[rights] General comments

[Mike Godwin <mnemonic@well.com>]

At 4:52 PM -0400 10/15/02, Hal Lockhart wrote:
"The agenda for the meeting of Sept 18 was published just a few 
minutes before the call and contained no mention of any vote. The 
meeting went over an hour with no mention of any vote, suddenly 
(after I had dropped off because of another commitment) a vote was 
taken on a major issue of requirements."

This particular decision still has done much to destroy any sense I 
had as to the committee's good faith. The lack of well-established 
agenda for the vote, the conduct of the meeting in which the vote was 
not mentioned, the holding of the vote after the meeting was 
scheduled to have ended -- all this speaks to me of a tactical 
decision to disenfranchise a class of participants whose commitment 
to involvement lies not with extracting revenue from patents but with 
ensuring that the standard is both robust and accurate.

I have made this point before. It strikes me as significant that not 
one of the perpetrators of this irregularity has stepped forward to 
offer an alternative explanation for what, to idealistic members of 
the TC, seemed to be a "sneak attack."

To be frank, I no longer trust the committee chairman to act 
honorably, and I no longer have faith that this TC in particular, or 
OASIS in general, is devoted to true standard-setting.

I'm working on an article about my experience in this process -- I 
solicit anyone's comments about it, whether you think I'm right or 
wrong. It'll probably appear in Wired or someplace -- still thinking 
it through.

Honestly -- here in DC, we know how to conduct meetings so that the 
opposition never walks away with a sense of bad faith and ill 
treatment. I had had no idea that this TC needed a tutorial in such a 
basic political and humane skill.


--Mike



-- 
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"I speak the password primeval .... I give the sign of democracy ...."
            --Walt Whitman 
Mike Godwin can be reached by phone at 202-637-9800
His book, CYBER RIGHTS, can be ordered at
	http://www.panix.com/~mnemonic .
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