On Sun, Mar 23, 2008 at 08:45:19AM -0700, Christian Huitema wrote:> Does the IETF have a policy regarding misrepresented identities?> > In the particular incident, it is assumed that the person using the> name of a famous French aviation pioneer is in fact someone else. On> the one hand, using pseudonyms is a form of free speech. But on the> other hand, in a standard setting body, hiding identities is not> necessarily something we want to encourage. What are the> implications for our standard process? What about copyrights and> patents?
The use of pseudonums is very much a form of free speach. To quotefrom from the U.S. Supreme Court,
"`Anonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books have played an important role in the progress of mankind.’ Talley v. California (1960). Great works of literature have frequently been produced by authors writing under assumed names. Despite readers’ curiosity and the public’s interest in identifying the creator of a work of art, an author generally is free to decide whether or not to disclose her true identity. The decision in favor of anonymity may be motivated by fear of economic or official retaliation, by concern about social ostracism, or merely by a desire to preserve as much of one’s privacy as possible. Whatever the motivation may be, at least in the field of literary endeavor, the interest in having anonymous works enter the marketplace of ideas unquestionably outweighs any public interest in requiring disclosure as a condition of entry. Accordingly, an author’s decision to remain anonymous, like other decisions concerning omissions or additions to the content of a publication, is an aspect of freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment." --- McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, 1995.
However, free speech rights are those which a government is notallowed to abograte via the unique coercive means made available to it(i.e., prison, fines, etc.). Free speech does not imply that anyonewishing to avail themselves of their "free speech rights" gets to useanyone's printing press or radio station or television station or IETFwg mailing list to broadcast their "free speech" to the those thathave no interest in listening to it. Nor does it give people theright to use a bullhorn to loudly blare their opinions in aresidential neighborhood at 3am in the morning.
So free speech rights is a red herring, in terms of whether or not anydecision made by the IETF would violate LB's fundamental human rights(assming he really is in the EU), since the IETF is not a state actor,and he is perfectly free to spout his views about the multilingualinternet in plenty of other fora.
In terms of whether or not there is value added by allowing anonymouscontributions in IETF wg mailing lists, issues arround copyright andthe IETF's patent disclosure rules seem to mitigate any posible valuein a standards context, and while I wouldn't suggest making a big deal ofrequiring identity verification for every single working groupparticipant, if there is reasonable cause for a working group chair tobelieve that someone is using a pseudonym to evade an RFC 3683 PRaction, that the IETF reasonable proof of a real-life identity.
Certainly some of the claims made by "LB" of this being done with thesupport of "our two direct commercial competitors in his WG" can notbe evaluated while "LB" tries to hide behind a shield of anonymity.
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