I don't get it [LWN.net]

I don't get it

Posted Dec 2, 2010 2:41 UTC (Thu) by njs (guest, #40338)
In reply to: I don't get it by dlang
Parent article: The dark side of open source conferences

*Not* ejecting people also opens organizers up to lawsuits from the people being harassed. (Especially when the harasser is a repeat offender that everyone knows about but ignores anyway. Even if we ignore the *ethical* aspects here, that'd be a *far* more difficult lawsuit to defend against.)

And, for that matter, pretty much everything else involved in running a conference *also* opens one up to lawsuits -- e.g., guess who's on the hook if some attendees trash the venue.

So we have standard ways to deal with this -- written policies (if the form when you signed up said "attendance may be revoked on whim of organizers" then you hardly have a legal leg to stand up if your attendance did get revoked), and running the conference under the auspices of a limited liability corporation with a civil liability insurance policy.

This is all so standard that when I see the liability argument I always feel like the person advancing it is just trying to find some logical justification to back up their gut reaction. Sorry if that's not the case here, but that's how I feel.

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I don't get it

Posted Dec 2, 2010 7:14 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

I was in San Jose (Silicon Valley) a few weeks ago, and the hotel I was staying at apparently has problems with weekend parties.

they had a written policy that they apparently hand out to guests staying for the weekend talking about eviction if there are noise complaints.

one interesting thing about this was that it wasn't hotel security that would evict them. The hotel would call the police and have the police evict them.

If you want to throw someone out and make it stick, you really should involve the professionals, either police or other local security personnel.

if someone is merely misbehaving, telling them to calm down, but the off-color jokes, etc is very definitely appropriate for anyone who witnesses the bad behavior to do (definitely NOT limited to event staff), but if you are talking about behavior bad enough to throw someone out (the abuse/assault level of behavior) that is a different story.

I don't get it

Posted Dec 3, 2010 5:19 UTC (Fri) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link]

Dunno what your hotel story has to do with anything? Are we just changing the subject from talking about the liability risks of throwing people out to talking about the exact mechanisms that should be used to do it?

Anyone who's running a conference should hopefully be competent enough to handle this kind of situation in an appropriate manner; whether that involves calling the cops is going to be situation dependent, but it's certainly an option.