The patent policy will be enforceable because whenever someone signs up to participate in the development of a spec at W3C, they will have to agree to abide by the terms of the patent policy. I won't rule out someone showing up later and saying that they didn't really mean to agree or that they had their fingers crossed behind their back when they checked the 'I agree...' box, but I don't see these excuses as holding much legal water. For better or worse, the enforcing a legal commitment like the patent policy is likely to be more straightforward than enforcing a technical specification.
This is a hard problem, but it's not about censorship. Censorship is what *governments* do when they are either trying to shut down political debate (a.k.a. totalitarianism) or subject minorities to the cultural values of the majority (repression),or both. Verio is not the government nor should it be treated like one, lest we get into a whole bunch of real censorship problems (like forced use of porn/content filters by ISPs).
This problem is about messed-up technology (as others have pointed out) and the difficulty of dealing with anti-social behavior (from spammers, not Gilmore). Since it appears that John can close his relay without interrupting his traveling friends, I hope he will do so. This is about cooperating with the relatively harmless means that the community has evolved (without recourse to legal repression) to help curb spam.
More comments to the public comment archive would certainly be welcome. There will be another public Last Call draft released before we make any final decision. Comments on this next draft would be particularly useful. We've heard a fair amount about the current draft already.
The Patent Policy Working Group makes decisions by consensus. Invited experts are considered equally with W3C Members in assessing consensus.
Note (not particularly in response to your question) that consensus means broad agreement, not unanimity. Under W3C process, those who dissent from consensus decisions have a right to file minority reports, what we call a formal object.
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The patent policy will be enforceable because whenever someone signs up to participate in the development of a spec at W3C, they will have to agree to abide by the terms of the patent policy. I won't rule out someone showing up later and saying that they didn't really mean to agree or that they had their fingers crossed behind their back when they checked the 'I agree...' box, but I don't see these excuses as holding much legal water. For better or worse, the enforcing a legal commitment like the patent policy is likely to be more straightforward than enforcing a technical specification.
This is a hard problem, but it's not about censorship. Censorship is what *governments* do when they are either trying to shut down political debate (a.k.a. totalitarianism) or subject minorities to the cultural values of the majority (repression),or both. Verio is not the government nor should it be treated like one, lest we get into a whole bunch of real censorship problems (like forced use of porn/content filters by ISPs).
This problem is about messed-up technology (as others have pointed out) and the difficulty of dealing with anti-social behavior (from spammers, not Gilmore). Since it appears that John can close his relay without interrupting his traveling friends, I hope he will do so. This is about cooperating with the relatively harmless means that the community has evolved (without recourse to legal repression) to help curb spam.
More comments to the public comment archive would certainly be welcome. There will be another public Last Call draft released before we make any final decision. Comments on this next draft would be particularly useful. We've heard a fair amount about the current draft already.
The Patent Policy Working Group makes decisions by consensus. Invited experts are considered equally with W3C Members in assessing consensus. Note (not particularly in response to your question) that consensus means broad agreement, not unanimity. Under W3C process, those who dissent from consensus decisions have a right to file minority reports, what we call a formal object.