Recording of meetings

[hober]

During a group's meeting at TPAC this year I was very surprised when the chair intended to make an audio recording of the meeting, and objected. They seemed as surprised by my objection as I was by their intent to record the meeting.

One quality inherent to the practice of minuting a meeting is that participants are able to occasionally request that a statement not be minuted, or be minuted differently—this sometimes happens after the statement was made. Creating an audio or video recording of a meeting removes this option, and stifles participation.

I wonder what, if anything, the process should say on this.

[hober]

(Also IANAL but many jurisdictions have laws around recording meetings, and I doubt anyone in the room at the time had adequate knowledge of the relevant legal situation pertaining at the time of the meeting.)

[frivoal]

In other orgs with less developed scribing practices, I've seen meetings being recorded by the person responsible for making a transcript, but this comes with announcements of "is everybody OK with this?" and "I will delete the recording once the transcript is made." every time someone who's not already familiar with the practice attends the meeting.

I would not necessarily go as far as strictly banning recordings, but given that they are known to make a number of people uncomfortable for a number of reasons, I would say that there should not be an assumption that it's OK just to record, and that if you want to, you need to get everybody's permission.

[cwilso]

To be clear, in this case that question (“is everyone okay with this?”) was asked. (Not speaking for or against recording, but permission was asked.)

On Thursday, October 3, 2019, Florian Rivoal notifications@github.com wrote:

In other orgs with less developed scribing practices, I've seen meetings being recorded by the person responsible for making a transcript, but this comes with announcements of "is everybody OK with this?" and "I will delete the recording once the transcript is made." every time someone who's not already familiar with the practice attends the meeting.

I would not necessarily go as far as strictly banning recordings, but given that they are known to make a number of people uncomfortable for a number of reasons, I would say that there should not be an assumption that it's OK just to record, and that if you want to, you need to get everybody's permission.

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[LJWatson]

The reason for the recording or its intended purpose is a consideration. Is it an official record of the meeting, or just a format some people might find easier to consume after the fact than reading minutes. I believe it's often easier to listen than read in a second language for example, it's also easier to listen than read if you're Dyslexic or similar.

We may already have complete historical records of what is said at meetings. If a remote call is transcribed automatically into captions for deaf people, that will include someone saying "not for the minutes".

To a lesser extent, the IRC logs can be edited before the minutes are published, but the IRC logs themselves (especially those on people's local machines) cannot.

Do we know why the request was made in this instance? A use case might help.

[dwsinger]

To be clear, in this case that question (“is everyone okay with this?”) was asked. (Not saying this was right, but it was asked.) …

Yes...but it seems that the answer "no" wasn't readily accepted. So perhaps we need to ask what the process is for resolution; I would have thought that anyone in the room could say "no" and that would be decisive, but there are obviously other possible outcomes.

[cwilso]

Actually, no, the answer "no" was readily accepted in this case; there was, as @hober said, a bit of surprise on both parts, but no significant issue afaict. (I support Tess' objection to being recorded and her query of whether this should be clarified in the Process, fwiw.) I'll ask why the request was made.

[yoavweiss]

I was the one who requested to record the meeting, for two reasons:

• Community members who could not attend remotely asked for the meeting to be recorded.
• Minutes tend to be rather lossy, and having recorded audio permits to go back to them and complete them after the fact.

As noted, I was slightly surprised by the objection, but fully accepted it, and avoided recording the meeting in its entirety.

[hober]

I think we've gotten distracted from the issue I was trying to raise by focusing on the particulars of a specific event.

[hober]

Personally, I think the process should discourage (SHOULD NOT) official recordings of meetings by chairs, and forbid (MUST NOT) unofficial recordings of meetings by anyone. One of the primary purposes of having a process in place is to encourage lively participation in meetings; recording has the opposite effect. Also, I don't think we should put chairs in the position of having to be aware of the laws in the relevant jurisdictions.

