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<nettime> Internet Commons Congress Debrief (Seth Johnson) |
From: Seth Johnson <seth.johnson@realmeasures.dyndns.org> http://www.internationalunity.org/ Internet Commons Congress Debrief (Practical Aspect) Hello! The gathering at the Internet Commons Congress this March was successful in many ways. The following analysis will give us a good sense of its results. This is an analysis covering the practical side, meaning it deals with courses of action. Naturally, some presentations did not focus on calls to action so much as reports on history and status and theoretical, legal strategy and policy analysis aspects. Attendees will notice that numerous important contributions (such as John Perry Barlow's fabulous lead-in for one notable example, and others as well) get short shrift in this approach; this is only a reflection of the focus on explicitly stated actions, rather than theoretical aspects, that operated in this analysis. It also only analyzes main presentations, not discussion periods. Please also see the endnote regarding missing recordings due to technical difficulties. Objectives: The main objectives, as we conveyed them when seeking participants, were to get a sense of our common ground, to find ways to bring grassroots efforts of many sorts together, and to bring together principled workers in telecommunications policy and advocates in information freedom. We provided an opportunity to assemble, pitch each other, present our projects, declare our rights and stake out the parameters of a strong public commons constituency. These goals were met, and the synergy of the event produced a great deal more. Practical Analysis: Actions fell under these general headers: 1) Pull Together and Coordinate 2) Engage Policymakers 3) Spread the Word 4) Organize and Support Constituencies 5) Create our Own Means 6) "Creative Disruption" 1) Pull Together and Coordinate Dan Berninger, Harold Feld, Jeff Chester, Ian Peter, James Love, Jay Sulzberger, Eric Hensal, Nelson Pavlosky, John Mitchell, Manon Ress, Pete Tri Dish, Robin Gross and Serge Wroclawski all issued calls for us to pull together and coordinate. William Finkel represented Meetup.com as a tool for that end. James Love, Manon Ress, Ian Peter, Robin Gross and Seth Johnson issued calls for taking this to the international level. These pitches took the form of calls to unite, plan, coordinate, and lead. - Dan Berninger asked what unites us and called us to collaborate to protect the Internet, mentioning VoIP, WiFi, digital divide, media concentration and free software areas in particular. - Harold Feld called for us to go together and talk with policymakers at the FCC before the industry folks do so, saying though the other side will fight very hard, we can fight City Hall. - Jeff Chester said we have to stand and fight to assure that all voices have access to the dominant medium, mentioning campaigns in the Tri Cities area outside Chicago and in San Jose, efforts that brought together Chambers of Commerce, Jaycees, educators and activists. - Ian Peter suggested applying project management techniques to management of the Internet. - Jay Sulzberger noted that we had only cadres present at the Congress, called for us to go away from the meeting and do something, for different groups to sit down together and cooperate. He called for us to plot to present our case before Congress and the public, to get out in front, to appear as the protagonist before Congress, the FCC, FTC, and the New York Times front page, business page and consumer interest page. - Eric Hensal expressed a desire to talk about how to put together a comprehensive campaign, do things necessary to form a wide bandwidth. He talked about the problem of using the Internet at the expense of real political organizing in a variety of ways on the ground, calling us to step back from our laptops and look at other things to do to influence the national agenda, and to go beyond preaching to the converted. - Nelson Pavlosky explained that his group was all about creating a movement for free culture, how they started their group after finding that they couldn't find a movement for free software and the commons. He described the mobilization that arose around their making the Diebold memos public, how they worked with the EFF and the Cyberlaw Clinic to take the battle to Diebold. - John Mitchell said it was up to us all to not only lobby but also to add up individual contacts through direct engagement. - Manon Ress and James Love explained that they had set up an organization designed so they could invite other groups to attend the crucial WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights meeting this month (June), and called the participants in the Congress to join with them in their work at the international level, particularly to credential with them to attend the Standing Committee meeting. - James Love described how CPTech decided to target getting civil society involved in WIPO, after he drew a broad picture of the myriad of activities with bilaterals and multilaterals and other initiatives going on at the international level. He described their plans for a "Future of WIPO" event