Hi John,
I also deal very often with insurance companies and even had a couple of litigation situations with them, so I understand all that.
However, the actual criteria that we follow to host the meetings was not available before, so our "possible" insurance companies, didn't knew if we were looking at the CDC or not.
I also don't believe that anyone can sue (and won that case) the IETF if it gets infected or has any injuries because something happens in a given venue/country. Nobody enforced you to go to that country. Of course, assuming that you were following the local laws for security, health, etc. Of course, if somebody falls in an IETF meeting in a country accepted by the CDC, and break his back, will also be able to sue the IETF, but of course, if it was an accident outside of the IETF responsibility, and instead may be a responsibility of the venue (for example a wall falls down, etc.).
I still think the LLC Board should provide a clear answer to my questions and then the community should decide if we agree or not with that.
I also understand that moving the LLC outside US may not be that easy. May be there is a way because ISOC also has offices in Switzerland, etc., I just don't know, and of course, before taking the decision about any other jurisdiction we will need to look into the local laws for this and many other aspects. It is an open question, but it is only important after we know the answer to questions 1, 2 and 4.
I participated in the IASA2 process. Unfortunately, at that time I (probably others as well) didn't consider insurance issues related to the CDC. Otherwise, we would have resolved this before.
Note that I'm not centering the discussion in the Covid situation, neither any specific venue or country or meeting, but in general in anything that may arise in the future ... we don't have the crystal ball, but we definitively need to avoid that any specific country recommendation, avoid us holding a meeting, because that opens the doors to a boycott of any country against others for political, commercial or other reasons. And that it is absolutely UNNACEPTABLE and we need to make sure that we avoid that *as much as we can*.
So again, my questions are still unanswered.
Regards,
Jordi
@jordipalet
El 2/9/21 9:03, "ietf en nombre de John C Klensin" <ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx en nombre de john-ietf@xxxxxxx> escribió:
--On Wednesday, September 1, 2021 16:56 +0200 JORDI PALET
MARTINEZ <jordi.palet=40consulintel.es@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi Michael,
>
> I don't think your view point is the right one. Let me try to
> explain and formulate the questions in a different way.
>
> If any participant from an US company has their own rules
> regarding insurance, they may opt to not travel to an meeting
> in a given country *regardless* of being IETF or something
> else.
>
> What I heard in previous discussions, is that the IETF is
> subjected to rules about insurance that mandate following the
> US CDC listings.
>
> The question is very simple:
>
> 1) If that's correct, can the LLC point to exact US laws that
> say that?
> 2) If that's not correct, and it is due to insurance
> rules, can it be justified that there are no other insurance
> options? 3) If either 1 or 2 are the responses to this, shall
> we consider an alternative jurisdiction for the LLC? And, this
> is the key question after all:
> 4) If we have a hosting country/venue that is not listed as
> "acceptable" and this specific criteria is not matched, will
> be the meeting taking place or not?
Jordi,
I was hoping someone else would respond to the more general part
of this question, but no, so here goes. I don't think any of
what follows is inconsistent with Michael's response to your
note quotes above; just a different perspective on the same
issue.
IANAL, but I have spent some time dealing with insurance
companies, including special risk underwriters, and trying to
understand the statistical risk assessments on which willingness
to insure and rates are ultimately based. While neither RFC 8717
nor 8718 appear to mention insurance among the criteria, I
suppose it is safe to assume that, were an insurer come to the
IETF and say, e.g., "if one of your meetings turns into a
superspreader event, there will be no coverage for either the
LLC or individual IESG or LLC Board members being sued over the
irresponsible decision", there would be no f2f meeting.
Let me try to move this up a level from "one country is better
than another" discussions. It may be worth putting the
questions of what governments do aside and concentrate on the
insurance companies. The latter may be driven by political and
economic considerations (judging from the last 18 months, some
more than others, but maybe not consistently). The insurance
companies are fairly rational and predictable -- staying in
business depends on getting risk assessments and cost of losses
right.
First, they are in the business of assessing risk and writing
policies and charging fees that reflect those risks and allow
them to make sufficient profits to stay in business in the long
run. Unsurprisingly, there is normally a fair amount of
uniformity among insurance companies who offer to cover similar
risks under similar conditions for similar prices. There is
also a matter of assessing whether a particular potential
insurer is solvent enough and honest enough that they will
actually pay if there is a loss, but I hope we can agree that
Jay is almost certainly better at making that assessment than
either of us. One can typically get, for example, much higher
risk situations covered, but, again typically, at very exciting
prices.
