Re: [Gendispatch] I-D Action: draft-halpern-gendispatch-antitrust-00.txt

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

On 08-Sep-21 10:59, Rob Sayre wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 7, 2021 at 3:35 PM Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
> 
>     On 08-Sep-21 06:06, Eliot Lear wrote:
>     > They are related Pete.  The real question is whether this is 
advice that
>     > should be given by the IETF.  As I have access to anti-trust 
experts, I
>     > thought I would ask one.  I have done, and am awaiting his response.
> 
>     On that question, I've got email back to 2006 suggesting that we need to
>     do this, as many other SDOs do, and I haven't seen any argument that it's
>     a mistake.
> 
>  
> Well, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, there is this:
> https://www.ietf.org/blog/ietf-llc-statement-competition-law-issues/ <https://www.ietf.org/blog/ietf-llc-statement-competition-law-issues/>

As I think someone else mentioned, the LLC doesn't write the rules or advice about participants' behaviour. Also, "All participants in IETF activities are expected to abide by applicable law" doesn't help anybody who is 
unaware of that law. That's the gap.

> That post was published just a year ago, and I sincerely doubt it was published without being reviewed by a lawyer.

Certainly, to ensure that the LLC *itself* is not at risk.
 
> That post seems to say that the IETF's existing structures are sufficient, and this draft does delegate many concerns to existing BCPs. I understand that competition regulation is a bit more active than it recently has been, but this activity ebbs and flows, and the IETF has never needed anything like the recommendations in Section 5 of this draft.

Not true. I've personally seen legal advice that we *do* need something like this going back 15 years. In a sense the 2012 BOF conclusion that it's an educational issue was correct, but we haven't even done that.
 
> I think the implications of many messages are that "we're skating on thin ice", a question to be left to the lawyers, for sure. But, I'll note that it hasn't mattered for many, many years. 15? 20? I think I subscribed 
in 2005 or so. Maybe the ice isn't that thin. Or, something major has changed, and no one has explained what that is.

Maybe we've been lucky so far?

   Brian