On Fri Sep 18 20:19:26 2009, SM wrote:
Some IETF participants might be considered as being disrespectful
towards the "leadership". They can turn a meeting into a rowdy
party. If the above is implemented, there are risks, both internal
and external, of a public relations nightmare.
I wonder what might happen if a remote participant started openly,
and pointedly, talking about human rights, say, or the Tibet
situation, on the XMPP chatroom service.
Now, obviously that participant is not going to be ejected from the
hotel - they could easily be a few thousand miles away - but
presumably some authority somewhere might well act.
Would that action be:
1) The termination of XMPP services (either by the hotel, or by the
GFW).
2) The termination of IP services from the hotel.
3) The termination of the conference.
It strikes me that any of these would harm participation very
heavily, and since it presents little or no risk to the remote
participant - who could therefore remotely participate purely for
disruptive purposes - it opens up a large window of disruption by
essentially external parties.
There's already been comments that an IETF meeting held within the
GFW would be seized upon by the press as ironic. It seems to be that
one sabotaged, or used deliberately for political purposes, would
raise much more press, and worse, this press coverage may actually be
useful to someone wanting to ensure the point is made.
I'd like to know what the PRC might say to that. The only solutions I
immediately see would be to give the PRC administrative rights over
the chatrooms, or else perform such policing ourselves, neither of
which exactly fills me with glee.
FWIW, I wouldn't be going to China, but then, I nearly always
remotely participate, so no change there. I do think we should make
every effort to hold a meeting in China, though, as a hefty chunk of
network expertise is there.
Dave.
--
Dave Cridland - mailto:dave@xxxxxxxxxxxx - xmpp:dwd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- acap://acap.dave.cridland.net/byowner/user/dwd/bookmarks/
- http://dave.cridland.net/
Infotrope Polymer - ACAP, IMAP, ESMTP, and Lemonade
_______________________________________________
Ietf@xxxxxxxx
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf