Subject: ASRG Censorship and IPR

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 18:11:29 -0700

Concerning the censorship issue, the chair gives as his reason for blocking
my posts as follows:

Your request to the Asrg mailing list

    Posting of your message titled "Reverse DNS modem pool records."

has been rejected by the list moderator.  The moderator gave the
following reason for rejecting your request:

"I need you to decide if you are a member of this group or not. You
have stated that you are an ex-member and you have stated that you
plan to form a competing group. If you do not believe in the goals of
this group, then I can not expect meaningful contributions from you.
Therefore, I do not see the purpose of you posting your opinions to
this research group's mailing list. Thank you. If at some point, you
decide that you would like to contribute to the research group's
efforts to address the problem, then please let me know."

The group has not been allowed to see that this is the basis for the
censorship policy - forming a group which the chair perceives as being in
competition. I do not think in this case the actions qualify as moderation.
I have complained to the IRTF chair and got nowhere.

After I pointed out this was hardly a legitimate use of moderation most of
of the posts I sent following were blocked without any form of comment.
Presumably to avoid any more embarassing comments that might reveal the true
motive.

There are two reasons why ASRG is not an adequate forum for anti-spam
standards. First it is a research group, the IPR regime is simply not viable
for building an open standard given the amount of IP claims existing. An ad
hoc post to the list does not fix that. Second, none of the principal
stakeholders with the ability to effect change are participating and a
number have explicitly rejected any participation with IETF/IRTF on this
topic. Hence the need for an alternate forum. I see no reason why membership
of one should cause automatic blacklisting in what is pretending to be an
open process in the IRTF.

The problem with the IPR policy is the WAY in which it was imposed. It was
not even a statement that RFC 2062 rules were in force which might at least
be readily understood and have some chance of being enforceable. Instead we
just got told that a decision had been taken by unspecified persons and some
text copied out of RFC 2062 with no indication that that is where they had
been taken from or any changes that might have been made.

My objection was one which anyone faced with a unilateral contract would be,
just what are you trying to spring here? 

The group is not even being allowed to discuss this issue because the posts
are still being blocked.

		Phill