in Geneva on September 13-14. He also described their effort to come up with proactive strategies, to set the WIPO agenda through focusing on user/consumer perspectives, and their request for a meeting with WIPO on content control, with the support of the US copyright Office. James commented that his focus on the international arena probably accounts for why he doesn't meet a lot of the other Congress attendees so often. - Manon described the general nature of WIPO and what's happening currently, in particular the Xcasting Treaty. She offered several things we could do to work with them: come in under their wing, talk and write to national WIPO delegates, submit comments to and observe the WIPO Standing Committee. - Pete Tri Dish concluded that individual acts don't do much, described his interest in joining the next major media fight. He described how organizing radio stations brought incredible numbers of diverse people together, how they began pulling money together for engineers, campaigns and demonstrations, building radio stations with civil rights groups, farmworkers, etc. in small towns. He described his group's realization that they needed to form allies among people who saw their low powered radio station work as part of broader media issues. He described how they realized that they wanted to change the rules, how their example and that of hundreds of other stations were having an impact, how they realized civil disobedience only works if it's combined with political campaigning and movement building. - Robin Gross described the coalition building she helped foster via the Campaign for an Open Digital Environment (CODE), a letter to MEPs signed by 50 civil liberties groups and consumer rights campaigns, lobbying by activists all across Europe, including free software, consumer rights, librarians and academics. She expressed a desire to put together an agenda we can support. She described the means by which the CODE campaign succeeded. She explained her group's intention to go on the offensive, introducing and pushing proposals for our side, at the international level, and encouraging proactive thinking about what we can do that's not defensive. She mentioned various initiatives going on at the international level, in particular the FTAA and TRIPS. - Serge Wroclawski described his local organizing efforts and involvement in various communities, explained people's interest in what others are doing, how important opportunities to bring groups together like the Congress are, and announced his wish to create a local forum for people from different organizations to connect, and encouraged people to look him up in the DC area. - Seth Johnson encouraged people to join the software patents fight, briefly describing the current status of that struggle. - William Finkel described Meetup.com as a way to organize people with common interests to meet locally, provide means for ease in helping people locate each other. 2) Engage Policymakers Harold Feld, Jim Snider, Jeff Chester, James Love, Jay Sulzberger, Brett Wynkoop, Eric Hensal, Paul Hyland, John Mitchell, Manon Ress, Pete Tri Dish, and Robin Gross all issued calls for us to engage policymakers. - Harold Feld urged us to send in comments and speak with representatives in order to effect a paradigm change within a narrow window of opportunity. He explained that the FCC will listen, that the other side will fight back very hard, how we need to speak with them and with representatives before the other side gets their say. - Jim Snider described the New America Foundation as working to get interesting ideas out in the policy community. - Jeff Chester called us to challenge, expose and publicly shame the cable companies' plans for broadband in communities and nationally. He explained that they are vulnerable, particularly when they are refranchising in local areas. - James Love encouraged us to engage with WIPO, describing their effort to push civil society involvement and explaining that it's not difficult to get involved. He called for some star power such as John Perry Barlow for their Future of WIPO event, with high level participation from WIPO. He explained that they have asked for a meeting with WIPO on "content control," and their request got support from the US Copyright Office. - Jay Sulzberger called for education of policymakers about the Internet, home computer hardware and government procurement policy. - Brett Wynkoop called us to keep up the pressure on legislators to repeal the DMCA. - Eric Hensal called for us to step back from our laptops and look at things we can do to influence the national agenda. - Paul Hyland called for us to encourage people to support Bills H1539 and S1980, for voter-verified voting, and to get in touch with local and State election officials. - John Mitchell called for us to make our persuasive arguments to the public and policymakers while considering some legal tools that have been overlooked. He encouraged us to individually engage policymakers and work to make votes add up on our side. - Manon Ress encouraged us to write to our national WIPO Delegates, to attend the WIPO Standing Committee meeting and to submit comments to them. - Pete Tri Dish explained