State the purpose of the City + Country on the participant agreement

[domenic]

In whatwg/html#10780 we had another unfortunate case of a contributor (@Psychpsyo) unable to contribute due to our contribution agreement requirements.

He suggested we make it clearer why we require the legal name and city + country. The former seems pretty obvious to me, so I just went ahead and sent a PR: whatwg/participate.whatwg.org#432 .

The latter is less clear to me, so I wanted the SG to figure it out and tell me what to write in such a PR. My guess was that it would be something about identifying the individual in question in the case of a patent dispute. Something like: John Doe from New York, USA sues a browser for implementing feature X, and then we find that the feature was contributed by John Doe, who signed the participant agreement. But the sue-er John Doe claims to be a different person than the contributor John Doe. Whereas if we'd recorded the contributor as from New York, USA, we'd have stronger grounds in suspecting that the sue-er John Doe and the contributor John Doe are the same person?

That doesn't sound super airtight to me, but I can imagine that maybe city + country is the accepted middle ground that gives enough detail for lawyers to be comfortable, even if it's not foolproof.

Or is there another reason?

Or is this not necessary and we should consider dropping the requirement?

[annevk]

There are other legal reasons to keep track of the location, such as sanctions.

[annevk]

Hey, please let us know if the above clarification is sufficient. Thanks!

[domenic]

I'd love to get some guidance on exactly what to write in the agreement, under the city + country field. I'm thinking something like

This is important for determining if you are subject to economic or political sanctions.

?

But sanctions are usually not on a city basis. So this doesn't really make sense to me.

And I'm not sure whether sanctions actually have much bearing on web standards participation??

[annevk]

There's a variety of reasons. Entity Listing, OFAC sanctions, and there could be other legal requirements depending on the location of the individual. We could say "For legal reasons", but I'm not sure that really helps anyone.

[domenic]

Can you explain those terms, and how they relate to standards participation? And why city is necessary and not just country, for each of them? Maybe then I could try to come up with explanations based on them to include in the form.