On Fri, 2009-09-18 at 15:11 -0400, Ross Callon wrote: > 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 +1 // Steve _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf