Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 03/12/2001 The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by fyfer. In attendance were Voting members: fyfer lgdean ingolia jmorzins nim arolfe alex_c sly | amu tibbetts keithw Associate members: jweiss hartmans tytso hdt yonah rjbarbal |jhawk cana Non-voting members: Prospectives: taralee xela |cyruse Guests: Treasurer's Report: Chairman's Report: fyfer: We're going to bring up the mycroft homedir/decss thing. The simple background is that in mid October, MPAA contacted Stopit (the DMCA contact for MIT) and Stopit contacted nathan and jacob about a copy of decss in mycroft's homedir. jmorzins: One of the complaints was the the EC didn't tell SIPB in general as much as it wanted to hear. I'll give a summary and suggest directions we might want to go from here. One Oct. 13, stopit sent mail to me and nathanw saying they had mailed mycroft twice in sept and gotten no response about a copy of css-auth in his SIPB homedir. The mail sait that the longer this lasted, the more vulnerable MIT was to legal action. Nathan replied that he wasn't comfortable acting on stopit's note, and asked Tim to check with MIT's lawyers. About a week later, stopit came back with a direct order that SIPB had to remove the files by a particular date and they couldn't be made available after that date and that if we ignored them, they were prepared to remove us from the network. Nathan personally contacted mycroft and presumably told him that we had to make the files go away. Nathan said mycroft's reply didn't help Nathan know how to proceed, so Nathan unmounted mycroft's volume. At this time, we sent mail to the rest of SIPB-ec. Things sat until mid-November. One thing that bothered us is that to maintain compliance, we had to make sure that the volume did not become re-mounted. We weren't happy that this required vigilance on our part to remain in compliance so SIPB-afsreq edited the acl to require SIPB-afsreq to remount it. Before re-acling the homedir, tibbetts talked to mycrofyt at rav-eaters. He did this as a personal contact; he didn't declare that it was offical. The EC's impression of the conversation was that mycroft was unhappy but that he didn't care that much. On November 27, the volume was re-acled. I've heard that this was mentioned in some previous meeting but was struck from the minutes. One problem is that the EC should have told SIPB more about it. hartmans: I'm not sure I agree with that... jmorzins: There's a SIPB policy that in cases that involve sanctions against memebers, it should be done in public unless the member requests privacy. There was a large discussion Tuesday night between mycroft and other members which is when we became aware of the extent of mycroft's dissatisfaction and became aware that we hadn't officially contacted him yet. I emailed him Friday to apologize and officially inform him. He hasn't replied yet. I need to follow up. Right now, to address the other issue: I can see two options. For the immediate issue of stopit's order, we can comply, or can disregard it. SIPB could engage in civil disobediance. alex_c: That's like suicide. jmorzins: Someone else who knows the issues well enough could try to persuade mit legal or stopit to change their mind. But this is the summary of what's gone on. sly: Given what we saw as being SIPB EC, I certainly don't know what was said by the lawyers to Tim McGovern and I think it would be interesting to see the text of what they said rather than Tim's summary. There may be more to it that what we've had summarized to us which might be good to know before we go anywhere else with it. harmans: It seems like we should either decide to follow our policies or admit that we screwed up and that while we acknowledge that, wer're not going to fix it. To fix it, we could consider this an interim measure and review it periodically, like at this meeting. It seems like this would take fairly little time. fyfer: one thing is that in terms of technical solution, stopit considers the current situation a complete solution. I view it, that we went further than the absolute mininum. But this didn't happen b/c the EC was reluctant to poke around in user's homdirs. If we're reconsidering, we might want to change what the interim state is. jmorzins: The files are still there, but can't be accessed or mounted jhawk: we're not technically in compliance. I don't think that's a good long term state of affairs. jmorzins: according to stopit, we're in complete compliance. fyfer: ditto. If the lawyers want to tell us otherwise...I don't think it's SIPB's job to know more about this than MIT's lawyer. jhawk: Stopit asked us to do something. We did something else and they said it was OK. I'm unhappy with the situation because I don't think