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

From: [email-masked] (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:00:31 -0400 (EDT)

> From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>

    > Has the SAR (Hong Kong) been considered?

Excellent idea. Does HK have the same 'Great Firewall of China' issues
(which I would assume would be a fairly significant problem for many
IETF members)?

	Noel

---

From: Donald Eastlake <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:28:24 -0400

To quote from Wikipedia: "Most national laws of the People's Republic
of China do not apply to the Special Administrative Regions of Hong
Kong or Macau. There are no known cases of the Chinese authorities
censoring critical political or religious [Internet] content in those
territories."

I am opposed to the IETF meeting in China except in Hong Kong or
Macau. While one could argue endlessly about how likely such IETF
documents as RFC 1984 and RFC 2804 or such politically and culturally
sensitive issues as language tags, "internationalization" of
protocols, issuance of advice/requests to international authorities in
reference to country codes, etc., will be a problem, it seems to me
that the risk is too great.

Thanks,
Donald
=============================
 Donald E. Eastlake 3rd   +1-508-634-2066 (home)
 155 Beaver Street
 Milford, MA 01757 USA
 [email-masked]

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 1:00 PM, Noel Chiappa <[email-masked]> wrote:
>    > From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
>
>    > Has the SAR (Hong Kong) been considered?
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ietf mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
>

---

From: Geoff Mulligan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:53:49 -0600

I have helped setup one and attended another conference in Beijing and
have attended one conference in Hong Kong.

All of them were technical by nature, but not nearly as large as the
IETF.  Nor did any have the potential of political debate that might
arise in the IETF.

Personally I found the events in Beijing to be culturally more
interesting and getting around and things to see in Beijing much better
and the food and hotels were cheaper (airfare to Beijing was higher).

One event did have some Chinese government official attendance.  We had
no problems.  There were no warnings about "watch what you said".  From
my point of view it wasn't even a consideration or an issue.

Perhaps another consideration is the issue of Visa's.  I thought that
Visa's (at least for the US) were not required for Hong Kong or Macau,
but they are for Beijing.

I really think that there is less worry about the control of speech
issue than with the logistics.

	geoff

PS - My internet connection (to most sites :-) was actually better from
Beijing. Disclaimer - My personal experience - you connection may vary.