[cwilso]

I agree we should not put chairs in the position of needing to adjudicate local legal restrictions, and supportive of your reasoning for discouraging recordings. I'm little concerned about "MUST NOT" for the same reason. (Are chairs legally responsible for determining if the conference room is bugged, kinda thing.)

[frivoal]

From an enforce-ability point of view, "Chairs MUST ensure that participants are not recording [...]" would not be reasonable. "Participants MUST NOT record [...]" would be.

Whether we should go with MUST NOT or SHOULD NOT for participants, I'm less sure. Whether for scribing purposes, accessibility reasons, or other unforeseen reasons, there might be cases where it'd be appropriate.

If we need to write this down, (which I am not 100% sure we do) I'd probably go with something like:

Participants in a meeting should not make audio or video recordings, and must not do so without the explicit consent of of everyone who would be recorded. Furthermore, consent to be recorded does not generally imply agreeing that the recording be distributed to other people or made public.

[chrisn]

As an experiment, and following suggestion from one of the co-chairs, we have started publishing recordings from the Media & Entertainment IG calls. Our main reason for doing this was to increase the IG's reach to potential new participants.

I share the reservations that @hober has mentioned here.

The process we've used is to ask participants whether it's OK to record at the start of each call, and to not do that if anyone objects. In practice, no one has objected so far.

I support having guidance in the process, and @frivoal's suggestion seems good, although I suggest making explicit that consent is required for publication/distribution of any recordings.

[dwsinger]

I think I'd express it slightly stronger, something like

Participants in a meeting should not make audio or video recordings, and must not do so without the explicit consent of of everyone who would be recorded, even if the recording is only for personal use of the person making it. Furthermore, separate explicit consent must be obtained before the recording is distributed to other people, or made public.

[cwilso]

I'd like to object to stating in the Process that recordings are simply not allowed. I respect the desire to not be recorded; I think any chair who wants to record needs to 1) clearly state the purpose of recording and the availability (public, Member, private-only-used-for-chairs-editing-the-minutes), 2) ask all participants for their permission, and do not record if anyone objects. This seems to match @chrisn's suggestion, and others I've talked to who have used recording as a tool (following those rules).

[frivoal]

I'd like to object to stating in the Process that recordings are simply not allowed.

Is anyone proposing that though? My text and David's variant say should not in the base case, not must not, and only say must not when you do not have consent. That's not "simply not allowed".

[cwilso]

Must not without consent is of course proper. "Should not" is a pretty strong admonition to not attempt this as a matter of course.

On Wed, Oct 9, 2019 at 9:56 AM Florian Rivoal notifications@github.com wrote:

I'd like to object to stating in the Process that recordings are simply not allowed.

Is anyone proposing that though? My text and David's variant say should not in the base case, not must not, and only say must not when you do not have consent. That's not "simply not allowed".

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[hober]

@cwilso, should not is "must not, unless you have a really good reason."

I think any chair who wants to record needs to 1) clearly state the purpose of recording[...]

I think your (1) is the chair providing that really good reason to the room. So should not is the right formulation here. Unless you do (1), you can't.

[cwilso]

@hober that leaves a lot up to the determination of who is responsible for determining "what's a really good reason?" If it's the chair, okay, but I think we're in the same state we're in today?

[hober]

@hober that leaves a lot up to the determination of who is responsible for determining "what's a really good reason?" If it's the chair, okay, but I think we're in the same state we're in today?

That's not the same state we're in today. Today, the process fails to give chairs any guidance here.

[nigelmegitt]

that leaves a lot up to the determination of who is responsible for determining "what's a really good reason?"

@cwilso my reading of the proposal is that it's the whole group who determines if the reason is good enough and balances that against negative impacts. If anyone in the group is sufficiently concerned they can object, at which point there is no consensus for making the recording and the default of "not recording" needs to clearly apply.

