Re: [ietf-privacy] New Webiquette RFC

This submission raises an interesting question for the IETF: how to 
treat anonymous (or pseudonymous) submissions?

On one hand, there are lots of classic reasons for hiding behind a 
pseudonym when participating in public discussions. On the other hand, 
the IETF has to be protected against intellectual property issues and 
against sabotage by external groups.

Before submissions are accepted for publication, their authors have to 
disclose whether they, or their employer, own intellectual property 
rights on the technologies described in the draft. Failure to disclose 
would influence the prosecution of intellectual property disputes that 
might arise when third parties implement the technology. This provides 
some degree of protection to implementers. But when the submission 
cannot be traced to a specific company, these protections disappear, and 
we might have a problem. So this is one source of tension between 
standards and anonymity.

The other source of tension is the risk of sabotage. Various groups have 
tried to sabotage the standard process in the past, for example to delay 
the deployment of encryption, or to introduce exploitable bugs in 
security standards -- some of these tactics were exposed in the Snowden 
revelations. Anonymous participation could allow these groups to perform 
such sabotage in untraceable ways, which is obviously not desirable.

I think this issue of anonymous participation is worth discussing.

-- Christian Huitema

On 4/17/2022 11:35 AM, kate_9023+rfc@systemli.org wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I'm quite new at creating RFCs. I have recently submitted a draft for 
> a new webiquette and I am still searching a group which will take care 
> of it. It would fit into privacy as this new webiquette is dealing 
> with new internet technology such as deepfakes, sharing photos of 3rd 
> parties and so on and also deleting old information on a regular basis 
> good behavior. It's also quite short with only 9 pages and also covers 
> cancel culture and mobbing. I think a document like this is needed and 
> important. Anyone here who'd like to take care or helping me making an 
> RFC out of it? Or guide me in the right direction?
>
> The draft can be found here: 
> https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-rfcxml-general-the-new-webiquette-00.txt
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Kate
>
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