Re: IETF LLC & IETF Participation from USA-sanctioned countries

[Christian Huitema <[e-mail]>]

On 3/7/2021 9:22 AM, Keith Moore wrote:
> On 3/7/21 11:11 AM, Michael Richardson wrote:
>
>>      > * Are participants from sanctioned countries or organizations 
>> allowed
>>      > to participate in mailing-list discussions, and e.g. publish
>>      > Internet-Drafts, or RFCs?
>>
>> I suspect that we won't like the answer, so maybe we shouldn't ask the
>> question :-)
>
> No, we need to know, even if we won't like the answer, and even if we 
> can't change the situation.    Far too much prejudice is perpetuated 
> by those kinds of taboos.


This is not exactly an issue of prejudice. AFAIK, we do not have checks 
to verify that some new subscriber to an IETF working group is not 
accessing the server from a penalized country through a VPN, or any such 
workaround. We don't really want to set up any check like that, because 
they are intrusive and complicated, and also because they are beyond 
commonly held standards. Yet, if we conducted an in depth study of the 
issue, who knows whether some bureaucrat somewhere would force the IETF 
to enforce such checks, or force the LLC to spend a good chunk of money 
asserting our rights to not do that. It is probably much wiser to let 
sleeping dogs lie.

-- Christian Huitema