GRC on Applied and Environmental Microbiology

So here I am at the campus of one of the Seven Sisters, Mt. Holyoke, for the Gordon Research Conference on Applied and Environmental Microbiology. I had intended on blogging this conference, as I do for most conferences I attend, but actually, I'm not sure of the legality in this case: The conference schedule says "All information provided at this GRC (formal talks, poster sessions, discussions) is considered private communication from the individual making the contribution and is presented with the restriction that such information is not for public use". This seems very strange to me. Why would anyone present *anything* at a conference if they want it private? Why have conferences at all? Maybe we can go back to the medieval alchemist model where we write our discoveries in code to prevent rivals from learning of them...