At Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:17:04 -0700 (PDT), 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.
Sure, but I've heard plenty of stuff like this said in the IETF, indeed in this very discussion. So, while you may not think that those are appropriate statements, ISTM that we do in fact have a situation in which common IETF speech potentially runs afoul of this restriction. > 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. I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that this is in fact defamatory speech within the legal sense that prevails in the US. (That doesn't make it illegal in the US. First Amendment, etc.) > > I'll rephrase my question then: > > Is your claim that you believe that the contract would not be > > found in a court of law to cover the described activities? > > > > If by "activities" you mean "technical discussions" that are a normal > part of any IETF meeting, then yes. In that case, can you please post your analysis of the other ORed parts of the original clause that supports that conclusion? -Ekr _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