how political campaigns and movement building are necessary, pointing out that just because the system is broken and mindless, doesn't mean you shouldn't use it. He described the work of activism in terms of bringing the system to its logical conclusions, demonstrating its weaknesses, lack of equity and unjustness. He described his group's work organizing comments to the FCC on the media consolidation issue. He explained how through their efforts Congress has ordered a study on interference, through which they hope to reauthorize the low power radio stations. - Robin Gross described how citizen lobbying and letterwriting brought about very fruitful results in the CODE campaign on the EU IP Rights Enforcement Directive. She encouraged us to introduce and push proposals of our own with policymakers at the international level. 3) Spread the Word Jim Snider, Dan Sieberg, Jeff Chester, James Love, Jay Sulzberger, Eric Hensal, Nelson Pavlosky, Pete Tri Dish, Robin Gross and Serge Wroclawski all issued calls for us to spread the word, to get new ideas and the truth out. - Jim Snider described the New America Foundation as working to get interesting ideas out in the policy community. - Dan Sieberg described the repressive circumstances for journalists in Malaysia and Indonesia, presenting the difference among advocacy, journalism and cyber activism and encouraging our support for their voices while showing how some sites that were extolled as signalling the change the Internet would bring in their countries, have both flourished, retaining their journalistic integrity and breaking major stories, and also were still struggling with censorship and restrictions on access to politicians, events and interviews. He described the issues for online journalism in terms of going beyond discovering and publishing news on a website, to reaching people who need it. - Jeff Chester called us to expose, challenge and shame the cable companies' plans for broadband. He called for us to come up with alternatives for most valid marketplace approach to providing for the commons. - James Love said we should not focus on identifying bad things that are happening, but on persuasively selling alternatives - Jay Sulzberger called for education of policymakers about the Internet, home computer hardware and government procurement policy. - Eric Hensal suggested we could target Congressional districts for outreach, distributing literature, to find other ways to form a wide bandwidth. - Nelson Pavlosky described his group's efforts to expose issues with voting technology through publishing the Diebold memos and countersuing them for their DMCA takedown notices. - Pete Tri Dish explained how the Prometheus Project discovered that low power radio stations were very powerful organizing tools that showed that people want to communicate. He described how their example and the example of others impacted the FCC through pressure of public opinion, how they built a movement by knocking on doors, going from town to town, speaking in libraries and coffee shops, building stations with groups in small towns. He described the work of activism as demonstrating the weaknesses, inequity and unjustness of the system. He expressed the wish to reach people who could see them as part of broader media issues. He described their organizing of public comments and their pursuit of a court case against the FCC media ownership rules. - Robin Gross described her work to build a coalition for the CODE campaign, reaching out to free source, consumer rights, librarian, academic and other constituencies. She described a public letter to MEPs that they prepared, explaining the problems with the EU IP Rights Enforcement Directive. - Serge Wroclawski described his wish to create a local forum in the DC area that would let people from different organizations hear about different issues they might not otherwise know about, and described gatherings such as the ICC as crucial for exposing these organizations to other issues and initiatives. 4) Organize and Support Constituencies: Terry McGarty, Dan Sieberg, Jeff Chester, Bob Frankston, Ian Peter, Ann Bartow, James Love, Anthony McCann, Chris Hoofnagle, Eric Hensal, Nelson Pavlosky, Paul Hyland, Mark Cooper, John Mitchell, Manon Ress, Fred Stutzman, Pete Tri Dish, David Sugar, Robin Gross, and Serge Wroclawski all issued calls for us to organize and support constituencies. William Finkel offered Meetup.com as a tool for that end. These pitches took the form of calls to involve non-geeks, to do traditional meatspace political organizing, to work with communities, to meet locally, to organize and provide support to constituencies, and to create a student movement. - Terry McGarty described his work with communities in New England to deploy fiber, how they conducted 28 feasibility studies, categorized towns and worked on the basis of working with them, giving them a seat at the table, giving them equity in an open network. He mentioned that there are about 300 municipal networks out there right now. - Dan Sieberg said that while the Internet won't save the developing world from persecution and censorship, that doesn't mean we shouldn't support independent journalists who