[chaals]

On Tue, 08 Oct 2019 14:17:57 +0200, David Singer
notifications@github.com wrote:

I think I'd express it slightly stronger, something like

Participants in a meeting should not make audio or video recordings, and
must not do so without the explicit consent of of >everyone who would be
recorded, even if the recording is only for personal use of the person
making it. Furthermore, separate >explicit consent must be obtained
before the recording is distributed to other people, or made public.

I think this is in the right direction, but we need to think more
carefully.

I'm not sure that the specific technology details belong in the Process,
but we need some clear and well-known procedures.

For legal reasons, no recording should be made without the consent of all
participants.

A request for permission to record needs to include where/how the
recording will be stored and to whom it will be released for what purpose

• it is quite reasonable for people, on privacy grounds, to object to
  cloud storage of a recording.

On the other hand, e.g. to facilitate auto-scribing for people who are
hard of hearing or who find spoken english difficult to understand, or as
an aide to post-meeting editing of the minutes for greater accuracy (some
groups do this), there are real use cases for recordings, including in
not-very-privacy-friendly systems.

We should probably end up with part of our participation, code of conduct,
and privacy policy noting our position on this.

[nigelmegitt]

For legal reasons, no recording should be made without the consent of all participants.

@chaals please could you be more specific about the legal reasons? I have an antipathy towards vague "lawyers say its bad" arguments, and I don't think this is obvious, particularly since IRC scribing is already done and persisted and we already accept that IRC log != minutes. I think there could be an argument that if you're willing to persist an IRC log which may be almost verbatim, then there's no significant difference between that and an audio recording. I've never heard anyone request that no IRC log is kept, though obviously people do sometimes ask the scribe to take their hands off the keyboard for a while, which in my current mental model is equivalent to "please pause the recording".

If there's a particular legal concern, there probably is a mitigation we should be aware of before finalising any process wording.

[dwsinger]

@chaals indeed, can you indicate whether you think any changes need to be made to the (mercifully brief) proposed text? The question of shared storage is covered by the requirement to get separate permission if the recording is for more than personal use, for example

[chaals]

The laws regarding recording of conversations are related to wire-tapping. In some places, you only need one party to know (or to have a warrant, in others you need full consent. I think - and I think it is the consensus - that we should require consent of all parties before recording a call.

I don't think we should add any text to the process. I think this is an operational requirement that chairs need to be aware of and we need to make sure new participants are aware of, as we do with the Code of Conduct.

And where the recording is stored is, a priori, relevant. I'm far less likely to give permission for recording (or more likely to simply drop off a call) where the sound is held in a cloud service that may subsequently be used for tracking my voice - or there is no clear archived promise that it will not be turned over to such a system.

[dwsinger]

And where the recording is stored is, a priori, relevant. I'm far less likely to give permission for recording (or more likely to simply drop off a call) where the sound is held in a cloud service that may subsequently be used for tracking my voice - or there is no clear archived promise that it will not be turned over to such a system.

That falls under the category "is or made be available to others" as far as I am concerned.

I don't think we should attempt to cover, or interpret, local laws. We do need norms of behavior, though. So, I don't think this is mere practice; members o fthe W3C need to be able to point at a policy that they can request be enforced.

So, asking again for specific text; I would be OK adding a note that people have to abide by applicable (not necessarily 'local', as 'local' may not be well defined) laws. How is this?

Participants in a meeting should not make audio or video recordings, and must not do so without the explicit consent of of everyone who would be recorded, even if the recording is only for personal use of the person making it. Furthermore, separate explicit consent must be obtained before the recording is distributed to other people, stored in shared or cloud storage, or made public. Note: there may also be applicable laws concerning recording.

[yoavweiss]

I'd like to push back on the "should not" part here.

At the WebPerfWG we've been recording calls for the last year and posting them online (with explicit notice at the invitation to the calls as well as at the beginning of each meeting). We've seen multiple benefits to that practice:

• New participants who saw how the WG meetings happen and decided that involvement in standards is something they are willing to pursue. I believe we were able to bring in at least 2 new member organizations from the industry to the WG as a result, and their contributions have been extremely valuable.
• Significantly improved minutes - scribing is lossy by nature, and regardless of the scribe, I found myself using the recordings to complete the minutes to be more coherent after every single meeting.

