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

From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:42:00 -0400

Greetings;

We have received numerous suggestions and requests for an IETF meeting
in China and the IAOC has been working on a potential China meeting for
several years. We are now close to making a decision on a potential
upcoming  meeting in China. However, the following issue has arisen
and we would appreciate your feedback.

The Chinese government has imposed a rule on all conferences held
since 2008 regarding political speech. A fundamental law in China
requires that one not criticize the government. Practically, this
has reference to public political statements or protest marches, which
are not the IETF's custom. The government, which is a party to the  
issue,
requires that people who attend conferences in China (the IETF being
but one example) not engage in political speech during their tour
in China. We consider this to be acceptable, on the basis that the
IETF intends to abide by the laws of whatever nations it visits and
we don't believe that this impacts our ability to do technical work.

The rule is implemented in the Hotel agreement and reads (note that
the "Client" would be the Host, and the "Group" would be the IETF) :

    "Should the contents of the Group's activities, visual or audio
    presentations at the conference,or printed materials used at the
    conference (which are within the control of the Client) contain
    any defamation against the Government of the People's Republic
    of China, or show any disrespect to the Chinese culture, or
    violates any laws of the People's Republic of China or feature
    any topics regarding human rights or religion without prior
    approval from the Government of the People's Republic of China,
    the Hotel reserves the right to terminate the event on the spot
    and/or ask the person(s) who initiates or participates in any or
    all of the above action to leave the hotel premises immediately.

    The Client will support and assist the Hotel with the necessary
    actions to handle such situations. Should there be any financial
    loss incurred to the Hotel or damage caused to the Hotel's
    reputation as a result of any or all of the above acts, the Hotel
    will claim compensation from the Client."

What does this condition mean ? The hotel staff would have, in theory,
the legal right to shut down the meeting and ask the offending
participants to leave the property immediately. While we do not
foresee a situation where such action would take place, we feel that
it is proper to disclose these conditions to the community.

The members of the IAOC, speaking as individuals, do not like this
condition as a matter of principle. The IAOC does believe that this
condition would not prevent the IETF from conducting its business.

We note that the Vancouver/Quebec survey conducted earlier this year
asked for people to suggest venues in Asia; an overwhelming majority
(94%) of those who mentioned China were in favor of having a meeting
there.

We are therefore asking for input from the community by two means - by
commenting on the IETF discussion list, and also by completing a very
short survey on people's intentions to travel to China, or not,
subject to these conditions. This survey can be found here :

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=h4DUkRUOdG_2bVLqioPcYYHw_3d_3d

All responses received by October 1, 2009 at  9:00 AM EDT  (1300 UTC)
will be considered by the IAOC in making its decision. We appreciate
the assistance of the community in providing us with data that will
help us to make an informed decision.

Regards
Marshall Eubanks
(acting for the IAOC)

---

From: Ben Campbell <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:24:05 -0500

Could technical discussions about the following be considered political?

Internet censorship (including evading of it)
Data privacy
anonymization
Lawful intercept
Spyware
DRM

I have personally seen IETF presentations that explicitly talked about  
on how encryption and anonymization are pro-human-rights technologies,  
which would seem a direct contravention of the language of the contract.

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.

Is the "hotel agreement" something that individual participants would  
be party to? Would the IAOC expect individual participants to sign a  
contract around this sort of thing in order to participate?

---

From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 18:26:12 +0200

On Sep 18, 2009, at 17:42, Marshall Eubanks wrote:

> The IAOC does believe that this

Marshall,

I also do not believe that the IETF needs to violate this condition to  
do its business.
However, in this case there are two aspects out of control:
1) The IETF participants may have a different interpretation of the  
condition than you and I have.
2) The people running the place may have a different interpretation of  
the condition than you and I have.

I have lived close enough to what was the GDR for long enough to know  
that 2 is an extremely uncontrollable problem.
(And I have been in the IETF long enough to think that 1 isn't much  
more controllable.)

China certainly deserves to host a meeting.
Has the SAR (Hong Kong) been considered?

Gruesse, Carsten

---

From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:38:52 -0400

On Sep 18, 2009, at 12:14 PM, Scott Brim wrote:

> Excerpts from Marshall Eubanks on Fri, Sep 18, 2009 11:42:00AM -0400:
>> Greetings;
>>
> I don't see that.  Is this what they told you?  What I see is:
>
> - the _conference_ materials shouldn't contain political speech.
>  "which are within control of the client"

In the above,

"the Hotel reserves the right to terminate the event on the spot"

I, speaking just for myself, think that this is extremely unlikely to  
happen.
There have been a number of technical meetings in the PRC in the  
recent past,
and I haven't heard of any being shut down. Also, this would be a very  
serious step
for any venue to take, and would likely mean a near termination of any  
future foreign
conference business for them for quite some time to come.

Others, of course, will have to judge this probability for themselves.

Regards
Marshall

>
> - if an _individual_ does so, that individual may be asked to leave.
>
> I don't see "if anyone says anything they could shut the conference
> down".
>
> Scott
>

---

From: Alan DeKok <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:08:45 +0200

> and we would appreciate your feedback.

  I would suggest waiting until after Hiroshima to make a decision.  I'm
hearing that a large number of people (such as myself) do not have the
budget for a trip to Asia.  I suspect an IETF in China within the next 2
years will have lower attendance than Hiroshima.

  Alan DeKok.

---

From: Ross Callon <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:11:10 -0400

Speaking solely as an individual, providing only my personal opinion:

I think that this is not acceptable and we should not sign it.  

I understand that no location is perfect. However, I think that this goes well beyond what we normally put up with and well beyond what we should put up with.

There are two classes of issues which concern me:

The first is the risk to the IETF. I understand that the likelihood of anything happening as a result of this is very low. However, the IETF is a very unruly and opinionated group, and is probably more unruly than other groups that have recently met in China (or anywhere else). We have little idea what IETF attendees will do either in spite of or even because of this restriction. It would not be surprising to have some sort of major dust-up at the IESG plenary over this issue, and we don't know how the host country officials would react to this. Also, while the risk of the meeting being stopped in the middle seems very low, if it did happen this would be a very bad result for all concerned. If one IETF attendee were to be booted out of the hosting country based on something that they said or put on their slides or in a jabber room even that would be very bad. 

Also, from a moral point of view I don't think that we should accept this. Freedom of speech is a very basic freedom that is guaranteed in a wide range of countries (although of course not all).  The people who live there don't have the ability to say "no" without serious consequences. We DO have the ability to say no, and I think that we should. 

Again, this is just my personal opinion, and not the opinion of any group nor organization that I might happen to be associated with. 

thanks, Ross

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Marshall Eubanks
Sent: 18 September 2009 11:42
To: IETF Announcement list; IETF-Discussion list; Working Group Chairs
Cc: IAOC Jabberr; IAB IAB; IESG; [email-masked]
Subject: Request for community guidance on issue concerning a future meeting of the IETF

Greetings;

Regards
Marshall Eubanks
(acting for the IAOC)

---

From: Henk Uijterwaal <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:29:08 +0200

John, (and others),

>  The difficulty is
> that, from things I've heard informally, the proposed Host
> ("Client") isn't the government or a government body.

The (possible) host is not a government body.  However, the host must
have permission from the government to organize the meeting, they
asked for it and got it.

I think it is safe to assume that the government did run some checks
on what the IETF is doing and, if we did keep ourselves busy with
things they do not like, then I seriously doubt that they would
have given the host permission to invite us in the first place.

Henk

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Henk Uijterwaal                           Email: henk.uijterwaal(at)ripe.net
RIPE Network Coordination Centre          http://www.xs4all.nl/~henku
P.O.Box 10096          Singel 258         Phone: +31.20.5354414
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Belgium: an unsolvable problem, discussed in endless meetings, with no
          hope for a solution, where everybody still lives happily.

---

From: "John G. Scudder" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:33:19 -0400

Applying the same disclaimers Ross did (this is just me as an  
individual) I'd like to generally agree with his risk/benefit  
argument, and to add two more points to it.  First, I don't see an  
offsetting compelling benefit.  Second, there would also seem to be a  
risk of loss of productivity due to self-censorship by people who do  
choose to attend.