are using the Internet to get the word out, commenting that even if they remain smaller voices trying to shout, they deserve to be heard. - Jeff Chester described local community efforts to build networks independent of cable dominance, including one in the Tri Cities area outside Chicago and one in San Jose. He described how the Tri Cities campaign brought together Chambers of Commerce, Jaycees, educators and activists in an attempt to build a network for business and real democracy, a way to make sure children don't feel like leaving town. He said that cable is particularly vulnerable where it's refranchising, and called us to challenge their plans in our communities. He said we should encourage municipal ownership, but to assure that all voices have access to the dominant medium. He stated that he was not content to have his own wireless feed and a progressive alternative sphere. - Bob Frankston commented that the reason to focus on connectivity as a commodity is to give society a very valuable resource to build on. - Ian Peter commented that the Internet is presently run by the gardeners, suggesting that broader constituencies should be involved. - Ann Bartow commented that most of her law students are not technically proficient, and while the people at the ICC know how to work around things when "code is law," she asked "What about normal people?" She mentioned her work around commodification of information, noted the phenomenon of people entering false information when registering to see websites, asked whether that was a form of civil disobedience, and said she hoped that part of the conversation would be how to bring in the people who commit such acts of resistance into the fight. - James Love described CPTech's effort to involve civil society in WIPO and called for participation in the WIPO Standing Committee meeting and their Future of WIPO event, and presumably will pursue the same approach in a future meeting they have called for with WIPO on "content control." - Anthony McCann explained how he sought to talk about people and relationships, how the character of relationships depend on the particular people you're talking about and working with. His analysis of the concept of commons reveals a deficiency: most commons talk tends to steer discourse toward resource management concepts. - Chris Hoofnagle listed public participation in Internet governance among the missions of EPIC, along with free speech, open government and privacy. - William Finkel described Meetup.com as a way to organize people with common interests to meet locally, to invigorate the grass roots. - Eric Hensal talked about the problem of using the Internet at the expense of doing other things such as stepping in front of people on a local basis, doing our own polling, greeting people outside BestBuy, driving people to websites through outreach in meatspace, targeting people by Congressional district and distributing literature. He pointed out that everything we were talking about is politics, and that we have to avail ourselves of all available campaign techniques. He suggested targeting members of the Internet subcommittee and see how we can help them on the ground, not necessarily monetarily, but in other ways such as providing technological support. - Nelson Pavlosky described his group as seeking to create a student movement for free culture. He explained how their experience with the Diebold case indicated to them that there was a backbone for such a movement. - Paul Hyland called us to get in touch with local and State election officials to encourage voter verifiable technology. He suggested ways of making the point such as getting people to request absentee ballots or to resort to early voting in places where that entails a paper ballot. He called for support for free source software in voter technology. - Mark Cooper said that the public is begging us to develop the unique, many-to-many potential of the Internet, and encouraged us to make use of the fact that technological transformation makes non-commodified information production possible. He encouraged us to support the public's interest in deliberative democracy by noting how that goal correlates with P2P production modes. He called us to use the technology to reclaim the First Amendment and transform democratic discourse. - John Mitchell called us to engage directly at the individual level, saying it's votes that count, and that as much as lobbyists want to be persuasive, it's the individual contact that actually starts adding up. He also called for us to use the courts in the fight, describing some legislative tools toward that end. - Manon Ress continued James Love's call for greater civil society involvement in WIPO, and called people to accredit as observers for the WIPO Standing Committee meeting or attend under CPTech's wing, to send them comments, to talk or write to national WIPO delegates. - Fred Stutzman described several projects of ibiblio working with communities, including their support for the Tibetan Government in Exile, their work on the Louisiana Slave Database, and their support for the free source community and Creative Commons. He explained that in hosting resources they were making