I believe the transparency those recordings provide is extremely valuable. I'd hate to see that go away.

While I understand that a "should not" means that chairs could still record while justifying their actions, I believe it sends the wrong message. Instead of encouraging openness and transparency by default, we would be encouraging the opposite. I don't think we should do that.

[dwsinger]

I'd like to push back on your push back. Scribing is intentionally lossy: there is matter that can be said, or poorly said, that should not survive the meeting. Far from giving transparency, I think recording can and does have a significant chilling effect on conversation. It relays tone, for example: something said in a truly hostile or passive-aggressive way. So, I don't agree that recording encourages "openness and transparency ".

[cwilso]

I'm sure I don't understand you correctly, @dwsinger , because I just heard this as "recordings would have a chilling effect on the ability of participants to be hostile or passive-aggressive in the moment, and not have that recorded in the minutes." Which... I don't think is a good thing?

[dwsinger]

It's the chair's job to manage hostile speech and passive-aggressive behaviour, not the existence of recordings. Everyone is (or should be) much much more careful opening their mouth, in case they mis-phrase, or come across wrongly in audio, if they are being recorded. It tilts the playing field to native speakers, people who are attuned to nuance, and badly away from people less comfortable talking.

[yoavweiss]

Everyone is (or should be) much much more careful opening their mouth, in case they mis-phrase, or come across wrongly in audio, if they are being recorded

Is being mis-scribed significantly better? Again, from the WebPerfWG's experience, I saw multiple times where in the heat of scribing, some complex technical nuance was misunderstood and the scribe wrote down the opposite of what was actually said.

[dwsinger]

Yes, scribing is better, for three reasons. (a) if the scribe misunderstood what was said, then probably others did too, so we get a real-time comprehension check. (b) It can be corrected in real-time ("That's not what I said/meant") and (c) can be corrected after the fact.

[dwsinger]

By the way, I think that WebPerf's current practice would be OK under the text provided. "I like to make an audio recording for the exclusive use of the chair, to enable the chair to correct minutes and make them accurate. Does anyone object?" It sounds as if you don't if anyone objects, so you'd be fine.

[yoavweiss]

Yes, scribing is better, for three reasons. (a) if the scribe misunderstood what was said, then probably others did too, so we get a real-time comprehension check. (b) It can be corrected in real-time ("That's not what I said/meant") and (c) can be corrected after the fact.

All that can already happen today. When it doesn't (which is again, every single meeting, at least in some part of the conversation), the recordings are there to help correct things.

By the way, I think that WebPerf's current practice would be OK under the text provided

I know, but it still sets the default to "lack of transparency". I think that's a bad default for the W3C process to set.

"I like to make an audio recording for the exclusive use of the chair, to enable the chair to correct minutes and make them accurate. Does anyone object?"

Again, the purpose of the recordings today is both to correct the minutes as well as to publish them to increase transparency towards the larger web community. That transparency has served us well in bringing in new active members that we so desperately need.

[cwilso]

In particular: I do not believe the recordings are for the exclusive use of the chairs in the WebPerf case. (I think they are published.)

[yoavweiss]

In particular: I do not believe the recordings are for the exclusive use of the chairs in the WebPerf case. (I think they are published.)

Indeed

[dwsinger]

I do not agree that a lack of an audio recording is a lack of transparency; we minute meetings precisely to give transparency. And I would like to know how many participants feel inhibited by the recording, and how many potential participants have kept away by the existence of the recordings.

[LJWatson]

We're not the first to consider the possibility of recording meetings, and it's possible we might learn something from one institution that has gone before us.

