Subject: [Ltru] M. Morfin's attempt to undermine me with my employer

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 12:30:57 -0400

I apologize for the off-topic nature of this post, but I feel I must
take this action to defend myself.

Reuters, my employer, received the following message today through our
electronic customer help system.  It was forwarded to me for disposition,
although it was addressed to "Mr. Chairman".

>              E-mail: [email-masked]
>          First Name: Legal Affairs
>           Last Name: AFRAC
>      E-Mail Address: [email-masked]
>             Address: 
>           City/Town: Versailles
>     Postal Code/Zip: 
>             Country: France
>             Company: AFRAC
>               State: 
> 
> Mr. Chairman,
> we wish to know if Mr. John Cowan, who uses the e-mail address
> [email-masked], belongs to the Reuters organization. If this
> is the case we desire to know if his participation to the IETF (Internet
> Engineering Task Force) is part of his Reuters assignments. If this was
> the case, if his attitude there results from a Reuters policy.

The answers are yes, no, and no respectively.  My supervisor and
other Reuters employees are aware of my membership in this WG, but my
participation in it is not an "assignment".  As is well known, IETF
members speak for themselves and not for their employers.

> The reason why we need to know this is that Mr. John Cowan has formally
> petitioned the Chair of the IETF WG-ltru to ban our VP R&D from this
> Working Group. Due to our VP R&D kind attitude in response to Mr. Cowan's
> periodic harassment and his technical, political, societal background
> and thirty years of high level experience in international networking
> this request is ... childish.
> 
> However, this WG discusses what we consider the founding building blocks
> of the multilingual internet, resulting in an innovation demanded by the
> World Summit on the Information Society, some considerable commercial and
> political interests want to contain or at least constrain. We therefore
> fear that under the circumstances some could be tempted to take advantage
> of the name of your group as a cover for an action against what we
> consider the general interest we strive to support. This could only
> result in a public reaction from us against your supposed strategy which
> would be detrimental to all, as we believe that - as an international
> information group - we fully share the same values and will be among
> the first to technically benefit from our action (we are in relation
> with other press agencies technical departments and cooperated in the
> past with information services now amalgamated in your organization).
> 
> If your intent is not figth us and our efforts for the common good,
> as we suppose, we could only suggest that Mr. John Cowan uses another
> e-mail name, apologizes to his fellow members of his Working Group
> for his attitude and continue his excellent contributions in a less
> acrimonious way.

Mr. Cowan declines to do anything of the sort, and believes his actions
were fully justified.

> This mail is sent in using your on-line [URL deleted] advised system. We
> will contact tomorrow the Reuters legal department in Paris we will then
> copy and ask an acknowledgment from.
> 
> Sincerely yours.
> 
> Legal Department
> [email-masked]
> AFRAC
> http://afrac.org
> April 11th, 2005

WG members can draw their own conclusions about the actual author of this
document.

_______________________________________________
Ltru mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ltru

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 18:48:23 +0200

John Cowan wrote:
 
> I apologize for the off-topic nature of this post

Harassing mails are posted, no reason to apologize.

---

From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 20:22:25 +0200

I have been informed, I reviewed and I approved this mail which has been 
decided by my organisation. One should not reverse the roles.

I often said I could survive the harassment I am subject from a very few 
number of supporters of the RFC 3066 Bis/Ter Draft since I opposed its Last 
Call, I supported the creation of the WG-ltru and I protest than thorny 
questions risen by its Charter have not been considered before the 
proposition of a WG Draft.

However this is a permanent public attempt to undermine my own reputation 
and the reputation of the organisation I belong to. This organisation has 
direct relations with different press agencies and information centers. It 
has been questioned due to the appearance of John Cowan's mails through his 
organisation name's in search engines. Some of John Cowan's mails include a 
disclaimer about the responsibility of his organisation for his views, 
while many others are not. This make this organisation legally responsible 
for the positions expressed by John Cowan in his mails.

A clarification is our obvious right. We think that a PR may be enough as 
soon as we receive a response from their legal department. We obviously 
wish this PR being common if possible. To write it we need to know who 
assume legal responsibilities of what.

I note that this mailing list being public, this mail (noted JCRJFC) will 
be referenced on search engines, giving our interlocutors all the 
preliminary elements.

jfc