--John

On Sep 18, 2009, at 3:11 PM, Ross Callon wrote:

> I understand that no location is perfect. However, I think that this  
> goes well beyond what we normally put up with and well beyond what  
> we should put up with.
>
> The first is the risk to the IETF. I understand that the likelihood  
> of anything happening as a result of this is very low. However, the  
> IETF is a very unruly and opinionated group, and is probably more  
> unruly than other groups that have recently met in China (or  
> anywhere else). We have little idea what IETF attendees will do  
> either in spite of or even because of this restriction. It would not  
> be surprising to have some sort of major dust-up at the IESG plenary  
> over this issue, and we don't know how the host country officials  
> would react to this. Also, while the risk of the meeting being  
> stopped in the middle seems very low, if it did happen this would be  
> a very bad result for all concerned. If one IETF attendee were to be  
> booted out of the hosting country based on something that they said  
> or put on their slides or in a jabber room even that would be very  
> bad.
>
> Also, from a moral point of view I don't think that we should accept  
> this. Freedom of speech is a very basic freedom that is guaranteed  
> in a wide range of countries (although of course not all).  The  
> people who live there don't have the ability to say "no" without  
> serious consequences. We DO have the ability to say no, and I think  
> that we should.
>
> Again, this is just my personal opinion, and not the opinion of any  
> group nor organization that I might happen to be associated with.
>
> thanks, Ross
>

---

From: Bernard Aboba <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:33:25 -0700

The IETF does not and cannot make any warranties relating to the political views, manners or behavior of attendees.   The attendees are responsible for their own actions, and the IETF has no ability ensure their conformance to local laws or customers.  If attendees violate the laws or customs of the host country, they may face consequences -- but they're on their own. 

So if the question is whether the IETF should sign any agreement that takes responsibility for the behavior attendees, I'd say that this is a bad idea.   It's not really an issue of politics -- I'd say the same thing if the meeting were being held in Palm Beach and the city requested that the IETF take responsibility for ensuring that participants conformed to the dress code (no white after labor day!).

---

From: Alissa Cooper <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:50:54 -0400

>   all of the above action to leave the hotel premises immediately.

We will definitely talk about privacy in GEOPRIV. One interpretation  
of the above provision would lead me to conclude that at the very  
least the GEOPRIV group would have to get some of its presentation  
materials approved by the government in advance.

---

From: "Mike McBride (mmcbride)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:54:55 -0700

Marshall,

I think going to China would be a great opportunity and that we should
go for it and play by their rules. I agree with Bernard, attendees
should be responsible for their own actions no matter where in the world
we meet. 

mike

> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On
> Behalf Of Marshall Eubanks
> Sent: Friday, September 18, 2009 8:42 AM
> Cc: IAOC Jabberr; [email-masked]
> Subject: Request for community guidance on issue concerning a future
> meetingof the IETF
> 
> Greetings;
>

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:08:50 -0700

On Sep 18, 2009, at 12:29 PM, Henk Uijterwaal wrote:

> on what the IETF is doing

The government has been negotiating to bring an IETF meeting to China  
since 1997, and has been very carefully vetting the IETF's activities  
for a long time. U betcha they know what we're doing.

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:52:16 +0100

On 18 Sep 2009, at 16:42, Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]> wrote:

> in China

I'd have no problem with such a meeting if, and only if, there would  
be a normal meeting network with normal Internet access. I reckon the  
hotel-pull-the-plug scenario is unlikely enough to ignore, (assuming  
there are no other restrictions),

Stephen

PS: will there be a prize for the least appropriate BoF proposal? :-)

---

From: Steven Blake <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 23:07:03 -0400

On Fri, 2009-09-18 at 15:11 -0400, Ross Callon wrote:

> goes well beyond what we normally put up with and well beyond what we
> should put up with.
> 
> The first is the risk to the IETF. I understand that the likelihood of
> anything happening as a result of this is very low. However, the IETF
> is a very unruly and opinionated group, and is probably more unruly
> than other groups that have recently met in China (or anywhere else).
> We have little idea what IETF attendees will do either in spite of or
> even because of this restriction. It would not be surprising to have
> some sort of major dust-up at the IESG plenary over this issue, and we
> don't know how the host country officials would react to this. Also,
> while the risk of the meeting being stopped in the middle seems very
> low, if it did happen this would be a very bad result for all
> concerned. If one IETF attendee were to be booted out of the hosting
> country based on something that they said or put on their slides or in
> a jabber room even that would be very bad. 
> 
> this. Freedom of speech is a very basic freedom that is guaranteed in
> a wide range of countries (although of course not all).  The people
> who live there don't have the ability to say "no" without serious
> consequences. We DO have the ability to say no, and I think that we
> should. 
> 

