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

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Olaf Kolkman wrote:
Do you have evidence that those items could not be discussed or do you suspect that those items could not have been discussed?

When discussed as other than a technical matter, "privacy" is typically viewed as a human rights topic.

Discussion of human rights issues is prohibited by the contract.


But we all really need to be more careful about discussing this contracted constraint. To add to some of the latest comments posted:

This is not about "engaging" China and Chinese people in the IETF. They are, and have been for many years, fully engaged in the IETF, with some IETF technical work of particular importance to China. Again: Chinese participants are already fully engaged in the IETF and have been for a long time.

If our ability to hold a meeting in a particular venue is a test of the hosting country's engagement in IETF work, then this represents yet one more reason we should routinize our meetings, holding them in a fixed set of places. We should seek to avoid having this been an opportunity for the IETF to give offense or suffer a bad meeting, or for a country to be offended. Having this sort of political concern be a factor in what really ought to be mundane meeting logistics administration strikes me a strategically distracting. (And, like others, I think it both arrogant and silly to think that the IETF can influence anyone else's culture; we have enough problems with our own...)

Rather, I will again suggest that the question needs to be about the match between the /particular/ details of IETF operational culture, versus /particular/ rules at a venue. Not in terms of principles but in terms of behavior.

I have enjoyed the meetings I have attended in China and was impressed with both the expertise of local participants and the hosting details. But Asian organizations, like APNIC, industry trade associations like 3gPP, and frankly every other group I've been around, have meeting styles that are nothing like the range displayed in the IETF.

Imagine that the rule in question were that all attendees had to wear either a coat and tie, or a skirt, and that violation of that rule would cause individuals to be excluded, with broad enough violation terminating the meeting. Imagine further that various folk assured us that individual violations of that rule wouldn't cause a problem. Would we agree to such a constraint? I doubt it. Yet it's really a very mild effort to ensure a reasonable business tone for a meeting.

But it doesn't match the realities of an IETF meeting.

I find it hard to believe that the discussion about net neutrality that we had at the last plenary would be acceptable according to the rules of the contract now in question. And I find it hard to imagine that having that plenary in Beijing would not have elicited far stronger and more pointed and specifically problematic comments from the floor. Again: We are an indelicate group. Let's not pretend otherwise and let's not pretend that decades of consistent behavior will magically change for a meeting in a particular venue.

And we should be careful at arm-waving dismissals of the concerns. The constraints in the contract are real and meaningful and, as noted, they are unlike anything the IETF has had to agree to in more than 20 years of meetings. It does not matter whether any of us individually approves or disapproves of the rules. Equally, it does not matter whether other groups have agreed to the rules and had successful meetings.

What should matter is whether agreeing to the rules makes sense, given the realities of IETF meeting behavior.

As for the survey, it only queries whether folks will attend, given the constraint. Or rather, it only queries whether folks /say/ they will attend. Whether they actually do attend will not be known. Survey questions like this measure attitude, not behavior.

Better, there are various other, important questions it doesn't ask. So let's be very careful about what we claim is learned from the survey.

Also, let's be careful about our expectations, should the meeting be held in Beijing, with the constraints being agreed to. It is quite likely that problems that ensue will not be as visible or as massive as some folk have put forward as the strawman alternative. In other words, when thinking about likely outcomes, don't assume it will be all black or all white. Systemic hassles are usually pursued more subtly than that.

d/

--

  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  bbiw.net
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