[members-discuss] Feedback on Mailing List/Board Election Issues

Dear members,

Those of you following this mailing list may have noticed some disruption as we approached the last GM.

Many of you shared your concerns, either on this list or by emailing the board directly - thank you. At the last GM, we promised to follow up with more details. With the election out of the way, we can now discuss whether changes are needed to avoid repeats of this behaviour in the future.

>From the feedback we received, we can identify three main areas of concern:

1. Contact information was taken from the RIPE Database and/or the list of RIPE NCC members and was used to spam members with unsolicited emails.

2. Actions on this list were not in line with expectations outlined in the RIPE community's Code of Conduct and were generally unacceptable. There were also concerns that this behaviour, along with some of the allegations made on the mailing list, were damaging to the RIPE NCC's reputation.

3. The person responsible for the above behaviour was able to stand as a candidate in the RIPE NCC Executive Board elections. There were some voices asking for a process to exclude this candidate from the elections.

In this email, I would like to look at issues #1 and #2 individually (#3 will be covered in a separate email after further discussion by the board).

1. ABUSE OF MEMBER CONTACT INFORMATION

Many of you will recognise that this is not exactly uncommon. In the past there have been a number of instances where third parties (usually vendors or IPv4 brokers) have spammed RIPE Database contacts.

When notified, the RIPE NCC follows what is generally considered common practice in these cases: it notifies the responsible party that they are violating the terms of the database and asks them to stop. The RIPE NCC reserves the right to pursue further legal action, though warnings have generally been enough to stop the behaviour.

No one likes spam, and we appreciate that many of you want the RIPE NCC to do more, especially as this is a violation of your data protection rights.

As long as the RIPE Database remains an open and public database, we expect that this may continue to be an issue. Perhaps this is something for members to raise with the RIPE Database Requirements Task Force on an individual basis.

Individual members are also within their rights to report cases to their local data protection authorities where their personal information has been abused (the RIPE NCC is not able to do this on their behalf).

2. UNACCEPTABLE MAILING LIST BEHAVIOUR / DAMAGE TO THE RIPE NCC'S REPUTATION

Regarding mailing list behaviour, in most cases this should not be complicated. The board is responsible for this list and it is within our remit to moderate or remove members from the list if we believe they are acting inappropriately.

However, in this case the person who was abusing the mailing list was a candidate in the board elections. This led to concerns that we might be exposed to legal claims that we had attempted to influence the outcome of the election through any actions or statements in relation to this behaviour.

Given the number of complaints we received, the board eventually took the decision to put the mailing list into moderation. One board member who was not up for re-election and one RIPE NCC staff member made the decisions on what to moderate, and an unmoderated archive allowed for a transparent record of what was removed:
https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/members-discuss-unmoderated/2020-May/000000.html

Regarding the concerns about damaging the reputation of the RIPE NCC: while there is a provision in the Standard Service Agreement (SSA) that allows for the agreement to be terminated in the event that the RIPE NCC's reputation is damaged, in this case no one seemed to believe the claims, so no actual “damage” occurred.

It therefore appears that the only issue that requires further investigation is how the board can ensure appropriate conduct on this mailing list when the person in question is a candidate in the board elections.

The board would like to know your thoughts:

- Should the same approach be used next time (moderation + unmoderated archive for transparency)?
- Does the membership feel confident with moderation being overseen by the Executive Board and RIPE NCC staff, or would you prefer an alternate arrangement
- Is there value in a task force of members to examine these issues?

3. ABILITY TO STAND AS A CANDIDATE IN BOARD ELECTIONS

As mentioned above, the board is giving special attention to this issue. We plan to discuss this in a separate email in the near future.

Kind regards

Christian Kaufmann
Executive Board Chairman
RIPE NCC