+1

// Steve

---

From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2009 08:47:53 -0400

On Sep 18, 2009, at 4:44 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:

> On 2009-09-19 08:08, Fred Baker wrote:
>>
> Up to *at least* the level of a Vice Minister of the PRC Government,  
> from my
> personal knowledge. Roughly the same level as the US Government's  
> direct contact
> with the IETF, also from my personal knowledge. There is nothing  
> sinister
> there; we should be flattered.
>
> However, I have a question to the IAOC: do we know if other  
> standards meetings
> such as 3GPP had to sign similar conditions before meeting in the PRC?
>

Dear Brian;

Please note that we would not be signing these conditions. The host  
would be.

We were told that these conditions apply to all conferences, without  
exception.

Whether or not other conferences have the same level of transparency  
as we do (i.e.,
whether the organizing committees know about these formal  
restrictions, and
communicate them to their attendees), I do not know.

Regards
Marshall

>   Brian
> _______________________________________________
> IAOC mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/iaoc
>

---

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Sep 2009 18:42:36 -0700

Personally, I have three specific concerns with a meeting in China:

(1) The law and associated hotel rule Marshall quoted could be 
violated by what may appear to IETF participants as technical 
discussion.  For example, the manipulation/censorship of Internet 
traffic by or under orders of the Chinese government is well known. 
If this were to be mentioned or discussed during the IETF, perhaps in 
the context of encryption, tunneling, web proxy, DNS, or some other 
technical area, we could run be violating the law and hence the rule.

(2) This is a very personal concern, but my experience with China is 
that it is among the worst places to try and avoid tobacco smoke.

(3) Similarly to (2), my experience in Bejing has been that the air 
is exceptionally polluted.  Hence, I'd be concerned for those IETF 
members who would find this makes participation difficult.

-- 
Randall Gellens
Opinions are personal;    facts are suspect;    I speak for myself only
-------------- Randomly selected tag: ---------------
The solution to a problem changes the nature of the problem.

---

From: "David Harrington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:00:50 -0400

Hi,

Here are my impressions regarding the areas of concern you raise.
 
> technical area, we could run be violating the law and hence the
rule.

I have worked for a subsidirary of Huawei, and now work for
HuaWeiSymantec (a joint venture startup) and visit Beijing once or
twice a year. 
I don't know if the venues under consideration are in Beijing, but I
assume that is fairly likely.
These opinions are my own and do not in any way represent the opinions
of Huawei or HuaweiSymantec.

I have personal concerns about censorship and manipulation of Internet
traffic. I don't have anything to hide, and do not regularly post
views I expect the Chinese government might find offensive, so it does
not impact me directly, but it does impact me indirectly.

I had some difficulty reaching some web sites, although they were
mostly news websites that might discuss politically-sensitive topical
issues. I do not remember having difficulty reaching any websites
critical to my IETF work.

The HQ of HuaweiSymantec is in Hong Kong, and my boss who lives there
tells me that HK is not subject to the censorship on the China
mainland. So maybe meeting in Hong Kong would allow us to meet in
China, without the censorship. (But I personally found HK very
expensive compared to mainland China)
 
I doubt the Chinese government, or the hotel, is likely to interfere
in our technical discussions. Some lively plenary discussions about
government-regulation impact on Internet technologies, such as the net
neutrality discussion in the Washington meeting and the encryption
regulations discussion we had in Danvers, might make our Chinese
participants and our host uncomfortable.

I would be a bit cautious about political discussions in public venues
outside the official meeting, e.g., over dinner or in bar BOFs.
"Bush-bashing" and other disrepect for our leaders is considered great
sport in Western countries; In China, for cultural reasons based on a
very long history going back at least to Confucious, this type of
disrespect for one's leaders is apparently considered very poor
manners. I am pretty sure that disrespect for their leaders would be
very very poor manners. The locals are much more likely to consider
you a barbarian than to want to engage in such discussions of their
leaders.

