Policy-Discussion

[Eva Stöwe <eva.stoewe AT cacert.org>]

Dear Policy Group,

I hereby propose the following policy decision:

~~~

Resolved that the CAcert Community Agreement (CCA => COD9) is revoked
and terminated according to CCA 3.3 1.

~~~


The reason being some recent ruling with which CAcert Arbitration
decided to ignore legal fairness, threatened independency of arbitrators
and also stepped outside of DRP, in the context of appeal or appeal like
cases.

I will not go in detail in this mail, but it's now established by
arbitration that

- appeals are cases against the arbitrator, none-appealing parties are
excluded

- other reviews about cases are allowed, but only for anybody who is not
original party, those cases are also cases against arbitrators. Those
cases don't require a claim about "clear injustices, egregious behaviour
or unconscionable Rulings" as appeals require. Original parties of the
original case are excluded to become party of those cases, they only
seem to be open for anybody who is not related to the original case, for
whatever reason

- none claim for those cases has to include any requirement of
"intentional or grossly negligent breach of duty". Even as DRP 3.5
requires this. Actually any party who participates in DRP Arbitration
agrees that there will not be liability for the Arbitrator or anybody
else who is handling arbitration cases outside of those cases according
to DRP 3.5. And even more this provision may not be overridden outside
of appeal process.

For none of those decisions exist some reasoning by the arbitrators.
Especially references to DRP 3.5 and the need of independency which
should be protected by DRP 3.5 were ignored by the ruling arbitrators.


The alternative for termination of CCA would be a deep update of DRP.
But this

a) would require some time where we would be in void with the current
situation

b) I doubt that enough energy is left to get there

c) this would not change that arbitration ignores DRP provisions.


So the only realistic alternative for us is to terminate CCA.

It's a very sad step, which I always hoped to avoid. A lot of times this
was the perspective someone was providing and I always fought to create
the option for an alternative. I did it this time, as well. Twice. But I
failed.

I'll try to explain my reasons for this step some more, but this mail
should not get too long.


I ask you to not lightly move the proposal away, just because you don't
like it and want to have CAcert continued.

I was an arbitrator an arbitrator knows that there could be the
situation where the CCA would have to be revoked by a ruling or the root
keys would have to be revoked based on a ruling. Those options are
available by intention. It's to protect the members from even more harm,
if CAcert core becomes un-reliable.

And now we have the situation where we cannot guarantee fair arbitration
cases, any more. Maybe the first instance of the case would be fair, but
that decision is now open to be attacked by any member for any reason
with a case against the ruling arbitrator. So how independent of that
threat will an arbitrator rule? - It's not that we trust or distrust the
arbitrators as such. It's the situation as such that we create for any
member, who don't know about the persons of the arbitrators and whom we
ask to trust this setup.

Believe me, I am aware about the burden that this proposal places on us
all. But it's the option that was created for this situation by
intention. We should not ignore that.

Kind regards,
Eva

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