Proceedings of the House of Commons in the UK have been minuted in Hansard since the 1820s. In 1975 proceedings were broadcast on radio for the first time, despite several Prime Ministers blocking the possibility after 1950 (when the House of Commons was first kitted out with microphones) and a 1949 committee determined that "the effect of broadcasting proceedings would be harmful".

The same thing repeated itself when televising proceedings was proposed. In one debate, Neil Kinnock asked:

For centuries we have had this place reported. The public come into the Gallery and for 10 years we have had the House broadcast. What reasonable cause can be given for not using modern technology—[HON. MEMBERS "You."] What reasonable cause can be given for not reporting and broadcasting this House with moving pictures? What is the Prime Minister afraid of ?>

To which the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher replied:

The right hon. Gentleman gives me my point. The reputation of this House has not been enhanced by sound broadcasting.>

Despite this, proceedings were first televised in 1989, and have been so ever since.

Notably it has not fundamentally changed the way exchanges take place in the House of Commons, but it has offered much greater transparency to a much wider audience. Of course anyone could have read Hansard for an account of the day's proceedings, but radio and television broadcasts have democratized proceedings to a far greater extent.

[fantasai]

Fwiw, I'm OK with @dsinger's proposed text in https://github.com/w3c/w3process/issues/334#issuecomment-541786765 I'd also be OK if we only applied the SHOULD NOT to video recordings, and left audio recordings unadvised.

I think there are a number of people for whom recordings would be uncomfortable, and publication even more so, some of them personally (there's reasons many conferences have "don't record me" tags) and others because it conflicts with company requirements. I don't want us to make F2F meetings and telecons more intimidating than they are already. We are not elected officials; we are not needing to demonstrate how we represent our constituents. We need to come to good solid conclusions by consensus and represent the thinking and rationale behind our decisions clearly so that others can understand the origins and implications of our decisions, and have the opportunity to poke holes in it if necessary. The minutes and subsequent follow-up (such as responding to the commenter as required by the Process) should be sufficient for those purposes.

Strongly agree that a WG should absolutely be required to get the the consent of everyone it records, and separately consent for whether those recordings can be shared. Audio recordings for personal study or correcting the minutes, with the understanding that they would be deleted once their purpose is fulfilled and not shared further, are quite different from publicly posting things on the Internet. We should also not be unduly pressuring new participants to consent to such recordings or publications, where "we're all fine with it why aren't you" is what I would consider excessive pressure--there's already a lot of pressure to conform when coming into a WG where regularly taking and posting recordings is their habit, and anyone new should be given an explicit opportunity to say no, noting that consent is not freely given if “no” is not an equally acceptable answer to “yes”.

[plehegar]

Taking minutes has a high cost, especially in very small groups with complex technical issues. As long as we have the consent of the participants that the recording is being done and its purpose, we should enable the practice imho. WebPerf is not the only Group doing this btw, and it does help a lot with timezones if you can't make it. If things shouldn't go in the recording, the recording could be stopped as well.

[domfarolino]

I just want to register my strong support for recordings in general. External contributors provide an enormous value to the web ecosystem, and if you are one of the few privileged enough to attend standards meetings and discussions in-person, that is wonderful, but by far most cannot attend these. Intentionally choosing to degrade the quality of meeting summarization (which is what choosing minutes over recordings does IMO) because some people are uncomfortable, directly limits the quality of information consumed by anyone external, and potentially the work they may generate as a result. Contributing to the web platform in any way is incredibly difficult, and I really think we should do absolutely whatever we can to lower the barrier of entry for anyone to get involved.

I think choosing minutes in favor of not recording meetings would be a big step step back for a group or industry that otherwise aims to be superiorly transparent and inclusive to all, especially to those who do not have the personal or financial ability to attend every (any?) in-person meeting.

---

If things shouldn't go in the recording, the recording could be stopped as well.

That, and the recordings could be edited in many ways after-the-fact. The point is, the quality of this first-hand information should be what anyone external has access to, and I think generally encouraging this makes for a more inclusive environment. In my opinion, this generally outweighs feelings of discomfort by those fortunate enough to attend in-person.

