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RE: [BOARD] Dissenting opinion on CyberCrime treaty statement

David LeBlanc said:

>I do agree with some of what he posted, and feel like his concerns
>should have been brought up earlier.  There are portions of the
>statement that I, for one, might have wanted to amend.  I don't know
>that we could have reached consensus, but we should have considered
>his input when creating the draft.

There are several factors that contributed to this delay.

1) Marcus' finalized statement was approved by him on Friday May 26, a
   week after the rest of the Board had signed the document.  I did
   not feel comfortable raising the issue without ensuring that I was
   characterizing his position properly, so this is the earliest that
   it could have been sent.  Note that at that time, Marcus was not a
   member of the Editorial Board yet, so he could not have posted to
   the list himself.

2) I thought that posting the email on a Friday would potentially
   cause Board members to miss in the volume of emails that would
   collect in everyone's mail boxes over the weekend.

3) I have been careful to "space out" a number of important topics
   that need to be discussed by the Board, so in some cases I have
   intentionally delayed bringing up too many important issues at
   once.  Early on, Board members "complained" of information overload
   from this list, and last month was the busiest for the Editorial
   Board yet.  Since the statement had been signed, and Marcus didn't
   want to press the issue, and it wasn't a Board-level activity any
   more, I felt that the statement was a formality.  I was concerned
   that this potentially sensitive topic could generate certain
   conversations on the list which would distract from certain "high
   priority" messages I intended to send out.  I believed that CVE
   would be better served by posting the emails regarding the content
   decision adoption process, and requesting dates for the next Board
   meetings.  Thus the delayed release of the statement was an
   "editorial judgment" on my part, but of course I would have
   released it as soon as possible if Marcus had asked me to; and as a
   new member of the Editorial Board, Marcus could have sent the
   statement himself if he had believed it was important enough.  Of
   course I defer to Marcus if I misstated anything here ;-)

4) On Monday, when I proposed the modified version of the statement, I
   emailed Marcus to see if he agreed with the new version.  If he had
   agreed, then there would have been no need to take the "risk" of
   posting a potentially controversial opinion which might distract
   from a number of other issues I've planned to bring up.  Since he
   still disagreed, I forwarded his statement to the list.  I do admit
   that I should have sent it yesterday, after I had received Marcus'
   response.

These are the factors that contributed to this late release.  I
welcome any opinions regarding my "editorial approach" to this
particular issue.  It is extremely difficult to predict how Board
members will react to any one email, so I only have past experience to
rely on when determining the best way to bring up certain topics.


- Steve
Page Last Updated or Reviewed: May 22, 2007