See below... looks like LWN is going to cover us. -JM
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Mark Walker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 10:06 AM Subject: Re: GeekPac To: Lisa Hoover <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Hi Lisa, See answers below. On Sun, Aug 10, 2008 at 7:12 AM, Lisa Hoover <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > 1) How is this group different from the GEEKpac of yore: > http://www.linux.com/articles/22325 ? It's completely different. I remember when the old GEEKpac was being set up and thinking it was a great idea. Unfortunately, that effort seemed to stall out a few years ago. In our case, we were originally going to use BytesFree.org, but then I learned that geek-pac.org was available, and it just made sense :) While we share no common people with the last effort, we do share common goals, namely, the desire to affect change wrt issues such as copyright reform, patent reform, etc. > > 2) What criteria will you use to select the candidates you'll be > approaching? We have a pledge for candidates: http://deki.geek-pac.org/BytesFree.org_Pledge We will probably add one or more line items to that, but I don't want to make it overly complicated. Between the pledge and members tipping us off to new candidates, those will be the primary means. The issues nearest and dearest to us are open standards and open access, copyright reform, and patent reform. I usually include net neutrality as well. Obviously, we'll be most enthusiastic about candidates who support all of those, but we will help campaign for candidates who support at least one of those items. > > 3) Have you already spoken to any candidates? What kind of response are you > getting so far? Before we had agreed to become a PAC, I was in contact with Mark Leno's office. Leno is the CA Assemblyman who authored AB 1668 last year, which would have mandated open standards in state government. Leno is running for state senate this year, and I look forward to helping out with his campaign. > > 4) If you aren't able to meet your fundraising goal, what will happen to > GEEKpac? Is there a Plan B for raising money? Fundable.org requires that you meet your goal by a certain date if you want to actually collect the funds, and we have set the goal of $2,200, which we must collect by September 1. With this article and others like it, I hope it will push us over the top :) The purpose of the fundraiser is to pay off the attorneys we will use to officially incorporate *and* be in compliance with the FEC. If we don't meet the goal, I'll go to each of those who pledged and see if they'll donate individually. Plan B is to continue through my contact list with dogged determination :) > > 5) How can people help if they can't spare any cash right now? People can help in several ways. One is to take a look at our voter information project: http://deki.geek-pac.org/Voter_Information_Project On that page, we've collected information from every Senator and Representative from every state, including how they voted on certain bills, such as the 1998 DMCA vote. We're looking for any more bills we should add to the mix - we grab the data via the Sunlight Foundation's wonderful API's. But we're also looking for the anecdotes that can't be found in any API, such as comments a politician or candidate has made in public about these issues. Stage 2 for this project is to then link this with funding data so you can trace a congressperson's voting record to their funding sources. That will have to wait on new API's that the Sunlight Foundation is working on in conjunction with opensecrets.org. > > 6) Why is it important for the FOSS community to take up this cause? How do > these issues affect John Q. Public? This is probably the most important thing I want to address. If all we do is fund some campaigns, create a few attack ads, and do the occasional lobbying, I'll be pretty disappointed. The real goal here is to educate people as to why they should care. Frankly, those of us who care about our rights in the information age have done a really poor job of communicating the importance or relevance. I don't see how what many are doing really helps in educating the masses. One of the problems is that we insist on using terms like "digital rights", the usage of which basically leaves out a large percentage of the population. Most people don't know what that means, and they assume that digital doesn't include them, because they don't work in the tech industry and have little contact with people who do. So lots of digerati swing around their proverbial phalli and talk "digital rights" this and "DRM" that and it becomes a kind of high-tech circle jerk that is constraining and ultimately self-limiting. This is why I never use the term "digital" when describing this stuff. I much prefer to couch these discussions in terms of "information rights." I reduce the problem down to information. It's really about the free flow of information and letting free markets do their job. Once you start there, it's a quick hop and a skip down the path of the founding principles of this great country. Once you put it in those terms, people begin to understand and see the light. At least, I hope so. Time will tell. But within this context, you can then weave all of the following: - restrictions on information create a rental society, not an ownership society - patents, as they are currently implemented, greatly limit free markets and come at a great opportunity cost - net neutrality, or the lack thereof, will raise the bar to entry for poor Americans - information restrictions affect our ability to adequately educate the public in the 21st century - the information divide is a direct result of our IP laws and to add to that: we can never solve the information divide without reform of our patent and copyright laws It's really about education, innovation, and reducing the bar to entry so that America can remain competitive in the 21st century. > > 7) What kind of turnout did you get at LWE's BoF, and do you have any other > events planned? We had some number greater than 10 and less than 25. Doc Searls came by, and he's worth at least 5 people alone :) We do not currently have any events planned. Our #1 priority is to get incorporated, get the foundation in place, and then worry about going on the road. > > 8) How did you decide what specific issues to focus on, since there are so > many to choose from? Have you prioritized them in any way? See #6, above :) Really, what spurred me into action was Leno's AB 1668 bill and seeing it get killed in committee. When that happened, I realized that we really had no voice and no means of countering that kind of offensive. The lobbyists marched into committee and just spewed the worst kind of bile, and we had no response. That committee did actually vote for the bill, but it died after moving to the next committee on account of the continued lobbyist pressure. > > 9) When will you know GEEKpac is a success? When politicians and candidates start referencing us by name because our influence is large enough to matter :) > > 10) Is there anything else you'd like to add? Just that this is an election year, and quite an important one. If we don't take a stand on these issues and make our presence felt, then we deserve what we get. There are many out there who think that they're the bee's knees for talking about this stuff and doing whatever advocacy they do, but I'm here to tell you the reality: whatever it is that you're doing, it's not enough. We must do more. In the 10 years that have passed since the DMCA, we still haven't been able to mount a credible reform effort, and countless horrible things have taken place on our watch that co-opt our so-called inalienable rights. Whatever you're doing, it isn't enough. We must do more, and I can't think of a better time to do more than an election year. -- John Mark Walker Community Manager, CollabNet http://www.collab.net/ _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@geek-pac.org http://www.geek-pac.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