[dwsinger]

Background info. The joint ISO/IEC technical committee, JTC1, has this policy:

---

JTC 1 follows the ISO policy on recording technical meetings which are included in the ISO Supplement, Annex SF clause 10. This policy is the following:

• The recording of ISO meetings by the committee secretary is acceptable provided that at the outset of the meeting all participants are made aware that the meeting will be recorded and there are no objections. Individual participants shall have the right to require that the means of recording are switched off during a particular intervention if s/he so desires.
• Such recordings are intended to aid the meeting secretary in preparing the minutes/report of the meeting. They may also be used to resolve disputes concerning what occurred at a meeting, which, in some instances, may require the preparation of transcripts of the recording.
• The recordings and any transcripts are the property of the meeting secretary, who is expected to respect the confidentiality of ISO meetings. The recordings and transcripts shall accordingly not be divulged to third parties and should preferably be destroyed once the minutes have been approved.

[thezedwards]

Howdy everyone, thanks for having this conversation.

There's a lot of talk about participant rights, consent to record, and very little discussion about legal requirements that any organization funded by certain governments must undertake to not be in violation of Sunshine/Open Meeting laws.

To be clear, a Sunshine Law is typically violated by THE CHAIR of a meeting -- and this discussion is pushing TONS of legal exposure on the chairs of every W3c meeting, and creating conflict between those chairs, and people in the United States who have rights when their government fund organizations like W3c.

If w3c and the Chairs did NOT want to comply with U.S. sunshine laws, you should have changed your organizational goals, and been extremely careful with sources of funding and your public membership -- that didn't happen, the checks from the U.S. government were already cashed for various W3c support and liaison positions, and U.S. government bodies are paying members of W3c.

The W3c is apparently not a legal entity - but it seems to get funding from some governments, and there are NUMEROUS State/Federal/Local government-funded organizations in the United States who are dues paying members of W3c, as listed here: https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List

Furthermore, there are ~40 federal contracts that mention W3c specifically (https://beta.sam.gov/search?index=opp&notice_type=r,p,k&page=1&is_active=false&sort=-relevance&keywords=w3c&opp_inactive_date_filter_model=%7B%22dateRange%22:%7B%22startDate%22:%22%22,%22endDate%22:%22%22%7D%7D&opp_publish_date_filter_model=%7B%22dateRange%22:%7B%22startDate%22:%22%22,%22endDate%22:%22%22%7D%7D&opp_modified_date_filter_model=%7B%22dateRange%22:%7B%22startDate%22:%22%22,%22endDate%22:%22%22%7D%7D&opp_response_date_filter_model=%7B%22dateRange%22:%7B%22startDate%22:%22%22,%22endDate%22:%22%22%7D%7D&date_filter_index=0&inactive_filter_values=false) and numerous other state/local contracts that have gone to fund W3c liaisons and other work.

I want to be clear to everyone that ANY organization that takes money from the U.S. government, and holds meetings discussing policies that impact the public and other businesses, is operating in a space where it's almost guaranteed where the organization does not get to "choose" whether to comply with Sunshine Laws. The inclusion of government bodies in the discussions, makes open door policies required.

If an organization does not want to comply with U.S. Sunshine laws, then you don't get to take money from the U.S. government, or be involved in non-governmental meetings discussing policies that impact governments, the public, corporations and nonprofits in the U.S.

Some EU version of W3c that has no U.S. members, could maybe argue that this organization doesn't need to comply with U.S. sunshine laws, but otherwise, there are a ton of red flags in how this organization is operating, the lack of recordings, and the clear pushback from numerous people in positions of power to provide some level of transparency for an organization that has cost U.S. taxpayers significant amounts of money over the years.

I am strongly urging a change in policy, and all Chairs who are banning audio/video recordings of these meetings, should consult with attorneys about their potential violations of U.S. Open Meeting laws.