Tim understands the issue of homedir unmounted vs. files not supposed to exist. I would like the situation explicitly clarified. jmorzins: I want to finish with sam's suggestion about this as a policy issue. My opinion is that we messed up with policy and I want to correct that harmans: I explicitly disagree with jhawk and it's not in our best interest to clarify the issue. I move the SIPB recognizes that making mycroft's homedir inaccessable is an acceptable interim measure subject to the policy on interim measures [may 11, 1998] and should stand until replaced by a formal process or re-reviewed in 2 weeks from today [rereviewed every 2 weeks]. cana: I'm unclear on exactly what policy this issue is hartmans: The policy on interim measures or sanctions. cana: when did we decide this was a sanction? hartmans: I think it has that effect jhawk: 1) The wording: that has been reviewed at this meeting, which I read as the policy, so it binds correctly. 2) I thought your intent was the acknowledge an error on the part of the EC hartmans: do you think a formal motion is needed for that? The board can make a motion that the EC screwed up. tytso: I'm trying to understand: did the EC have a reason for not informing members? jmorzins: We didn't contact Charles at first, because stopit said charles had already failed to reply to them. (It turns out Charles's mail to stopit bounced; nobody knew this until this week.) But I didn't do so b/c mycroft might have a right to keep this quiet and we were hoping that making less fuss would make mycroft more likely to remove the files sly: I would like to make explicitly clear whom "we" refers to (nathan/jacob vs SIPB ec). hartmans: One of SIPB's systemic process problems is that members as a general rule like things to be open, but in specific situations, don't want to hurt feelings. We've had problems with mycroft over this issue in the past. We should have learned. jmorzins: the rest of the EC didn't know about the homedir umount until it happened. hartmans: at that point it was open to anyone who looked at the SIPB-ec meeting fyfer: but that requires activity on the part of the members alex_c: but then they should be on the acl by default... fyfer: who does the reviewing? hartmans: EC or board fyfer: let's vote. < 13-1-3, motion passes> jhawk: What is yonah's objection? yonah: I don't think this is a sanction by the SIPB fyfer: I would have to read the text. We were referring to the other policy, which doesn't specifcally mention sanctions hartmans: sanction is sort of defined in the other, and they are intended to go together. there are 2 arguments for this not being a sanction of the SIPB, and they're both wrong. All these policies exclude the actions of server maintainers; didn't want public discsussion to handle those issues; wanted to give maintainers excessive lattitude. But this didn't seem like nathan as an afsreq maintainer. I can only justify it as Nathan acting as chair. Even if it were a server action, the right thing to do was to have a public process to make people happier with the result; no significant harm other than a waste of time. It also wasn't an action initiated by the SIPB; it came from stopit and he had no say. But this doesn't seem true. We could have just as easily remove the files, decided it would be better to have the AFS cell down, or taken other actions. So we should hold ourselves to the same standards of fairness as for actual sanctions cana: sam used the phrase "remove the directory", which did not happened. The idea that we could have taken down the AFS cell, I feel uncomfortable with that. harmtans: we could have removed the files or changed the permissions. Or we could have done the civil disobediance route. fyfer: athena rules of use might restrain our behavior keithw: over zephyr, I suggested that if mycroft wanted our help, he should email me, SIPB, or SIPB-ec to suggest a course of action, but he hasn't done that. He did ask that zephyrs be forwarded to EC. They requested that I talk to stopit to ask stopit to clarify their postition. Should I do so? fyfer: I think there had been discussion on SIPB-ec about meeting with stopit on various things. It's unfortunate that the communication between mycroft, stopit, and us didn't cc all relevant parties at every step. But we should ask them why. sly: I had suggested that I would be willing to speak with stopit about their escalation policy and why they failed to include relevant parties. And I mentioned earlier that I would like to see clarification on what they got from the lawyers. Keith, can you email the EC that? keithw: sure sly: I want to see what Tim actually got from the lawyers before we move forward. jhawk: I move that keith go talk to tim fyfer: I think it would be useful if keith and or angie, as reps of SIPB, talked to stopit. Objections? rjbarbal: my impression is that the EC acted in a reasonable manner and that the board should either express a complaint to the EC or we should say that they acted in a reasonable manner. hartmans: 1) I think they acted in a reasonable manner but forgot SIPB history and dealt when reminded. 2) people need to be aware that we need to be in a more permanent state by the end of the term. We should resolve this soon. rjbarbal: I would like to move that the Board state that the EC acted in a reasonable manner jhawk: Should we do this for all potentially contentious issues? I think they were reasonable, but they made some errors. I don't want to look like we're excusing those. jmorzins: I agree with jhawk. I don't object, as long as we understand that the EC did make some errors. rjbarbal: friendly ammendment to include something like that... jweiss: I would like to note that I have no understanding of the value of this motion, but don't want to spend time explaining cana: I don't like the precedent of motions to have the board second-say anything contentious that the EC does fyfer: If we don't approve it, then it looks like we don't approve of the EC actions. ingolia: the notion is that the EC might have violated policy; the motion might acknowledge that this happened and that we support the actions even if they violated policy cana: there's disagreement as to how much people approve of what the EC did and who did what. A motion on the matter will force people to vote against things for wording. fyfer: If people have complaints, they should be raised now. alex_c: this might also alienate mycroft. I don't see why we should do that for no reason. fyfer: I think he publicly said that he was unhappy with the EC actions sly: the board has already made one motion saying that we support this interim measure. Anything else is redundant and we shouldn't vote on it. hartmans: the EC didn't make reasonable actions; it took no action at all. This was nathan and jacob. The EC took no vote and can't act by consensus. fyfer: was there interest in a straw-poll? fyfer: discussion over. moving on. Office Report: xela: move to allocate for a copy of Interconnections sly: one or both? xela: just Interconnections [xela allocation : $75 for Interconnections] sly: move to allocate $32 for removal of binkley's old monitor [sly allocation : $32 for removal of binkley's monitor] Office Cleaning Report: amu: according to the whiteboard, the office was vacuumed on valentine's day. people should record when it was vacuumed when it is. alex_c: there's been vacuuming in the past few days. fyfer: when the office is vacuumed, update the white board. I'll also talk to CAC about our mouse traps. Have there been mice? sly: no bait in the traps jweiss: there was a mouse in the cluster a couple of weeks ago. But no sightings in the office. sly: move to yield my time to ingolia to talk about cleaning bot. ingolia: it's having issues. it's all kolya's fault. I might move away from the fingering office heads design. sly: move to dispose of CJ at the DOTOCICOSO. the disk and cpu fan are dead jweiss: exactly which equipment? sly: cpu, don't know about cpu and mice. jweiss: cpu box, cables, no monitor jweiss: take down empty cans and bottles. MIT Computing Report: hartmans: MITnet sucks Computer Services: sly: I am going to go through SIPB-linux 5.2 docs to make it less accessable so more people don't try to install. tibbetts: is there a reason not to break the installer? sly: I think it already is SIPB Backup Report: jweiss: some failed. I don't know which ones. fyfer: does Garry know? jweiss: I think they were UFS. keithw: do we have an idea of when the last time a restore was done? fyfer: nathanw said he was going to at some point jweiss: afs: sometime in the past few months. Publications Report: fyfer: do we need more iAFS? sly: I'd like to move to allocate $50 for 50 copies of the SIPB linux 6.2 installer docs. jweiss: is that in a state that we want to copy it? sly: it seems fine hartmans: make sure we can truthfully remove the word beta from it. sly: it's probably out of beta. any changes for the 3c905 issue can be made live. jweiss: someone on linux-dev should see if there are any unresolved bugs hartmans: useful, but not a precondition for release [sly: $50 for 50 copies of linux install] Orientation Report: fyfer: cpw is april 6-8. tibbetts: there will be a mini activities midway. IAP Report: fyfer: keith's iap class has gotten a lot of attention on various places. CokeComm Report: cyruse: there's coke. fyfer: make checks to cyruse rather than gif. Other: jmorzins: OED.com noticed alex's script Other Other: sly: LSC gencomm in 4-370 now. The meeting was adjourned at 20:23. Minutes taken and submitted by arolfe.