In recent meetings that I have attended, the issue that "VOs might not be legal" has surfaced a couple of times. Of course, the illegitimacy of a VO depends on you define and operate a VO for a certain community. But the basic argument goes like this: in a loosely coupled, non-centralized community, there is no point of control that can be held responsible for the sharing of information considered "sensitive" from a legal standpoint: Health and business regulations (not to mention data privacy laws) often require such a single entity. Other examples that fit this description is world-wide file-sharing of copyrighted material and cryptographic software. Does anyone have more insights on this matter? Regards, /Olle
Hi Olle, First, I am not a lawyer, so ... Even so, in the VO's that I am familiar with, largish physics experiments, the VO is formed by agreements between the institutions that employ the people who decide to be part of the VO. The institutions are legal entities but the agreements that form the VO are not necesarily legally binding and the VO itself has no legal status, it is not something which can be sued, files no tax returns, etc. The institutions that employ the members perhaps can be sued or held accountable, but in this research community, many of them are part of some government and may be shielded from law suits. My 2c. Doug Olle Mulmo wrote:
In recent meetings that I have attended, the issue that "VOs might not be legal" has surfaced a couple of times.
Of course, the illegitimacy of a VO depends on you define and operate a VO for a certain community. But the basic argument goes like this: in a loosely coupled, non-centralized community, there is no point of control that can be held responsible for the sharing of information considered "sensitive" from a legal standpoint: Health and business regulations (not to mention data privacy laws) often require such a single entity.
Other examples that fit this description is world-wide file-sharing of copyrighted material and cryptographic software.
Does anyone have more insights on this matter?
Regards,
/Olle
Doug Olson wrote:
Hi Olle, First, I am not a lawyer, so ... Even so, in the VO's that I am familiar with, largish physics experiments, the VO is formed by agreements between the institutions that employ the people who decide to be part of the VO.
That seems to be the way with most VOs I've heard of - a far cry from the dynamic on-the-fly set-up many people are talking about and building software to support.
The institutions are legal entities but the agreements that form the VO are not necesarily legally binding and the VO itself has no legal status, it is not something which can be sued, files no tax returns, etc.
Where there is commercial value - or legal issues over privacy, say - the agreements do have to be stronger, with lawyers and redress, and so on. When such a VO becomes very real joint venture, I don't know - better ask a lawyer. Making a grid set-up where you can negotiate such things in software and have them adequately legally binding ... seems some way off.
My 2c.
I'm down under right now, so that had better be my AU$0.02. But here there are no 2c coins, so they'd round it down to zero. Andrew.
A few random comments: This illustrates, again, that root trust arrangements are always outside the system. I suspect that the very dynamic VOs that folk consider are usually within the context of some root agreement (e.g. institutions already have an relationship, so one assigns part of its budget to a temporary group). Many dynamic business relationships are like this - I have a framework contract with several suppliers that I've pre-qualified, I can then set up a supply contract with any of those using a lightweight procedure rather than a full contract negotiation. If I'm looking for a supplier I have a choice - either I do it quickly, in which case I don't surf the world I compete within my framework suppliers, or I do it (very) slowly and compete and negotiate a new contract. regards Howard ----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Martin" <Andrew.Martin@comlab.ox.ac.uk> To: "Doug Olson" <dlolson@lbl.gov> Cc: "Olle Mulmo" <mulmo@pdc.kth.se>; <security-area@ggf.org> Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2004 11:45 PM Subject: Re: [security-area] Are we all lawless?
Doug Olson wrote:
Hi Olle, First, I am not a lawyer, so ... Even so, in the VO's that I am familiar with, largish physics experiments, the VO is formed by agreements between the institutions that employ the people who decide to be part of the VO.
That seems to be the way with most VOs I've heard of - a far cry from the dynamic on-the-fly set-up many people are talking about and building software to support.
The institutions are legal entities but the agreements that form the VO are not necesarily legally binding and the VO itself has no legal status, it is not something which can be sued, files no tax returns, etc.
Where there is commercial value - or legal issues over privacy, say - the agreements do have to be stronger, with lawyers and redress, and so on. When such a VO becomes very real joint venture, I don't know - better ask a lawyer.
Making a grid set-up where you can negotiate such things in software and have them adequately legally binding ... seems some way off.
My 2c.
I'm down under right now, so that had better be my AU$0.02. But here there are no 2c coins, so they'd round it down to zero.
Andrew.
participants (4)
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Andrew Martin -
Doug Olson -
Howard Chivers -
Olle Mulmo