Hi At first when I read the terms posted by Marshall Eubanks I sort of wanted to react with my reptile brain and boycott the whole thing. Looking in perspective however the idealistic part of me wants to believe that the Chinese people gains a lot more than they lose if the IETF visits China, nobody gains if we boycott countries just because we don't like their reign. IETF should not take on a political position, the only possible political position should be that the country in question must be able to issue visas to people coming from all countries (this is however not exactly the case with any country today). In the unlikely but possible case that something unfortunate happens and the whole meeting closes down because somebody makes a political manifest at the meeting I believe it gives a lot more bad-will for the Chinese government than for the IETF. That said, history has shown quite clearly that all efforts to try to control what people say and think will ultimately fail, it happened in the former eastern block and will happen in China as well and it is quite obvious that IP technology has made the control apparatus even more complex for the Chinese government. It's like when you construct a pond with concrete, the water will always find the cracks... /Ingemar ******************************************* Ingemar Johansson Senior Research Engineer, IETF "nethead" EAB/TVK - Multimedia Technologies Ericsson Research Ericsson AB Box 920 S-971 28 Luleå, Sweden Tel: +46 (0)10 7143042 ECN: 852-43042 Mobile: +46 (0)730 783289 Visit http://labs.ericsson.com ! ******************************************* _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf