Re: China blocking Wired?

On Jan 11, 2010, at 12:41 PM, John C Klensin wrote:
> Many of us have been to China multiple times.  I am not aware of
> anyone who has been granted a business or professional visa, and
> who has gone and behaved professionally, having nearly the
> problems with entry or exit that have been typical of the US in
> recent years (even returning US citizens).  I've encountered
> some long lines, bad multilingual signage, and miscellaneous
> confusion on occasion, but China clearly has no monopoly on
> those.
Thanks, John! I feel very reassured.

How about some practical guidance for the folks who haven't been there  
multiple times, beyond "Behave professionally and don't do anything  
stupid." We have lots of people who don't know they're "being stupid"  
because in their world, what they're doing is absolutely normal and  
they have absolutely no expectation of consequences.
These sorts of things can be subtle. A friend's brother was arrested  
in the UAE last year for possession of melatonin, which is a common  
over-the-counter sleep therapy in most of the world but is apparently  
considered a major narcotic in their airport (although you can  
supposedly buy it OTC in stores in-country).  He was very surprised at  
this, having never even thought it might be an issue. If we were  
meeting in Dubai, I'd expect  medications to be a major problem. But  
we're not meeting in in Dubai, but China, and China quite likely has  
equivalent surprises in store. Quite possibly, neither you nor I have  
ever run afoul of them due to a combination of luck and discretion  
(which I occasionally DO exercise). But also quite possibly, they'll  
trip up some of our colleagues. Unlike the US, whose border- 
liabilities are fairly well understood by IETFers, I'm pretty sure we  
generally don't know what the likely problems are in China. We need to  
find out, and we need to educate our community about them.
If we (the IETF) can't even figure out what China is doing to Internet  
traffic, how are we supposed to understand the laws that aren't in our  
area of expertise? If they think Wired Magazine is dangerous enough  
that it must be blocked, chances are that they'd find the contents of  
my home PC appalling (I do too, it runs Windows XP). How about what's  
on Alice's laptop?
For example: As I understand it, one is allowed to bring only one  
camera and one computer, not two of each. Will this affect camera-and- 
computer loving IETFers? Possibly, if it's still true. Does the camera  
in your cell phone count against the quota? How about the one built in  
a Macbook?
I'm much more concerned about the prohibition that goes "Printed  
matter, films, photos, gramophone records, cinematographic films,  
loaded recording tapes and video- tapes,compact discs (video&audio),  
storage media for computers and other articles which are detrimental  
to the political, economic, cultural and moral interests of China."  
That's pretty nebulous. It reads to me like "leave behind all personal  
digital media, just in case" which is what I generally do. I travel in  
a fairly sanitized mode, for numerous reasons. Will the average IETFer  
do this? If not, what, if anything, is likely to surprise them?
How many IETFers are going to lose their currency-exchange receipts  
and consequently be unable to legally turn their excess yuan back into  
dollars? Or is this still even a problem?
--
Dean

_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf