> The IETF legal counsel and insurance agent suggest that the IETF > ought to have an antitrust policy. I would be interested in a brief explanation of why we need one now, since we have gotten along without one for multiple decades. Having worked with a lot of lawyers, my experience is that few lawyers understand cost-benefit tradeoffs, and often recommend spending unreasonably large amounts of money to defend against very remote risks. Similarly, insurance agents will usually tell you to insure against anything. (This is why NDAs are 12 pages long, and the standard deductible on policies is usually an order of magnitude too small.) I don't know the particular lawyer and agent involved, and it's possible they're exceptions to the rule, but before spending much money, I would want to understand better what problem we are trying to solve and what the realistic risk is. Also keep in mind that the main effect of such a policy would be to shift whatever the risk is from the IETF onto participants. It might also be educational, here's things that might lead to personal legal risk if you talk about them, but we don't need a formal policy for that. I understand that some other SDOs have antitrust policies, but they generally have organizational members, and other differences from the IETF that make them only weakly analogous. R's, John _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf