On Sep 22, 2009, at 7:03 PM, Ole Jacobsen wrote:
You said:
"Because in the free world, defaming the government, disrespecting a
culture, discussing human rights, and discussing religion might be
rude, or they might be the subjects of perfectly appropriate academic
discussions, but they are not illegal."
I agree, but I think you are arguing that such discussions are a
normal and required part of our technical work in semi-public fora and
I think that's stretching the meaning of the terms you list.
Aren't they? I've certainly found discussions on thwarting "the
government's" will to be a central part of a great many security-
oriented discussions at IETF. Specifically, we're been concerned with
the individuals human rights with respect to security of
communications and privacy. We've refused "government mandates" to
require cryptographic back doors time and again.
Doesn't IETF regularly host PGP key-signing events in furtherance of
this ideology?
As for what constitutes "defaming a government" or "disrespecting a
culture", who knows what that really means? I assume the conference
hotel knows, since they're the ones with the job of deciding and the
power to enforce the contract. We know that in Thailand, insulting
the King can get you 75 years in jail, and we also know that the King
is apparently a lot easier to insult than most Western leaders (or
really, that the King himself seems like a pretty reasonable guy, but
that lower-echelon folks are easily insulted on his behalf).
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Thailand_bans_YouTube_over_videos_insulting_king
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2009/08/29/activist_gets_prison_sentence_for_insulting_thai_king/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/world/asia/20thai.html
Now admittedly, PRC is not Thailand. But mysterious phrases in
contracts referring to poorly understood crimes and imposing draconian
penalties without any kind of review mechanism are still going to
worry people. And I think they're right to be worried.
If it's a non-issue, why does the hotel contract cede all rights for
determining legality or offense to the hotel, and leave us holding
nothing but the liability?
--
Dean
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