entry costs low, and described how once they begin providing some works online for a community, the rest of the community begins approaching them with other areas, noting in particular how this happened with the Tibetans. - Pete Tri Dish described the work of the Prometheus Project, working with small community organizations, civil rights groups, farmworkers, etc. in small towns to build radio stations, how they built a transmitter and amplifier without technical experience, how they saw their work bring an incredible number of people together, from out of the woodwork. He explained that they resolved to change the rules so every community that wanted to have a neighborhood radio station could. He described their movement building in terms of knocking on doors, going from town to town, speaking in libraries and coffee shops. He explained how they procured funds for engineers, campaigns and demonstrations. He described how they had an impact on the FCC through pressure of public opinion. He expressed their realization that they knew they were going to need allies among people who see low power FM as part of broader media issues. He described their work organizing public comments in the media consolidation campaign. He commented that even in the webcasting, WiFi world, the vast majority of his neighbors listen to FM radio. - David Sugar described his work on free software for telephony, explaining how he's worked effectively with carriers, OEMs, and VARs on this basis. He described the GNU/Alexandria project, which uses GNU/Bayonne to support e-government services for the blind through interoperable XML conventions for electronic talking books. - Robin Gross described her work building a coalition of many civil liberties, consumer rights, free source, librarian, academic and other groups, and encouraging citizen lobbying and rallying at the EU for the CODE campaign. - Serge Wroclawski described his work in various communities in his local area, his desire to put together local forums to bring together people to hear about different issues they might not otherwise know about, and encouraged people to look him up in the DC/VA area. 5) Create our Own Means Terry McGarty, Jeff Chester, Joe Plotkin, John von Lohmann, Jay Sulzberger, Brett Wynkoop, Nelson Pavlosky, Paul Hyland, Mark Cooper, Fred Stutzman, Norbert Bollow, Pete Tri Dish, David Sugar and Lucas Gonze issued calls to build independent means of our own. These pitches took the form of calls to build networks and other "workarounds," to compete with established players, to support free works, and to use free software. - Terry McGarty described his work deploying fiber to communities in New England. He mentioned that there are about 300 municipal networks out there right now. - Jeff Chester described local community efforts to build networks independent of cable dominance, including one in the Tri Cities area outside Chicago and one in San Jose. He described the Tri Cities campaign as an attempt to build a network for business and real democracy, a way to make sure children don't feel like leaving town. He said we should encourage municipal ownership, while assuring all voices have access to the dominant medium, and stated that he was not content to have his own wireless feed and a progressive alternative sphere. - Joe Plotkin called for us to fight the duopoly of cable and phone companies by competing not on the basis of price, but better, different and innovative services. He recommended Vonage VoIP as a simple plug-in solution providing users with their same phone number, then recommended small business VoIP services as a "homerun" for ISPs, because cable and phone companies can't compete in the setup and bandwidth management support. He also recommended symmetric bandwidth as a great product that undercuts the pricing of T1s and afford small businesses with two-way connectivity. - John von Lohmann recommended that people go buy a PCHDTV card before it becomes illegal, after describing the FCC's broadcast flag proceeding. - Jay Sulzberger contrasted free software with the impact that Palladium and TCPA will have, encouraging its use as a way of guarding against them. - Brett Wynkoop described his practice of using free software in his consultancy business, as a way of guarding against what the DMCA and "DRM" bring about. - Nelson Pavlosky described the inception of his group in terms of supporting free works. - Paul Hyland called for the use of free software in voting technology as a way of guarding against technological faults and corruption, mentioning that in Australia they have had this for 3 or 4 years. - Mark Cooper declared that his offering his books for free download from his blog was an act of civil disobedience against privatization, called for us to develop the unique, many-to-many potential of the Internet as a way of fostering deliberative democracy. - Fred Stutzman described ibiblio.org as a supporter of the public domain, providing 5 terabytes of liberated content, largely software and public domain webpages and multimedia. - Norbert Bollow described the DotGNU project as a means of competing with spyware systems, where software has to phone home and be rented for a limited