Re: Proposed Photography Policy

[Joe Touch <touch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mar 2, 2018, at 7:49 AM, Eric Rescorla <ekr@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Note: you are quoting Lee Howard, not me, though I agree with him.

Sorry about that...

On Fri, Mar 2, 2018 at 7:29 AM, Joe Touch <touch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Mar 2, 2018, at 7:21 AM, Eric Rescorla <ekr@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

I cannot imagine why anyone would object to giving participants a way to identify that they wish not to be photographed, and asking photographers to make a reasonable effort to honor that wish.

The key issue, IMO, lies with the idea that the IETF will enforce individual photographers ignoring that wish as harassment.

Here’s my suggestion:

UNOFFICIAL PHOTOGRAPHY

Many IETF participants also engage in photography. We ask that those

participants respect the above policies and avoid photographing

individuals who have asked not to be photographed. 

(i.e., just remove the last sentence)

If anyone wants to claim harassment about being photographed otherwise, they ought to take it up with their lawyer. Photography isn’t a function of IETF meetings, and I don’t think it is useful for the IETF to try to police it (in fact, were they to try, I would not be surprised if they would end up on the wrong side of the law too).

Hi Joe,

I don't think it would be terrible just to have this text.

Just that text (above) is fine, IMO, as is the rest of the policy. The only concern I have is really with the final sentence - esp. given the motivation for this doc, I don’t like seeing a full page of text where the driving issue is buried in the final point (that I disagree with as well).

The main purpose here is to establish the norms that we expect participants to comply with, which mostly come down to "respect people's expressed preferences".

With that that said, the IETF has established other mechanisms (primarily the harassment policy and the ombudsteam) in order to attempt to address behavior which might make participants feel uncomfortable. We know that some participants don't like being photographed, and so this text is intended to acknowledge that if people feel that they are being made uncomfortable in this way, that the ombudsteam is available to them. 

Agreed. The issue then may with placement - put this sentence up front, at the end of the first paragraph:

—

The intent behind this policy is to balance people's legitimate desire

not to be photographed with the IETF's ability to document activities

and enable remote participation. In order to enable that, we are

proposing the following policy which applies to all IETF events,

including WG meetings, plenaries, and the hackathon.

Although we

recognize that mistakes will be made, repeated intentional violations

of this policy may constitute harassment and could be brought to the attention

of the ombudsteam, per RFC 7776.

—

This avoids the implication that “violations” focus on unofficial photography, which is how I (at least) interpreted it.

Joe