> that it is among the worst places to try and avoid tobacco smoke.

I have not found avoiding smoke in China much worse than in Europe. I
find it much easier to avoid smoke in US cities.

> members who would find this makes participation difficult.

Auto emission pollution in Beijing is a real problem. If you have any
respiratory problems, I recommend you avoid heavy-traffic areas of
Beijing. 

This problem is mostly an outdoor problem, not an indoor problem. You
can mitigate the pollution by wearing surgical masks when outside
(which is fairly common in Beijing). I assume the air handling systems
in a conference center and major international hotels would mitigate
this while indoors.

I think the level of poluution in Beijing is a valid concern when
evaluating venues.

David Harrington
[email-masked]
[email-masked]
[email-masked]

---

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:41:18 -0700

>  find it much easier to avoid smoke in US cities.

In my experience, it no longer makes sense to talk about smoking in 
"Europe" as the situation varies so much from country to country. 
Prague was awful, Frankfurt was just fine, Rome and Dublin were not 
too bad, the U.K. is great.  I have been avoiding Spain, France, 
Portugal, Greece, and other such countries were it is likely to be 
very bad, which is easier now that alternative countries are 
available.

-------------- Randomly selected tag: ---------------
Any idiot can face a crisis, it's this day to day living that wears
you out.                                             --Anton Chekov

---

From: Adam Roach <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:13:49 -0500

On 9/18/09 14:33, Sep 18, John G. Scudder wrote:
> [T]here would also seem to be a risk of loss of productivity due to 
> self-censorship by people who do choose to attend.

+1

/a

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:45:06 -0600

IAOC,

I'm trying to understand what is political speech in China. The  
Geopriv WG deals with protecting users' location privacy. The policies  
of more than one country have come up in geopriv meetings in very  
derogatory terms. There have been very derogatory comments made by  
people about the US's wiretap policy. Unless someone can point me at  
specifics of what is or is not OK, I would find this very concerning.  
We also regularly discuss issues around Taiwan/China, cryptography,  
wiretap, DNS root server location, reverse engineering, and so on.   
Clearly most the people involved with IETF would never want to break  
the laws of the country they are visiting but the question is do we  
actually understand the laws and what impact do they have on our  
technical work? To help us make informed decision about whether these  
terms are issues or not:

1) What is political speech in China? And can we explain that to IETF  
participants well enough that they know what is OK and what is not.

2) Are there any special rules about publishing and broadcasting? I  
note that the IETF, unlike most other groups having meetings,  
broadcasts the meetings live over the internet, which will be both  
publishing the material and exporting it outside of the PRC.

3) Are there any rules around discussion, publication, or export of of  
cryptography algorithms and technology? publishing weaknesses of  
national crypto algorithms?

4) Many of our participants use communications products (like jabber  
clients) that they helped develop and include strong cryptography. Do  
they need permission to use these in China?

5) When discussing what I think of as technical issues, many  
participants regularly treat Taiwan and PRC as two different countries  
and currently recognize both of them as separate countries in their  
own right. I'd actually venture a guess that there is strong IETF  
consensus they should be treated this way.  Could any discussions like  
this be viewed as political speech? What are the rules on this?

6) It is not core to IETF work but some of us do some interop of  
running code for IETF protocols under development sometimes at IETF.  
This would be about the right timing for running P2PSIP code, but that  
requires us to to run a local CA. Is any special permission needed to  
run a CA in China?

7) Would we be OK running a BOF on techniques for firewall advancement  
in general and in particular on getting around any firewalls China  
runs? [Seriously, you know someone will propose this BOF, the  
questions is could we run it or not?]

8) Given the Chairs for WG set the agendas and such, I am assuming  
that a reasonable person would consider all the presentation done by  
presenters at the front of the room to be things that are under  
control of the client. Is this the assumption the IAOC is working  
under too?

9) What is the IETF's potential liability here. If the meeting was  
canceled on Monday, everyone checked out of hotels early and paid a  
one day change fee, would the IETF be responsible for the hotel's loss  
of revenue for the Wednesday through Friday nights?

