-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 9/23/09 12:17 PM, Ole Jacobsen wrote: > > On Wed, 23 Sep 2009, Eric Rescorla wrote: > >> So, this isn't really that useful context for the rest of the >> paragraph. To take the example of encryption, I think people >> were arguing that it was a topic "regarding human rights". >> >> With that said, it's not clear to me that saying "China's policy >> of censoring the Internet sucks" isn't defamation. > > I would say that this DOES border on defamation, BUT I am at a loss > to understand why such a statement would be a required part of our > technical discussion. The statement is an opinion about a topic which > there is a lot more that can be said, but like the baby said "this > isn't the venue." (Let's just say that it isn't well understood in > the west). "X policy sucks" sound like politics and not technology > particularly if X is a country. > > If on the other hand you were to say: "I am upset about the way > provider Y in country X does aggregation in BGP because this degrades > performance of..." you would have little to worry about beyond perhaps > a technical argument.
Here's the rub. In the heat of the moment during a given technical discussion, someone might come up to the mic and blurt out "it sucks that countries like X enforce policy Y and IETF technologies need to provide a way for end users to route around that kind of interference with their sacred human right to freedom of unfettered communication". But now that person probably won't come up to the mic for fear of being carted away if they don't phrase things very carefully. People who show up at IETF meetings are simply not in the habit of self-censoring in this way, which means that they probably won't come up to the mic at all if they fear that a topic might be forbidden or dangerous. This climate of fear and self-censorship is a problem. Peter - -- Peter Saint-Andre https://stpeter.im/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAkq6aWcACgkQNL8k5A2w/vwdggCg3q68Ck49RDUaDvj0gct8lEEP eL4AmwVxZN7ru8StrRZvaJBn2aHZLY3n =dRMx -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
