On Dec 2, 2011, at 9:12 AM, Marshall Eubanks wrote: > On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 10:24 PM, John Levine <johnl@xxxxxxxx> wrote: >>> Rather than trying to set up rules that cover all hypothetical developments, I would suggest >>> a practical approach. In our process, disputes are materialized by an appeal. Specific legal >>> advice on the handling of a specific appeal is much more practical than abstract rulemaking. >> >> +1 >> >> This has the admirable advantage of waiting until there is an actual >> problem to address, rather than trying to guess what has not happened >> in the past 30 years but might happen in the future. >> >> R's, >> John >> >> > > I must admit that I don't understand that reasoning at all, assuming > that this discussion is still about anti-Trust policy. Once there is > an actual problem to address, it will be because we are enmeshed in a > lawsuit, and it will be much too late to change our policies. Just because we are enmeshed in a lawsuit doesn't mean that we need to change or create a policy. The lawsuit will be based on whatever they can hook us on, whether it is "they have no policy and they should have", "they had a policy but it was the wrong one", or "they had a reasonable policy but were not enforcing it so we were harmed" (the latter being the tone of the suit discussed earlier in this thread). Having a policy, even one that is enforced, does not necessarily prevent the damage of a lawsuit. In fact, it could make things worse. We just don't know. > Now, I > realize that that does not prove that we have to change our policies > (I regard that as the output of this exercise), but saying you want to > wait until there is a problem to consider changes is IMO akin to > saying you don't want to consider putting in fire extinguishers until > there is a fire. The message quoted above says nothing about "wait until there is a problem to consider changes". It says that we don't know how to reduce our risks so we shouldn't flail around guessing. I would add "because some of our guesses can make things worse than our current state". --Paul Hoffman _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf