[mat-wg] Community Feedback on Draft RIPE Atlas Service Terms and Conditions

Dear colleagues,

On September 15 we announced the new draft of the Terms and Conditions 
for the RIPE Atlas service:
https://labs.ripe.net/Members/becha/ripe-atlas-moving-to-production-service

We received feedback from the community and we’d like to thank you for
your input. Below is a summary of the main points raised and our response.

-------------------------------
Security audits and user assistance
-------------------------------

We were asked to clarify what is meant by “security audits and checks”
and what “assistance” users would be obliged to provide. We will clarify
this in the next draft.

--------------------------------------
Contradiction between Articles 2.3 and 10.1
--------------------------------------

We were asked to clarify the perceived contradiction between Articles
2.3 and 10.1 about informing users about the future changes to the Terms
and Conditions (T&C). There was a strong preference stated to actively
alert users about upcoming changes. It was suggested to allow for a
window of time after notification before changes are applied (e.g. 30
days).

We will inform users about the upcoming T&C changes by email, as
outlined in the “implementation timeline” (point #3) in the RIPE Labs
article.

In reference to the articles, Article 2.3 is about amendments to the
T&Cs and Article 10.1 is about other RIPE Documents that are created
using different procedures and include points of references for the T&Cs.

----------------------
Minor editorial changes
----------------------

We were given several minor editorial suggestions. We will review the
suggested edits.

---------------------------
Strong legalese in the T&C
--------------------------

Some people raised concern about the “strong legalese” included in the
updated T&Cs.

The inclusion of those provisions is to align the T&Cs with the other
legal documents of the RIPE NCC. We felt that the document should
reflect the RIPE NCC’s operational practices and should clarify the
mutual responsibilities and expectations of probe hosts and the RIPE NCC.

The Terms and Conditions is a legal document and the rights and
obligations between both parties should be clearly and fully stated.
Unfortunately legalese cannot be avoided.

We would like to thank you again for your input. If you have any other
comments about the text or the implementation procedure, please let us
know.

Please let us know if you have any other comments on the text or the
implementation procedure.


Kind regards,
Vesna Manojlovic
Community Builder for Measurements Tools