Thanks Vesna,

You state:
- this is a *community* self-governance process.
It is not a duplication of state law framework, nor employment laws...
while those still stay in place, and can be part of escalation.

The *community* should not act outside the law, the *community* should respect and support basic fundamental rights. This process does not respect basic fundamental rights and therefor puts RIPE at risk and RIPE event attendees .

The outcome of the proposed process can have real world consequences. Consequences that might be unfair maybe even career-ending so a cavalier 'who have the benefit of the community at heart' which implies: "and therefor know what to do and we trust in them so we need no transparency and due process" is not enough. The process makes everyone attending an RIPE event a potential target with no due process, no recourse, a total absence of fairness totally at the mercy of the CoC, and only the CoC.

RIPE Legal can hopefully research what are the potential liabilities for RIPE, for the organizers of events and for members of the CoC itself. As I will assume that if an attendee is 'sanctioned' by the CoC, they might go to court if the impact is serious enough. They can do this either in NL or in the country that has hosted the event or even their own country if the impact is there. The outcome might not be very favorable for all of the above.

So if a person gets sanctioned (banned from the event and maybe future events), and if he/she does not get to know what action got him/her banned, who complained etc. They could go to court in NL, request a 'voorlopig getuigenverhoor' where the CoC team members (and anyone they think has relevant information) have to answers questions (under oath, it's like a deposition). Those depositions could than be used in court for damage claims (loss of employment, libel/defamation). You can sue RIPE, the event or (individual) members of the CoC. Lawyers paradise and if you pick the jurisdictions correctly you might win the lottery several times over. We should ensure any process can standup scrutiny in court. That (unfortunately) means it has to be very 'court-like'.

You also state:

Please consider volunteering, since you seem to be very passionate about justice and fairness.

When the process has been changed to include fairness and has a high change of delivering justice I might consider.

Cheers,

Alex

--

IDGARA | Alex de Joode | alex@idgara.nl | +31651108221

On Wed, 14-09-2022 19h 03min, Vesna Manojlovic <BECHA@ripe.net> wrote:

Dear Leo, all,

thank you (& the CoC drafting team) for the hard work you are putting
into this! I am happy that the writing process is coming to a
conclusion, and am looking forward to _finally_ have a complete
framework for dealing with offensive / unpleasant / harmful behavior.

I'd like to respond to some of the comments by Malcolm, Mike, Jordi & Alex:

- this is a *community* self-governance process.
It is not a duplication of state law framework, nor employment laws...
while those still stay in place, and can be part of escalation.

This is a process performed by volunteers, who have the benefit of the
community at heart. Please consider volunteering, since you seem to be
very passionate about justice and fairness.

- this kind of process is proven to work in many other communities.

- within RIPE, we had a "lite" version for several years now, called
"Trusted Contacts" (TC) , and I have been one of the people "appointed"
to this role: difficult job, so I got a training; it's not perfect to be
appointed, nor it is perfect that I have kind-of "conflict of interest"
since I work for RIPE NCC. As TC, we were not "empowered" to take any
action, partially because we were not selected by the community,
partially because there was no CoC framework... as we have now.

Still, from the multiple years of experience, I can say that most of the
reports we received would NOT have as a consequence that the "offenders"
are removed from the meeting; consequences mostly were that they are
"given the feedback", while keeping the identity of the complainer
anonymous.

I am voicing my support for the documents and the process,
and I wish Leo and the team success in implementing it!

Vesna

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