10) If the meeting is canceled, will the IETF be reimbursing the  
registration fees?

11) Given the IETF would be depending on the actions of the  
participants of the meeting to meet the contract, it would seem very  
prudent to me to make sure that each participant agreed to this. Will  
you be asking each participant to sign an agreement agreeing to these  
terms?

12) Do you all feel like you need a beer yet?

I'm trying to get to the bottom about what is legal and what is not in  
the PRC.  Ignorance is not an excuse for the law in any country and  
when I don't know if something is legal or not, I don't do it. Right  
now I am looking for input from knowledgeable people on these  
questions. I imagine the IAOC has looked into many of these and would  
appreciate understanding what you have found.

Thanks, Cullen

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:50:02 -0600

> materials approved by the government in advance.

What is the approval process and how long should we expect it to take?

---

From: Olafur Gudmundsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:57:16 -0400

>specifics of what is or is not OK, I would find this very concerning.

Anything we think is a speculation, the ways of governments and
hotels have their own logic that may not make sense to technical people.

As for restrictions on topics that border technical and political sphere,
there are different restrictions in different countries.

I propose an experiment, lets have a meeting if it gets shut down
we will never return to China.

         Olafur

---

From: Alissa Cooper <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:14:42 -0400

Ole,

Just want to make sure I understand this response fully.

On Sep 24, 2009, at 12:05 AM, Ole Jacobsen wrote:

> There is absolutely NO intention or requirement to have any approval
> process for agendas or materials by a third party for this (proposed)
> meeting.

The question about approval was generated based on this part of the  

>> all of the above action to leave the hotel premises immediately.

Does your above response mean that the host would not consider slides  
and oral presentations made during working group sessions to be part  
of "the Group's activities, visual or audio presentations at the  
conference"? Or does your response mean that the host is going to take  
the risk of having the event terminated for reasons having to do with  
slide or presentation content that was not pre-approved by the  
government? Or does it mean that you do not think that the content of  
working group sessions falls under the category of "topics regarding  
human rights"?

Thanks much.
Alissa

---

From: "James M. Polk" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:09:21 -0500

At 12:41 PM 9/24/2009, Dave CROCKER wrote:

>Ole Jacobsen wrote:
>>Dave,
>>By the time everthing is said about this I suspect the "chilling 
>>effects" will be minimized. There will probably still be people
>>not wanting to go "on principle," but I at least hope that the
>>number will not be so great as to impact the success of the meeting.
>
>
>And here I was thinking it was already /increased/, not reduced.
>
>For example, I've enjoyed the meetings I've had in China -- and the 
>anti-spam topic ran directly into potential sensitivities, of the 
>sort discussed here, and with no problems.
>
>But this contract clause and ensuing discussion now have me fully 
>expecting serious problems I wouldn't otherwise have thought much about...

so -- here's another (compound) question to ask in this vein

*IF* somehow the meeting gets shut down (for whatever reason), does 
that mean we IETF participants are to leave the country immediately, 
or can we remain in the country -- conceivably at the same hotel -- 
conceivably at the same hotel that shut the meeting down -- or do we 
have to then immediately find new accommodations?

This would impact everyone of us attending, even if the incident that 
caused the meeting to shut down was a single individual not near 
where the rest of us were at that time.

I know this is extreme, but Alissa's quoted paragraph (from Ole's) 
doesn't make that unlikely, it states that this is a probability (if 
the meeting were to be shut down).  In other words, it seems that 
"any offense" can cause this action, even if most of us aren't 
involved. I don't like that uncertainty (that if I keep my nose 
clean, I can still be in a pickle because of some other (single?) offender).

I personally don't know why the "contract" can't be rewritten to say 
something like

         "If an individual is offending China, that individual is kicked out
         of the country (or goes to jail).

         If a group offends China, that group is kicked out of the country
         (or goes to jail).

         If the offense occurs during a plenary (the only time we are all
         together really), then the whole meeting is shut down, we are
         all going to jail or kicked out of the country."

This would be more concrete for me, and something I could evaluate 
the risks of.