Sincerely, Zach

[dwsinger]

I'm going to ask, as chair, that people not respond immediately to the preceding comment, while we consider it. Thanks

[mnot]

@dwsinger I trust you're getting an opinion from counsel.

[thezedwards]

@dwsinger - howdy do you have an update on this?

[dwsinger]

After taking advice, I am re-opening debate, but I request all participants to avoid offering, commenting on, affirming, refuting, supporting, or opposing, statements or opinions on legal matters. This is not a legal forum, and we are not lawyers, and the W3C is international and laws are not. Once we have a preferred direction, we will work with the W3C team to see whether cross-check with laws may be needed.

Please keep the discussion within the parameters of a community discussion of the considerations. Thanks. (Speaking as the chair of the process CG).

[thezedwards]

Hi @dwsinger - Google employees and plenty of folks have spoken. This needs to happen, every meeting should be recorded and uploaded to a permanent repository, and no one should be able to individually veto any specific meeting not be recorded. If you don't want to be heard or seen, submit written comments. Period.

For the record, what stops a company like Google already recording this for their own private use? Answer: nothing. You can't stop an individual from recording these public meetings for their own use, yet if there isn't a global policy, these recorded meetings wont' get organized anywhere, and each meeting will potentially be able to have some loud employee from a powerful company object and request no recording -- and then that could be the meeting where that major corporation is lobbying for an important change. This has happened, and i've been on calls where this has been happening.

If w3c believes that the meeting minutes always captures the tone, intent and details of these meetings, then 1) that's wrong, and 2) there are plenty of ways to prove this.

If Apple and Apple employees are trying to create nuance here that allows each meeting or chair to individually decide whether to allow these recordings, I think that's a very bad decision, and Apple, as the apparent arbiter of decisions here, will get the attention it deserves.

This thread is a few months away from being up for a year --- and there are tons of historical conversations about this same topic. I made my position clear on June 4th, and had to ask for an update before receiving this gem of a comment:

"After taking advice, I am re-opening debate, but I request all participants to avoid offering, commenting on, affirming, refuting, supporting, or opposing, statements or opinions on legal matters. This is not a legal forum, and we are not lawyers, and the W3C is international and laws are not. Once we have a preferred direction, we will work with the W3C team to see whether cross-check with laws may be needed."

// It's time to kick off this process, or I'm going to just move forward with the assumption that Apple is stopping this, while Google is endorsing this transparency.

Please move forward or promote this thread publicly to "get more feedback" - any delays without action will be considered further proof of Apple trying to avoid transparency.

[dwsinger]

I repeat: Please keep the discussion within the parameters of a community discussion of the considerations. Thank you.

[thezedwards]

@dwsinger - what gives you the right to keep delaying this? You said you were going to get a legal opinion, you didn't reply, and then you came back with ridiculous statements like "the W3C is international and laws are not." Was this statement from a W3c lawyer or Apple lawyer? If not, why didn't you get a legal opinion? Where is it?

Please go get a legal opinion, or push this forward. Don't keep dragging your heels and hoping for some sort of deference to what you consider appropriate for a community discussion.

[mnot]

I'd hope that a decision be made upon principle, not "$bigcompany has spoken" (despite reports to the contrary, the Web is still bigger than Google) and "somebody else can already do it."

Transparency is indeed one factor. Another is that some people will be reluctant to participate or fully speak their mind if the session is being recorded.

This might be because they're concerned that their words will be misconstrued as representing a company position, which for many people means they'd need to check with marketing/comms people before each statement. Or, it could be simply because they aren't as confident speaking publicly on recorded media as they would be in a room that's unrecorded.

Given the level of participation in most WGs, I think it's reasonable to ask whether recorded meetings will help or hinder overall participation; on the one hand, people who weren't there can get more nuance information about what happens; on the other, some people who are in the room may feel that they can't speak as openly.

To me, the proposal strikes the right balance; it doesn't make it impossible for groups that want to record to do so, as long as there's notification and consent.