Re: [ietf-privacy] New Webiquette RFC

The questions you refer to are not new.  The same issues (IPR policy
conformance and hidden agendas) have been raised with respect to the
affiliations of ‘consultants’ who are hired by clients who wish to remain
anonymous.  AFAICT, the IETF has never required that consultants divulge
their clients, even to the nomcom.

Anonymous participation takes this trend one step further.  The W3C does
not allow anonymous participation due to IPR concerns, but their IPR policy
is also significantly different, since W3C is membership-based (and not
particularly friendly to ‘consultants’ or small businesses).

We might decide that this anonymous participation is one step too far, but
my take is that IETF crossed an important line long ago.

On Sun, Apr 17, 2022 at 12:15 Christian Huitema <huitema@huitema.net> wrote:

> 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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> > ietf-privacy@ietf.org
> > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-privacy
>
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