James

>d/
>--
>
>   Dave Crocker
>   Brandenburg InternetWorking
>   bbiw.net
>Ietf mailing list
>[email-masked]
>https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

---

From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:43:48 -0700 (PDT)

> The question about approval was generated based on this part of the contract
> that Marshall originally quoted:
> 
> 
> Does your above response mean that the host would not consider 
> slides and oral presentations made during working group sessions to 
> be part of "the Group's activities, visual or audio presentations at 
> the conference"? Or does your response mean that the host is going 
> to take the risk of having the event terminated for reasons having 
> to do with slide or presentation content that was not pre-approved 
> by the government? Or does it mean that you do not think that the 
> content of working group sessions falls under the category of 
> "topics regarding human rights"?
> 
> Thanks much.
> Alissa
> 

If I have to choose only one of your questions it would be the final 
one: I do not think that our normal way of conducting business would
run afoul of these rules. If you were planning to include blatant 
politicial propaganda in your presentation, then getting prior 
approval would be a good idea, but I cannot foresee a topic within
the scope of what the IETF does to require you to use such material.
The assumption is that the material is just "normal IETF documents,
presentations etc" and thus no approval is required.

Does our technology border or real-world uses, including "human 
rights"? I hope so, but that's a far cry from the type of action
that these rules prohibit. Do I expect careful monitoring and various 
colored lights to light up tracking the conversations? No.

The IAOC will be making more detailed statements in the near future.
In the meantime, the survey is still open.

Ole

---

From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:29:42 -0700 (PDT)

Dave,

Ole

Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor and Publisher,  The Internet Protocol Journal
Cisco Systems
Tel: +1 408-527-8972   Mobile: +1 415-370-4628
E-mail: [email-masked]  URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj

On Thu, 24 Sep 2009, Dave CROCKER wrote:

> 
> 
> Olafur Gudmundsson wrote:
> What about the multiple references to "chilling effect" and other possible
> negative effects of the contractual constraints?
> 
> Your "experiment" ignores these.
> 
> d/
> -- 
> 
>   Dave Crocker

---

From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:07:17 -0700

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?

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker

---

From: Dean Willis <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:09:04 -0500

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.
>

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

---

From: Hui Deng <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:41:31 +0800

Does this survey still work?, 

I failed to do anything over there.

-Hui
 
> From: [email-masked]
> To: [email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]
> Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:42:00 -0400
> CC: [email-masked]; [email-masked]
> 
> Greetings;
> 
 		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
Invite your mail contacts to join your friends list with Windows Live Spaces. It's easy!
http://spaces.live.com/spacesapi.aspx?wx_action=create&wx_url=/friends.aspx&mkt=en-us

---

From: Hui Deng <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:17:31 +0800

excuse me for previous sending wrong email.

Hello, all

I have to say something before the deadline of this survey.

To be honest, I am not the hoster, but live in Beijing, China 

for the long time, and would like to clarify several 

different concerns about China and Beijing.

1) I personally have attended several standardization meetings such as

3GPP and 3GPP2 in China, they have been discussed for example lots of security 

or privacy stuff such as in 3GPP SA3, I haven't see any problem.

2) Olympic game has been here, most of people think that it was a sucess.

3) IETF is doing technical stuff, I don't see why we need to be involved in political stuff.

4) China is one of the major member of United Nations, anyhow, come here and see 

what she really looks like, other than imagine remotely is a better way to do it.

Thanks for your consideration.

-Hui

 
> From: [email-masked]
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: Request for community guidance on issue concerning a future meeting of the IETF
> Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:09:04 -0500
> CC: [email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]
> 
> 
 		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
More than messages–check out the rest of the Windows Live™.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowslive/

---

From: Ray Pelletier <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:39:37 -0400

> I failed to do anything over there.

Yes it does.

What problems did you experience?
We have had one other complain of Java problems, but he had an old  
Browser.
Otherwise 343 have completed the survey successfully.

Ray

> > has reference to public political statements or pr otest marches,  
> which
> > of China, or show any disrespec t to the Chinese culture, or
> > participants to lea ve the property immediately. While we do not
> Invite your mail contacts to join your friends list with Windows  
> Live Spaces. It's easy! Try it!