Re: Fwd: New Version Notification for draft-tbray-http-legally-restricted-status-01.txt

On 07/10/2012 07:25 PM, Tim Bray wrote:
> Since MNot has put this on the agenda, I thought I should revise one more
> time.  There?s one big change and a bunch of little ones.
> 
> Big: I went and talked to some subject-matter experts at Google who are
> paid to think about this sort of policy stuff, and some others who might
> have to implement it.  I got strong advice that the draft should not talk
> about ?legal restrictions? because this might carry an implication that the
> party emitting the 451 acknowledges that this is in fact a ?restriction?.
>  In fact, many parties get legal demands that they think might well be
> bogus but choose not to go to court for reasons of policy or cost; so
> they?d like to avoid implying that they acknowledge a ?restriction?.  I was
> advised that it was perfectly OK to report that legal ?demands? had been
> made, and eventually became convinced that this was more accurate. The
> Republican Guards call up and demand that you take down some links, and you
> think they might be full of crap, but they?re the Guards, so you can
> accurately report that the *demand* was made.

What about an additional recommendation that, where permitted, servers
should include a link to more information?

A link could provide information about the specific demand or the
general legal context. With Chilling Effects, I'm thinking, from the
other direction, about better standardizing the description and posting
of these demands, so it could be interesting to encourage pointers.

--Wendy


-- 
Wendy Seltzer -- wseltzer@w3.org +1.617.863.0613
http://wendy.seltzer.org/

Received on Thursday, 12 July 2012 16:42:18 UTC