On Sep 18, 2009, at 11:24 AM, Ben Campbell wrote:
Finally, do you think that, in this group of people, there won't be
at least one who cannot resist stating their opinions about some
political hot button? Or for that matter, figure out they can DoS
the entire IETF by throwing up a controversial slide. Obviously
there's some wiggle-room in the "within the control of the client"
clause--but that's the sort of thing that gets worked out in courts
later. It's not very helpful when the on-site authorities have
already pulled the plug, and I don't expect them to be sympathetic
to the idea that the IETF cannot control the behavior of it's
participants.
You are absolutely right.
I might find a little political speech tempting, and can assure you
that there would be a number of other people with pithy political
comments to make.
Perhaps something like "Free Tibet and Taiwan, Celebrate Falan Gong,
Porn is a Human Right", as a footer on every slide? After all, we
have no rules about political speech. If the IETF tried to move to
suppress such discourse, we could well be sued back in the States.
I can certainly imagine people with agendae using this as an
opportunity to score massive publicity by getting the IETF shut down
or even better arranging for mass arrests and/or related civil
disobedience on a large scale. It might even be a good thing, but it
would be better if we weren't caught in the middle of it. Or maybe I'm
wrong; perhaps the best service we can give the world is to be made
examples of in China.
There are other risks as well. It wasn't too long ago that the Mexican
government had to send a plane to retrieve many of the Mexican
citizens in the country, after PRC health authorities decided to put
them all into a rather primitive extended quarantine (read
"concentration/death camp"). Given the IETF's penchant for outbreaks
of respiratory diseases (the "IETF cold/flu" that frequently gets
around), I'd not like to have that happen to us. I was doing standards
work and we were scheduled to meet in Guangdong during the SARS
outbreak, and remember television scenes of hospitals fenced in with
barbed wire, with the afflicted being fork-lifted over the fence to
die, as all supplies in the hospitals had supposedly been exhausted
and water and electricity cut off to "prevent spread". Not that any
country would do all that well in such a situation, but the People's
Republic of China has a proven track record of being rather scary, at
least from a western point of view.
See:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8033089.stm
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124137876507580987.html
http://www.salisburypost.com/Lifestyle/082109-quarantined-in-china
So all in all, I'd say I'm not comfortable with the idea of an IETF
meeting in the PRC at this time. Maybe, in a few years, if they open
up their Internet and cut back on the human rights abuses associated
with the users of our technology (making bloggers "disappear" is just
NOT acceptable), then we'll be ready to meet there. But not now, not
yet.
--
Dean
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