Subject: Re: Petition to the IESG for a PR-action against Jefsey Morfin posted

From: Dean Anderson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2005 16:23:30 -0400 (EDT)

On Fri, 30 Sep 2005, Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law wrote:

> </legal lurk>
> 
> No first amendment issues are implicated here.  The first amendment only 
> protects US persons (citizens & residents) against actions by the US 
> government.  Both sides of that equation are absent here.
> 
> This is private action against a private party.  It may implicate the 
> moral principles of freedom of expression but these are not ordinarily 
> actionable either in the US or elsewhere.  YMMV of course.

I think that the legal issues involve defamation and disparagement, and perhaps
others (e.g. corporate bylaw violations---otherwise known as "failure to follow
ones own written rules"), and other duties and obligations required of
corporations.  Last I checked, the IETF is an activity of the ISOC, which is
incorporated in the US.  The IETF has a nearly 2 million dollar budget, and its
bank account isn't in the name of an individual, it is in the name of a US
corporation.

But I think that Jefsey should formally counter-complain that the PR-action is a
personal attack based on personal dislike.  I think the next step is to appeal
the IESG action to the IAB, and if that fails, then to the ISOC.  It may also be
time to make a formal complaint to the ISOC about the pattern of misbehavior by
the IETF leadership in several related areas including abuse of Dean Anderson,
Dan Bernstein, Nick Staff, Jefsey Morfin, and others.

> Please note that this comment expresses no opinion on the merits of the ban.
> 
> <legal lurk>
> 
> On Fri, 30 Sep 2005 [email-masked] wrote:
> 
> [much edited]
> 
> > Note that the whole issue of list ban is treading on first amendment grounds 
> > in a way that could end up in court.
> 
> 

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---

From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2005 02:40:18 +0200

At 22:23 02/10/2005, Dean Anderson wrote:
>But I think that Jefsey should formally counter-complain that the 
>PR-action is a personal attack based on personal dislike.

Dear Dean,
Harald over did it: too much is nothing.

I only needed to expose the personal bias of some of the signatories 
over a technical and key strategic aspect for the IETF and the future 
of the Internet. Harald's threat was enough for that: I said it and 
acted accordingly. But he was bound to publish this ad-hominem 
(obviously in hurry if you read the mail selection and its comments) 
after apologising to the "consensus" (of another SSDO?) for honestly 
comforting ... this point of mine (private use usage, i.e. exclusiveness).

The only real matter of interest for the IETF is to take advantage 
from this incident to prevent further biased moral lynching attempts. 
IMHO the solution could be a "closed LC".

1. someone calls for a PR-action to the Sergeant at Arms who decides 
if the request is ethically acceptable or not.
2. the case is then transmitted to the IESG which opens a 15 days 
Last Call, any public comment resulting in a PR removal for one month.
3. a summary is made by the IESG or the initiator and sent to the 
concerned participant for comments before 15 days. An AD may be 
assigned to help the defense.
4. The IETF decides on these summary and response.
jfc

---

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2005 17:49:42 -0700

I wish that everyone who trivializes Harald's proposal as a matter of
"personal dislike" or "silencing anyone with a different opinion" could
have experienced life in the LTRU Working Group for the past 6 months,
where list members were constantly insulted for being Americans or for
being employed by large companies, where "resolved" and out-of-scope
issues were raised over and over again, and where list members became
wary of posting anything at all, for fear their words would be twisted
to mean something completely different.  It would not have been
tolerated in any face-to-face working environment.

--
Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2005 17:09:34 +0200

> Please note that this comment expresses no opinion on the merits of the 

And neither, by the way, does the fact that the IESG will *consider*
a PR action whenever one is brought to us. It's only after such
consideration that the IESG would express an opinion.

     Brian

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2005 17:15:08 +0200

Dean Anderson wrote:

> ...  It may also be

I reckon it's because we so much dislike Nick Staff that the IESG
appointed him as one of our external scribes. (The first set of
scribe notes will be showing up sometime soon, btw.)

     Brian

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2005 17:31:17 +0200

[email-masked] wrote:
...
> I'm worried about the process, and about the number of times it seems to 
> be invoked.
> Banning should be exceptional.

It is. RFC 3683 has been on the books since March 2004 and has been
used exactly zero times until now.

> Now we are presented with two dubious 
> (read non obvious, possibly requiring very careful inspection to arrive 
> to a conclusion) 

Of course they require careful inspection. How could it be otherwise?

> cases in the space of a few days,

That, as far as I can tell, is pure coincidence.

> and it appears that 
> the process itself is hardly symmetrical and lacks clear consensus 
> safeguards.

It has all the safeguards of any other IETF process - last call and
an appeal path. As for symmetry, I assume that that people will respond
both for and against the action during the last call.

> In a balanced world, this would spell doom for RFC3683.

After we have executed the algorithm in 3683, we should certainly
consider whether it worked as intended, and if not, change it.

    Brian

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2005 17:36:12 +0200

Anthony G. Atkielski wrote:
> If the IESG has the time to compile blacklists and go on witch hunts,
> perhaps it doesn't have enough work to justify its existence.

Randy Preshun has already responded, but let me observe that the
IESG did not initiate this proposed action, does not have a blacklist,
is not known for hunting witches, and would much rather spend its time
on technical and managerial work than on netiquette.

    Brian

---

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2005 11:51:15 -0400

>on technical and managerial work than on netiquette.

Speaking as a former AD -- and as someone who, when wearing a WG chair 
hat, had to request suspension of someone's posting privileges from the 
WG mailing list -- I can confirm this.  Dealing with disciplinary 
issues was at the very bottom of my list of favorite things to do as 
AD, even below understanding and copying with our process....

