Hi Pete, On Thu, March 19, 2015 2:31 pm, Pete Resnick wrote: > On 3/19/15 2:54 PM, Michael StJohns wrote: >> Version -06 of draft-farresnickel-harassment has this small phrase >> that was added in this version: >> >>> Any definition of >>> harassment prohibited by an applicable law can be >>> subject to this set of >>> procedures. > > This was added at the behest of the attorneys that did the legal review. > >> I find "prohibited by an applicable law" to be somewhat problematic >> and overreaching. >> >> This should be removed. If something is a violation of applicable >> law, then the folks responsible for that law should deal with it, not >> us. We should be dealing with harassment that impinges on the IETFs >> creation of standards and not with harassment that has little or no >> nexus with the IETF. > > You have misread the sentence (for which I don't blame you; see below). > It is not talking about dealing with acts that are violations of local > law. What it says is that the procedures in this document *can* be > applied to an act that falls under the definition of harassment that > appears in a local law. That is, if a local law says that harassment > includes commenting on the stripe pattern of someone's shoes, a person > *may* bring a complaint of harassment to the Ombudsteam and ask that > these procedures be used. Is this bringing our standards down to the lowest common denominator in the world? Your example is (intentionally, I presume) trivial but not by much. Let me try a real world example: If I am sitting in the lobby of the IETF hotel reading Charlie Hebdo and the cover has something someone finds offensive and that might, in fact, be a violation of a law in their home country am I subject to becoming a Respondent? Even if it's not a violation of the law but the person feels like he or she has been harassed by viewing the cover of my magazine am I subject to becoming a Respondent? > I did not think that the wording was particularly clear, but it is the > wording that the attorneys felt would be legally useful. Sometimes it's OK to politely decline to take an attorney's advice. regards, Dan.