Subject: Q: do we have any IETF Publication Mirror and Mailing List Retention Requirements.

From: tsg <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:16:22 -0700

Folks
In regard to IETF Mailing List Archives and WG operations... what is the 
period of retention? Also is it possible this needs to also apply to the 
document mirrors?

So there are some issues we need to pull out and put on the list of 
things we need to deal with in IETF participation. The issue I want to 
bring up here pertains to RECORD RETENTION and AVAILABILITY POLICY for 
both the submissions and for the WG Mirrors.

Documents and Mailing Lists must be retained for seven years (7 years)
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As to why there are legal tax issues for needing to prove participation 
in the IETF and so since as much as  75% of its participants today (we 
figure it actually may be higher) from the commercial world are using 
tax write-downs under employee benefits to support IETF costing, so the 
ability to prove that participation for the full tax-document retention 
period just became a real issue.

What does this mean for WG's who outsource that? -
================================
My gut level from the real world is that means that the WG's initial 
founders and its Sponsors are probably still liable and its their 
management and possibly any external sponsors therein who hold that 
liability.

I could be totally wrong but I dont think so. If that is true then to 
support this need for retention any WG which is maintained outside of 
the main IETF Web Profile through its own email archive and service.

The issue is of course  how the legal integrity of that data is 
maintained in a world where its so important to be right that fraud is a 
simple issue to justify that being right.

Any thoughts?

Todd