IPR issue is
harder to argue by analogy here.)


The question is not whether we collect email addresses.  The question is 
whether we collect the identification of the individual and its employer, 
bother with reasonable certainty.  IIRC, one reason for the change from email 
address to company name was made because, today, many people use non-employer 
email for IETF work even if they do the work mostly on behalf of their 
employer and as part of their job, and tracking down the participantâ€™s 
employer from the email address for things like Noncom eligibility and also 
IPR related issues didnâ€™t work anymore (if it ever did).  (there were also 
other motivations, including the handy creation of a SPAM list from IETF 
archival material such as the proceedings).

For an in-person meeting, we (or a court) have many ways to identify a person 
who influences the decision process.  For an external person, especially when 
there is no video, we are more limited.  A non-verified email address is 
certainly easier to fake than the recollection of a roomful of people during 
a physical meeting.

And 5) click-through of the Note Well (unless thatâ€™s done in some other 
phase of the remote participation, like when signing-in to meetecho).  
Again for--I hope obvious--IPR related reasons.


We _certainly_ don't do that for in-person meetings.  We put the Note
Well up and assume that anyone who is in the room and who makes a
Contribution in any way is aware of it.  Joining the meeting virtually
has the same property, no?


Actually, No.  In an in-person meeting, the hurdle of missing a note well is 
pretty high.  When you are at a physical meeting and get bombarded with a 
Note Well not only during registration time, but also daily several times at 
the begin of WG sessions, you and your lawyer would have a hard time to argue 
that you were not aware of it (and therefore perhaps free of certain 
obligations you otherwise have per policy).  OTOH, assuming no click-through 
or similar, a good lawyer could conceivably make the case that his client was 
not aware of the Note Well and associated policy when influencing an IETF 
decision process of a certain document, especially if that person is not an 
IETF regular and dials in only for one WG session (and perhaps a bit late to 
that).  Then, the good lawyer could conceivably argue that certain 
obligations (such as the obligation to disclose patents) were not known to 
that client of his.  And finally, the lawyer could argue that, therefore, the 
obligations do not apply.  (Note that I didnâ€™t include the word 
â€œsuccessfulâ€ in the last sentence.)

There has been one fairly prominent case where a company choose to send 
undercover participants to standards meetings, in order to (so the court 
found IIRC) circumvent obligations by the standards committee.  We should not 
facilitate such behavior.  That case and ours are not directly comparable, 
but IMO not dissimilar in their nature.

Stephan


A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs(_at_)anvilwalrusden(_dot_)com

signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature