I had the same understanding as Eve. And I'm confident the exercise is of good relevance, small effort and high value.
Given the group is "legal" it may be worth mentioning the role of using existing documents of prior similar work in the law. Precedent is a literal part of the common law and can sometimes result in mandatory continued use of specific phrases or formats. Even when a prior artifact has no direct authority to bind later actions (such as an example prior contract by other parties to a different but similar transaction). In short - we are a profession of enthusiastic re-users of content to put it politely (sometimes regarded as shameless plagiarizers). In this instance, we are just collecting examples of existing somewhat similar legal instruments as one prong of developing a framework to move forward. As a bridge to something more familiar, you could consider this prong of activity comparable to what you did to select the hospital consent doc which you then were able to use for several purposes. The people who wrote and use that consent doc operate in a non-uma context and do not currently understand or reflect uma assumptions in their documents and workflows. Nonetheless, I think you found much value could be extracted from that prior legal instrument.
So, in short, the wiki page where we are collecting legal instruments (terms and conditions mostly at this point) demonstrates examples of what people use in related contexts. We can use these inputs identify the "gap" between explicit evidence of existing practices and what could be retained vs what would need to be modified in legal agreements in order for these companies and governments to successfully migrate to uma. The general parameters of the mission statement do not articulate objective goals or metrics of a desired end-state contracts (eg: cap liability to actual damages for party X. ensure breach notice duty for party N). However, I hope looking at one type of relevant and existing agreements can help surface some aspect of what this group believes the uma legal layer should require, allow or prohibit.
Thanks,
- Dazza