Randall Gellens wrote:
Barry,
I'm not a lawyer and I don't play one on TV or the net, so I likely
don't understand the situation. As a point of possibly interesting
information, once upon a time, at a training session held by a lawyer
regarding how to protect confidential information, we were admonished
not to slap a "confidential" label on anything automatically or without
consideration, because, we were warned, doing so can cause the label to
lose meaning for everything. In other words, if we labelled everything
"confidential," then we were really saying nothing was confidential.
Ever since, I've wondered if these notices were set up by someone who is
a lawyer and does understand the situation, or if they were set up by
someone who saw others do it, or heard that this sort of thing was needed.
Depending on the organization, it may be a legally required especially
if it is public stock company. It is also legally required to make an
explicit statement in order to have stronger enforcement when push
comes to shove, i.e. ignorance can not be claimed. There is also a
difference in PUBLIC vs PRIVATE communications and while it is more
important to have disclaimers when public, unless an explicit
statement is also made in private, it can not be assumed. A good
example is a private message send to someone and he/she makes it
public. In tort cases, the receiver has to right to make it public if
and only if the author did not make an explicit statement that it
remains private and the guideline is to make it the very first
statement: THIS IS A PRIVATE MESSAGE AND THE INTENTION IS THAT IT
REMAINS PRIVATE. MAKING THIS MESSAGE PUBLIC WILL VIOLATE US EPCA "User
Privacy Expectation" PROVISIONS.
IMV, the IETF will be opening up a can of worms if they begin to cite
legal conflicts with the NOTE WELL statement and if its suggested that
participants use external addresses in order to participate without
conflict, well, even if people took the advice, it may put the person
in some legal conflict with his corporate employer. e.g. just because
a person moonlights in some other activity, does not necessary mean
they are free from company employment contracts and if there is any
kind of relationship of his external activities with his normal work,
they might want him to use a corporate identity or not. I guess it all
depends how much of a hard ass is his boss, employer or their chief
counsel. You might find if the IETF is making a fuss, they may ask
the employee to just not participate - lurk, but don't post.
--
Hector Santos, CTO
http://www.santronics.com
http://santronics.blogspot.com
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