Hi Ole,

I'm afraid that results of the survey will *not* prove informative. The one pertinent question in the survey assumes that we have a meeting in China, then asks if the respondent, as an individual, would prefer to attend it. This is very different from asking if we, as a community, should hold such a meeting given that we, as a community, are required to sign away our right to free speech.

For your reference, the question is: You may have other reasons for not attending the meeting, but would this contract provision by itself prevent you from attending the meeting?

Thanks,
Yaron

> Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 19:17:10 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Ole Jacobsen <ole@cisc...>
> Subject: Re: Request for community guidance on issue concerning a
> future meeting of the IETF
> To: Theodore Tso <tytso@mit....>
> Cc: iaoc@ietf..., ietf@ietf..., Robert Elz <kre@munn...>
> Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.63.0909181905390.25806@pita...>
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
>
>
>
> On Fri, 18 Sep 2009, Theodore Tso wrote:
>
> >
> > OTOH, if there is a legal agreement which must be signed which clearly
> > impacts the free speach rights of IETF attendees, past a certain
> > level, I think it is valid for us as a community to decide that maybe
> > using such a venue might not be the path of wisdom.
>
> Which is why we asked you :-)
>
> >
> > Whether or not the situation "on the ground" in Beijing is likely to
> > rise to that level, I am not sure.  Maybe people are right in that
> > the authorities understand that if they were to be unreasonable,
> > it's highly likely that it would be widely publicized and it would
> > be a major black eye for them.  On the other hand, having heard
> > stories (admittedly many years ago), about someone on an
> > international assignment in China who called his wife and talked to
> > her in Portugese (since that was her native language), only to have
> > a heavily Chinese-accented voice break into the line to demand,
> > "speak in English", I'd be feeling rather cautious about going to
> > China and would probably feel that I would want to be very careful
> > about how I spoke and behaved while in that country, far more than
> > most other civilized parts of the world --- which wouldn't make it
> > to be a terribly pleasant place to visit.
>
> I think that if you would ask the thousands of businessmen who visit
> China every day you would not hear such stories in 2009. Having just
> come from a meeting in Beijing (APNIC 28), I can certainly attest to
> the fact that nobody worries about what they say in public or private
> and there isn't an army of listeners ready to jump on you (at least as
> far as I could tell). Of course, if you wander down to a certain
> square and unroll a banner, it would probably get you arrested before
> anyone had a chance to read it. Since that's not typically something
> we do in the IETF, the IAOC does not feel it would impact our ability
> to have a good meeting.
>
> The result of the survey will be informative, I am sure.
>
> Ole
>


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