- From: Aram Zucker-Scharff via GitHub <sysbot+gh@w3.org>
- Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2022 14:05:56 +0000
- To: public-patcg@w3.org
> > Additionally, can the group agree to a ban on making frivolous claims on behalf of regulators? It keeps coming up in random issues and I have seen no evidence that they are helpful or represent anything other than wishful interpretations. > > **I'm in favor of that @darobin**, however if an outright ban is too large a pill for some to swallow perhaps we could _at a minimum_ agree that any legal references, written or live in meetings, be prepended by "It is my understanding of law xyz that..." or "My interpretation of regulatory proceeding 123 is..." In this way readers or listeners can be reminded that the speaker is sharing their personal interpretation or understanding of a law or related proceedings. I agree, I think the main thing is that since no participants thus far are regulators it is pointless to say 'regulators will', 'regulators would', 'with regulatory intervention this would happen', etc... and I think generally slows down conversation and--in fact--undercuts any point the speaker is trying to make. It is an argument from authority fallacy and doesn't even fully meet that argument because in this case it relies on assumptions that the authority *would* say a thing in this particular situation that it hasn't even said. Unless there is a clear citation that is directly applicable to this topic or, as @alextcone notes, a statement of interpretation, there isn't much that mentioning the CMA or any other regulator's theoretical actions adds to the conversation. I've said this before and I'll restate it here: do not speak on behalf of regulators who you do not have authority to speak on. Not only because it is not productive to the argument, but because it undercuts any argument you are even trying to make. The regulatory groups out there are fully capable of speaking for themselves. Additionally, I really **really** *really* want to discourage making statements on behalf of what Google can or can't do under regulators. Google's statements are extant. Their conversation and attestation to the CMA is *on record* and they have participants in this group. If Google wants to say something about their CMA commitments they can and will. Until they do we *have* to operate under the assumption that they are interacting in this group in good faith and under their existing restrictions correctly. We are not empowered to do otherwise. If you @jwrosewell believe they need to say something that they haven't, the right place to take that up is with the CMA and Google--not here. In this context, not only is going down this road not productive, but it will be actively misleading to readers who may not be familiar with individual participants in this thread or their affiliations. I have to emphasize this: since you are not an agent of the CMA or of Google you are fundamentally not able to talk about what Google is required to do or what the CMA is going to do. To the extent you wish to accomplish anything in regards to the CMA and Google and what these two agencies are doing, trying to force us to shadow-box their positions here is actively undercutting it. Please stop. -- GitHub Notification of comment by AramZS Please view or discuss this issue at https://github.com/patcg/patwg-charter/issues/8#issuecomment-1085946101 using your GitHub account -- Sent via github-notify-ml as configured in https://github.com/w3c/github-notify-ml-config
Received on Friday, 1 April 2022 14:05:59 UTC