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

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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.
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