[time-nuts] law and regulation applying to time.. was Re: OOPS on my wwv legal post

Michael Wouters michaeljwouters at gmail.com
Thu Aug 30 21:47:19 UTC 2018


In Australia, the legal reference for standards of measurement is defined
by the National Measurement Act:

https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2016C00085

This also defines the legal source of time of day UTC(AUS), the Australian
realisation of UTC. State legislation then defines local time as an offset
with respect to UTC(AUS)

I only know of three industry-related "requirements". In the financial
markets, there is a requirement (via "Market Integrity Rules", overseen by
a government regulatory body) for synchronisation to UTC(AUS) to 20 ms. The
others, in transport and telecomms, are more like "codes of practice".

Cheers
Michael


On Thu, 30 Aug 2018 at 11:03 pm, jimlux <jimlux at earthlink.net> wrote:

> On 8/29/18 6:55 PM, John Hawkinson wrote:
> > Continuing reference to what is "legal" or "the law" is very confusing
> to me because no one has cited any statues, regulations, or case law.
> >
> > What's the basis for these claims about legal requirement? Can we please
> cite chapter and verse? Without it, it's hard to distinguish rumor and
> anecdote from fact, or refute anything.
> >
> >
>
> This is an interesting point - a year or so ago (probably around the
> time of the last leap second) there was all this stuff about UTC and
> leap seconds vis a vis electronic trading
>
> There's a internationally agreed second (defined by vibrations of Cs,
> etc.), and I assume that "standard practice" is that everyone adopts
> this rate.
>
> But is it a legal or regulatory *requirement* - or is it just standard
> practice, in the same sense that everyone uses the same M2 or 6-32
> threads.  There's no *law* that requires me to use a particular pipe
> thread or resistor color code. There's a standard that has been
> promulgated for these things, and if I buy, and you sell, it's to our
> mutual advantage to use the same standard.
>
> But if wanted to be "different", (say I was hand crafting English sports
> cars :), I could use a completely different series of fasteners and
> standard dimensions, and I could even use the positive terminal of the
> battery as the chassis common.
>
> But is there some International banking agreement that requires UTC? Or
> a SEC rule?
>
> I buy lots of things that have requirements that say, in effect
> "calibration shall be traceable to NIST or other National Standards
> Lab", but that's a *contractual* requirement, not a *legal* requirement.
>
> There may well be a law in the United States, probably buried in some
> enabling or appropriating bill, that says "The Department of Commerce
> shall provide national standards for mass, time, voltage, etc."  but
> that doesn't say "and all residents of the United States shall use only
> the standard provided by the Department of Commerce, and no other"
>
> What about Germany? Notoriously it is "Das Land der Gebote, der
> Vorschriften, und der Verbote."  (Commandments, regulations, and
> prohibitions)
>
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