		--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

---

From: Dean Anderson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2005 20:48:02 -0400 (EDT)

I have to plead mostly ignorance of the technical details of LTRU issues.  
However, I just went to the LTRU archive and started with July 15th:
Specifically, I went to the archive page, and picked page 40:
http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ltru/current/mail40.html. This link
rotates as new pages are added to the archive. At the moment I selected it, it
pointed to July 15th, 2005.

>From there, I reviewed 6 messages from Jefsey, and one message from Randy
Presuhn in response to Morfin. I also reviewed several messages from Doug
Ewell.

On this day, it would seem to be a debate about Last Call issues, requirements
and objections to a draft in Last Call, and a few other issues. It did not seem
very unusual traffic.  Morfin's messages are not rude or combative.  Morfin 
articulates his objections to a new draft.

Morfin created a webpage to explain his objections. His messages seem to be
respectful, rational, and well-documented.  The website he created was likewise
rational, respectful, and well-documented, and even easy to understand to
non-LTRU experts, such as myself.

Randy's message
[http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ltru/current/msg02836.html] is rather
more disturbing. Randy (WG Chair) claims that Jefsey's wording is "deceptive"  
and his website is "misleadingly named", as if the _name_ of the website should
be relevant.  Randy is not specific as to what it is that is "deceptive".  This
is nothing more than an ad hominem attack. This seems to be offensively
inappropriate behavior by the WG chair.  

In the message Randy concludes that 

    "If anyone wishes to raise an issue, (s)he should do on on the working group
    mailing list by posting a message detailing the concern and, if possible,
    supplying proposed replacement text."

But it would seem that Morfin did just exactly that, with a lot of supporting
documentation.  It seems to me that Randy Presuhn just doesn't want to address
the concerns raised, nor does he want anyone _else_ to address the concerns. In
fact, Randy actually admits in the same message to having advised others _not_
to review Morfin's objections.  That seems to be contrary to Last Call.

Doug Ewell's several messages on this day were mostly in support of Randy
Presuhn's views.

So, I find the LTRU WG chairs response much more disturbing than anything I
found in the small sample of Morfins messages.  Indeed, the RFC3066.org website
seems to be sensible and rfc3066.org/review.htm raises what seem to be very good
points. I would argue that the WG Chair's role is to facilitate discussion. If
there is a language barrier, the WG Chair should try to bridge that barrier.

While I found it at times difficult to follow Morfins writing because he is a
non-native English speaker, I found that his sentences were in fact sensible.  
Morfin compensates for his language issues by restating his points, which while,
wordy, helps with extracting the meaning. That it is hard to communicate due to
language problems is not reason for criticism. It seems to me from this sample
(and his web pages), that it is difficult to argue that Morfin isn't making a
positive, and rational contribution, and if he represents a minority view, his
views are still fairly well documented and not unreasonable.  I saw nothing in
this sample that would seem to support Doug Ewell's view below.

The sample, limited as it is, seems to confirm an unjustifiable personal attack
on Morfin based, it seems, on personal dislike and intolerance for his English
language skills

		--Dean

---

From: Dean Anderson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2005 22:13:51 -0400 (EDT)

> scribe notes will be showing up sometime soon, btw.)

So what is the relevance of this to anything?  Indeed, I think Nick will be an
excellent scribe.  But appointing him scribe doesn't mean he hasn't been abused
as part of a pattern of abuse.  I didn't say you disliked Nick Staff. I said you
abused him. Sometimes these are different. When you offensively disrespect the
people you like, then you plainly have a problem with interpersonal
interactions.

Carpenter offers to (barely) chastise Alvestrand:
http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg35904.html

Nick Staff asks publicly to rule against Alvestrand: Calls Alvestrands attack 
"obnoxious, childish, and pubescent", notes double standard by Carpenter:
http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg35938.html

Nick Staff says TIME OUT: 
http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg35957.html

Brian Carpenter tells Nick to pound sand:
http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg35969.html

Nick tells Brian how he feels about that: (Nick is plainly offended)
http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg35993.html

Carpenter offered to barely discpline Alvestrand, and even though that offer was
accepted publicly by Nick, and offlist by Anderson, Carpenter backed out anyway,
and told Nick Staff (and Anderson) to pound sand, describing Nick's view as
"annoying and irrelevant".

Nick is just trying to make peace. He didn't deserve that.  What's more
sickening is that Carpenter still apparently doesn't think he did anything
offensive to Nick.

Carpenter also doesn't find it "annoying or irrelevant" to chastise others:
[e.g.  http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg35780.html] This is
part of a pattern of abuse and acceptance of abuse by Carpenter.

		--Dean

---

From: "Nick Staff" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2005 22:33:32 -0700

> Dean Anderson wrote...
> Nick is just trying to make peace. He didn't deserve that.  
> What's more sickening is that Carpenter still apparently 
> doesn't think he did anything offensive to Nick.

Dean, thanks for supporting me on this.  I appreciate your logic and your
posts and your knack for seeing past the B.S. and getting to the issue.

In that last post I made to Brian I was livid and didn't pull any punches.
I laid it our exactly as I saw it and assumed I'd be notified by bot of my
unsubscription.

Not only was I never unsubscribed but when I volunteered a month later for
the scribe position Brian was supportive.  I will always have a great deal
of respect for him for this as that shows a kind of character that most
people don't have (my words don't do it justice).  Sorry for posting this to
the list , I thought it was only fair to Brian.

nick