Now, there may or may not be specific US rules that said
"insurance companies can't write policies unless the policy
holder agrees to follow CDC guidelines". I suspect that such
laws or regulations do not exist but it really makes no
difference. The insurers are still going to write policies that
require the insured to behave in a way that is consistent with
generally available guidelines in the country(ies) in which the
insured, the insurer, or both operate because, from the
standpoint of protecting themselves from the risk of losses and
potential expensive litigation over them, it just makes
statistical sense. Could one find a special risks insurer who
would write a policy that would protect the IETF LLC and all the
the IETF leadership even if such advice were ignored? Probably,
but I would assume, based on a bit of experience dealing with
special risk underwriters long ago, that Jay and the LLC Board
would take one look at the price quote and decide it was
impossible (I have no idea whether they would decide that the
community needed to be consulted about that decision, but I'd be
surprised if the answer was different either way).
The same issues would apply to US companies including MS unless
the IETF were indemnifying them, and non-US companies
considering having employees attend IETF meetings (you will note
that I did not say "IETF meetings in the US") at least unless
those companies did no business and had no representatives in
the US. The questions for their insurers are about what the
risks are and how they protect themselves.
So, now consider moving the LLC out of the US and into some
other country. I don't even know how to estimate how hard that
would be but assume it would be very difficult. For starters,
remember that the establishment of the LLC involved what
amounted to legal incorporation in the US as an ISOC entity
(however arms-length). ISOC itself is incorporated and
chartered in the US (that is probably not the exact legal
terminology, but I'm confident it is close enough). Could it be
done? Possibly but I'd guess it would be complicated, would
require new legal documentation and agreements, including
agreements from ISOC, and might require going through an
IASA2bis process to make sure document provisions and
terminology were all still aligned. Very expensive, including
in the costs of the IETF not getting technical work done, and I
think we would really have to be convinced that the real,
substantive, benefits --not just escaping some US rules on
principle-- would be considerable and would outweigh any risks
of large contributors going away. Remember, for example, that
contributions to organizations considered non-profits in the US
generally have tax benefits to US-based companies while
donations to foreign entities generally do not (there are
important exceptions, but they might re-entangle one with US
regulations and risks).
I think a realistic guess is "not going to happen". But suppose
it did. Then we would find out that every country has its own
rules or lack thereof and, even if we just look at the last
year, those rules change over time ...maybe in ways that can be
predicted and maybe not. From what I read in the news, the EU
is making different recommendations now than they made six
months ago. So is WHO. And individual countries are adapting
their rules in different ways. Lockdowns and rules about
international travel (who gets to come in and or leave and under
what restrictions) come and go. Could we see some national
rules and guidelines about how many doses (or even what
vaccines) count, change over the next year? Noting that
different countries have different vaccines available and may
not recognize some that they do not use as valid, we are partway
there already. I hope things won't get worse and more
complicated, but I would not want to bet against it.
And, even if one wants to ignore governments or brand some as
even less reasonable than others, that brings me back to those
insurance companies. For obvious reasons, they don't like risks
they cannot quantify or constrain and will try to protect
themselves by either inventing restrictive rules of their own or
picking one or more sets of rules to follow. And the worst
nightmare for those wanting f2f meetings in particular locations
is not that they pick one set of onerous national rules but that
they decide to someone combine many sets of national rules
together, making the most restrictive choices where rules
conflict or overlap.
That brings me back to a variation on Brian's comment. COVID-19
is likely to be with us for a long time. Barring some really
major breakthroughs that will stop it (perhaps ones that do not
even require a cure for stupidity), Delta may be succeeded by
even more virulent (perhaps on different dimensions) Epsilon,
Zeta, or Eta. Given that, I think we, sooner or later, either
abandon the idea of f2f meetings entirely rather than going
through the motions of "nope, not the next one either" for each
scheduled meeting. Or we make a possibly-arbitrary decision to
move today meetings with a large fraction of participants online
(whether we call them hybrid or not) and, in all likelihood, a
shifting population of those who attend f2f based on applicable
national company and national recommendations and the ebb and
flow of infections and countermeasures.
best,
john
.
>
> Tks!
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