We Are All Individuals

Status of This Memo

This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.¶

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This Internet-Draft will expire on 2 May 2027.¶

Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2026 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.¶

This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.¶

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

The IETF has always said that its participants act as individuals. The existing statements of this principle are collected in Section 7.¶

Those statements were written when every message to a mailing list and every Internet-Draft was typed by a person. That is no longer a safe assumption. Agents can now draft text, post to mailing lists, open issues, and submit documents, and can do so at a volume no person could.¶

This document doesn't restrict the tools people use. It states who is responsible for what those tools produce.¶

2. Conventions and Definitions

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.¶

This document uses "Contribution", "Contributor", and "Participant" as defined in [RFC8179] and [RFC5378].¶

Human:

A natural person.¶

Account:

A Datatracker account, and the credentials associated with it.¶

Agent:

Software that produces or submits text, or takes other actions, on behalf of a human.¶

3. Requirements

4. Anonymity

This document uses "anonymous" and "pseudonym" as defined in Section 3.3 of [RFC6973].¶

Anonymity has real value. People use it to take part in political life where speaking under their own name would put them, their families, or their jobs at risk. [RFC8280] treats anonymity as a human rights consideration in protocol design for these reasons.¶

Anonymous participation is still incompatible with the IETF standards process. The process depends on knowing which human made each Contribution:¶

• A Contributor grants rights in their Contribution and makes representations about it (Section 5 of [RFC5378]). A grant or a representation from nobody in particular is worth nothing.¶

• IPR disclosure obligations attach to IPR that the Contributor "reasonably and personally" knows of, including IPR held by their employer or sponsor (Section 5.6 of [RFC8179]). Nobody can tell whether that obligation has been met without knowing who the Contributor is.¶

• Rough consensus is judged by chairs who read the discussion. If one human can appear as several participants, the chairs can't tell how much support or opposition there really is.¶

• The guidelines for conduct [RFC7154] and the moderation processes [RFC9945] act on people. A sanction that can be escaped by creating a new account has no effect.¶

• Affiliations "are often used for identification" (Section 3.2 of [RFC9281]). Readers weigh an argument partly by knowing who is making it and what interests they may have.¶

Every Contribution MUST therefore be attributable to an identified human, as required by Section 3.2. The IETF does not accept anonymous Contributions.¶

5. Multiple Identities

A human may want to take part in the IETF under an identity that is not publicly linked to their existing account. Reasons include changing employers, working in an area that is sensitive for their employer or government, or separating personal and professional work.¶

A human MAY hold more than one account, each used for a different piece of work, without publicly linking them. Each account is still subject to every requirement in this document: it belongs to one identified human who has acknowledged the Note Well, and that human is accountable for every Contribution made from it.¶

A human MUST NOT use more than one identity to contribute to the same piece of work. For the purposes of this document, a "piece of work" includes at least:¶

• an Internet-Draft and any later document derived from it;¶

• any discussion, issue, review, or consensus call about such a document; and¶

• any nomination, petition, or other process in which participants are counted.¶

A human MUST NOT create a new account to avoid a sanction applied to an existing one, or to avoid the history attached to it on an existing topic.¶

6. Open Questions

This document is a starting point for discussion. These questions are expected to be debated.¶

• Is a working group the right scope for a "piece of work", or is a single document enough? Working group scope is easier to check, but it may exclude people who have good reasons to keep two lines of work apart.¶

• Should an account with no public link to a human's other accounts still be linked privately, for example by disclosure to the IETF Secretariat or the Ombudsteam? That would allow enforcement of Section 5 without exposing the link publicly.¶

• Is a pseudonym acceptable on a single account, if the human behind it is known to the IETF and accountable in the same way as anyone else?¶

• How should the IETF verify that an account belongs to one human, and how much verification is proportionate?¶

7. Existing Principle

The following documents state that participation in the IETF is by individuals.¶

Section 3.2 of [RFC9281] (BCP 11):¶

• For all purposes relevant to the Internet Standards development process, membership in the IETF and its WGs is defined to be established solely and entirely by individuals who participate in IETF and WG activities. These individuals do not formally represent any organizations they may be affiliated with, although affiliations are often used for identification.¶

Section 1 of [RFC2418] (BCP 25):¶

• There is no formal membership in the IETF. Participation is open to all. [...] Participation is by individual technical contributors, rather than by formal representatives of organizations.¶

Section 5 of [RFC8179] (BCP 79):¶

• This document refers to the IETF Participant making disclosures, consistent with the general IETF philosophy that Participants in the IETF act as individuals.¶

Section 1 of [RFC8179] defines a "Contributor" as "an individual submitting a Contribution", and a "Participant" as "any individual Participating in an IETF discussion or activity". Section 1 of [RFC5378] (BCP 78) uses the same definition of "Contributor".¶

Section 2.2 of [RFC7241]:¶

• All IETF participants act as individuals. There is no concept of "IETF membership".¶

Section 4.1 of [RFC9680]:¶

• While IETF participants are expected to participate as individuals, their actions could still be construed as representing their employer, whatever their role.¶

Section 2.1 of [RFC8718]:¶

• Meeting attendees participate as individuals.¶

Appendix A.1 of [RFC6702] describes the IPR obligations as "personal requirements applying to all IETF participants as individuals".¶

Section 5 of [RFC2026] notes that the IAB and IESG "are composed of individuals who may participate, as individuals, in the technical work of the IETF".¶

The final version of the Tao of the IETF, archived in [RFC9592], says "There is no membership in the IETF."¶

The IRTF's code of conduct [RFC9775] says a generative tool must not be listed as an author of a document, and that significant amounts of AI-generated content must be disclosed.¶

8. Security Considerations

TODO¶

9. IANA Considerations

This document has no IANA actions.¶

10. References

Appendix A. Related Work

RFC Editor: please remove this appendix before publication.¶

Other documents under discussion cover parts of the same ground:¶

• [I-D.fengfar-led] discusses the use of AI tools in IETF mailing list discussions and recommends that the IETF develop guidelines for them. It notes that the sock-puppet problem is a separate issue. This document addresses that issue.¶

• [I-D.carpenter-rswg-authoring-ethics] states that authors remain entirely responsible for any content generated by AI, and that an AI tool must not be credited as an author. This document applies the same principle to every Contribution, not only to RFC authorship.¶

• [I-D.moonesamy-authorship-ietf] reflects on authorship in the IETF and asks whether the IETF should set guidelines for the use of generative AI by authors.¶

Some documents cited here are being revised. [I-D.ietf-procon-2418bis] would replace [RFC2418] and keeps the text quoted in Section 7. [I-D.ietf-procon-2026bis] would replace [RFC2026]. References will be updated if those documents are published first.¶

Acknowledgments

TODO¶

Author's Address