+1 to all of John's points here. Especially about the essential nature of lawyers - I've worked with plenty of them as well. Ned > > 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 _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf