He makes the legal argument in more detail in https://blog.cr.yp.to/20251004-weakened.html#standards

The gist of it is that standards organizations like the IETF depend on a specific carve-out in US antitrust law (in order for it to be legal for American companies like Cisco and Google to participate in them), and that carve-out includes a specific definition of what "standards organizations" and "consensus" are. So even if the IETF uses different words to describe its processes, those processes still have to comply with the legal definition that separates a "standards organization" from, like, an illegal cartel.

I can't help but note two things:

* the IETF's approach predates 15 U.S.C. §4302 by more than a decade

* every single case example cited is US-American scoped¹ SDOs: American Society of Mechanical Engineers, National Fire Protection Association, American National Standards Institute²

¹ NB scope ≠ legal domicile. The IETF's legal status is… complicated… but does have US dependencies. Its scope is world-wide though. Not so for any of the mentioned entities, even if…

² …ANSI is a borderline case since it is the constituent ISO member. But still, it's the US entity.

I'm not trying to make a legal argument here, but… I'll say he shouldn't be trying to do that either. Most mathematicians and CS majors make very poor lawyers in any case, and often enough without any awareness of it.