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Re: Request for community guidance on issue concerning a future meeting of the IETF

2009-09-29 19:09:47

On Sep 28, 2009, at 8:07 PM, Dave CROCKER wrote:

Folks,

A number of people have indicated that they believe the draft contract language is standard, and required by the government.

It occurs to me that we should try to obtain copies of the exact language used for meetings by other groups like ours.

If indeed the language is identical, that probably means something useful.

If our draft language is different, that also probably means something useful.

Does anyone have access to copies of agreements for other meetings?

As the IETF's liaison manager to OMA, and a former member of the OMA board of directors, I checked with OMA's management team, providing them the proposed text from our contract. They have held several large meetings as well as smaller interop events in China in the past. Their general manager does not recall having signed anything as unforgiving as the proposed contract, and suggested that we try to negotiate the terms, especially the financial damages clause, and that we attempt to restrict the "right to terminate" to just the affected session, not the entire multi-working-group IETF meeting. Clearly the government has the power to terminate whatever they want whenever they want, but OMA management seemed to think that the proposed contract was more generous to the venue than government rules might require.

OMA management did caution us to be careful about visas and be prepared for some of our attendees to show up with missing or wrong visas and need help at the time of arrival, and that we may have visa difficulty with attendees from Taiwan. They also had some trouble with equipment in customs, including power supplies and WiFi base stations. Apparently some equipment was disassembled by customs inspectors and required "in the field" repair with solder and scavenged parts, so we should be prepared to re-assemble things that weren't meant to come apart. Their technical support firm is based in France and ended up shipping some equipment in and out via the French embassy due to transport difficulties.

OMA management did note that they consider their meetings in China to have been very successful, and that they had and expected no difficulty with their technical discussions falling afoul of local regulations. OMA, as has been previously pointed out, has considered DRM specification a central piece of their specification family in the past, and encountered no difficulties talking about DRM in China.

--
Dean
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