Proposed resolution (February, 2010) [SUPERSEDED]:

Change 11.8 [class.access] paragraphs 6-7 as follows:

All access controls in 11.8 [class.access] affect the ability to access a class member name from a declaration of a particular scope entity, including references appearing in those parts of the declaration that precede the name of the entity being declared and implicit references to constructors, conversion functions, and destructors involved in the creation and destruction of a static data member. For purposes of access control, the base-specifiers of a class and the definitions of class members that appear outside of the class definition are considered to be within the scope of that class. In particular, access controls apply as usual to member names accessed as part of a function return type, even though it is not possible to determine the access privileges of that use without first parsing the rest of the function declarator. Similarly, access control for implicit calls to the constructors, the conversion functions, or the destructor called to create and destroy a static data member is performed as if these calls appeared in the scope of the member's class. [Example:

  class A {
    typedef int I;    // private member
    I f();
    friend I g(I);
    static I x;
    template<int> struct X;
    template<int> friend struct Y;
  protected:
    struct B { };
  };

  A::I A::f() { return 0; }
  A::I g(A::I p = A::x);
  A::I g(A::I p) { return 0; }
  A::I A::x = 0;
  template<A::I> struct A::X { };
  template<A::I> struct Y { };

  struct D: A::B, A { };

Here, all the uses of A::I are well-formed because A::f and, A::x, and A::X are members of class A and g is a friend and Y are friends of class A. This implies, for example, that access checking on the first use of A::I must be deferred until it is determined that this use of A::I is as the return type of a member of class A. Similarly, the use of A::B as a base-specifier is well-formed because D is derived from A, so checking of base-specifiers must be deferred until the entire base-specifier-list has been seen. —end example]