time, while providing a way for investors to do better things with their money than investing in proprietary software. He described his economic analysis, with its outcome explaining Microsoft's and others' interest in spyware systems, and then explained that DotGNU is a free software platform that lets you create free software that runs on both Windows and free platforms. He explained that it provides a good business way to provide useful, quality software for Joe Average Consumer, so businesses have an opportunity to upsell to them based on customer loyalty. - Pete Tri Dish described his work building low power FM radio stations for small groups and communities. - David Sugar described his work building free software such as GNU/Bayonne for telephony and solutions for carriers, OEMs, and VARs, as well as the GNU/Alexandria project providing e-government services for the blind. He encouraged the use of free software because proprietary solutions in communications are difficult to develop and provide to people, and contrasted its freedom with the prospects of treacherous computing (TCPA/Palladium), software patents, protocol regulations, and CALEA mandates. - Lucas Gonze described WebJay as a system supporting collaborative filtering of music libre, as a way of assuring it can be found. 6) "Creative Disruption" Harold Feld, James Love, Mark Cooper, John Mitchell, Anatoly Volynets, Fred Stutzman, Norbert Bollow, Pete Tri Dish and Robin Gross all called for various forms of "creative disruption." These pitches took the form of calls to change the paradigm, to exercise civil disobedience, and declarations of the need to fight or struggle or expose contradictions to bring about change. - Harold Feld declared that we were confronting an opportunity not for a short term battle or to hold the line, but to effect a paradigm change in the spectrum fight, with a narrow window of opportunity. He urged people to send in comments, explaining that the paradigm shift would be to establish that a license to spectrum is not property, but insurance for quality of service, an idea allowing others to transmit in the same freequency. He said if we change the paradigm, establishing that transmissions that don't interfere must be allowed under the First Amendment, this would plant the seed for exlcusive licensing to be irrelevant and its justification will go away. He said if we go in after the industry, it will be too late, and exhorted us to go in together and talk to them. - Mark Cooper declared that he was performing civil disobedience in the acts of allowing free downloads of his books from his blog and by reading his rights. He compared principles of deliberative democracy with characteristics of P2P production and declared that they hold great revolutionary possibility. He described legal, social, technological and economic conditions making possible "creative distruption," ending tyrannies of first mile monopoly, corporate software and telecommunications, and making possible more efficient cooperative, non-commodified information production, and declared that we have to fight to make it happen, saying it would be a tragedy not to seize these possibilities to organize and mobilize politically to use the technology to reclaim the First Amendment and transform democratic discourse. - John Mitchell illustrated how content was being used as a knife and encouraged us to use legal tools in the courts, and to not only lobby, but do the direct engagement on the individual level that builds strength, to make sure the knife is not in the hands of the copyright owner, but that we control the knife and the consumer is king, and to take back our rights. - Norbert Bollow explained how he came to take up the DotGNU project and how the project was part of the fight for freedom, in particular freedom of computing and communications. He explained that freedom of association was under attack with Microsoft's .NET project, Passport and "DRM". Norbert compared the proposed system to Chinese government monitoring of all communications and explained that when proprietary software companies reach the position of deciding what kind of software people (particularly non-geeks) can run, the result will be that sensitive personal information will be transmitted with inadequate protection, for governments and corporations to use at will. - Robin Gross described the kinds of activities IP Justice pursued in the CODE campaign, and explained that they want to go on the offensive, to encourage proactive thinking, to not only fight against bad laws and proposals, but to introduce proposals of our own pursuing an agenda we can support. -- Endnote on Missing Recordings: For various reasons, we do not have good recordings of Richard Stallman's, Bruce Kushnick's and Phil Shapiro's presentations. Richard's may yet be cleaned up; Bruce's and Phil's were not captured due to technical difficulties; we hope that somebody has a recording from the webcast. We also lost the end of Terry McGarty's presentation and the final minutes of the first day, including John von Lohmann's fine response to a question from the audience regarding a DMCA takedown notice. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net