[juneau-lug] GEEK PAC!
- From: Toby Harbanuk <tobysam@xxxxxx>
- To: juneau-lug@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 19:07:31 -0800
http://www.thelinuxshow.com/otc.htm
Here's the unformatted text:
Proposal for the creation of TWO Entities
The AMERICAN OPEN TECHNOLOGY CONSORTIUM AND GEEKPAC
DRAFT OF PROPOSAL/POSITION STATEMENT (Revised 4/15/2002)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Call To Action!
This effort was founded on March 11, 2002, with incorporation papers
presently being drafted for both organizations. The purpose of this
document is to inform those who wish to aid us in creating these
entities. This is only a draft, we are still not sure of the final legal
form that either entity will take. We are still exploring the legal
ramifications. Be Patient!
Be clear that we are NOT collecting monies at this time; just
suggestions and pledges of support.
Be Warned! The Internet, Technology Development
and the Future of American Business Is Under Extreme Political Threat
The Internet community and its friends have been relatively effective on
some political issues, notably in its opposition to government
censorship and cryptographic export controls. However, on other issues
even closer to community concerns, we have not yet mobilized effectively
and are now under severe threat. We have largely fought off direct
government controls, but now face an attempted takeover by corporate
monopolists using government as their tool.
The Internet was conceived and built by technologists -- hackers, geeks,
and nerds -- who shared a vision of open access that would empower
everyone, not just techies; that would enable dynamic new markets and
industries, more fluid and competitive markets, and that would indeed
promote human freedom. That vision is consistent with the Founding
Fathers of The United States, who believed that Economic Freedom was the
cornerstone that supported all of our other rights. That vision has
become a reality to the hundreds of millions of people who benefit from
email and the World Wide Web and other Internet services every day.
Totalitarian walls crumble by the day, and entrepreneurship has reached
every corner of the globe.
Today, hackers and geeks carry forward that tradition through continuing
development of the Internet itself, and through a myriad of closely
related technological movements such as open-source development in
software and community wireless networking on the streets. The flood of
Geek Developed technologies continues to spill forward from the minds of
American Entrepreneurs.
Recently that empowering vision has come under concerted attack by
monopolists and corporate special interests with a very different
agenda. They want to lock down the Internet and replace it with a
"content delivery system" designed for little more than delivering
digital-rights-managed media streams to passive couch potatoes who were
probably already happy with their cable TV service.
When you consider the fact that the IT industry now represents over $600
billion in revenues to our economy, and the entertainment industry
represents about $20 billion, you wonder why Congress is considering
crippling digital devices with copyright laws. When you consider the
failure of the RBOC,s and Cable TV industries combined failure at
delivering Broadband to consumers in large scale, you wonder why all the
legislation to reward these two industries and destroy the ISP community.
Here are some of the threats we face:
1. We have witnessed a slow and steady erosion of the ability of
Internet and software developers to field innovative products. The
Digital Millennium Copyright Act, UCITA, CBDTPA (the revived SSSCA with
a new name), CARP and other new laws and regulations are one prong of
the threat; the predatory behavior of Microsoft and other monopolies and
industry cartels (such as the DVD Copy Control Association) is the other.
2. The same over-broad laws and regulations threaten free speech,
fair-use rights under copyright law, and the use of reverse engineering
for product inter operability. Although effective in protecting some
intellectual property from domestic infringement, these regulations
threaten to exact economic, social, and political costs far outweighing
their supposed benefits; indeed, serious damage to the competitive
posture of American business in the world economy is already evident.
3. The greater evil is that these oppressive regulations stifle the
development of new and better technologies in an ultimately futile
effort to preserve old technologies and business models. We do not ban
automobiles because they are occasionally be used in bank robberies; no
more should we ban digital copying because it can occasionally be used
for content theft.
4. Passing regulations that prop up obsolete business models (as are
all too common of the motion picture and recording industries) can only
have the effect of driving innovation to other countries and funnelling
money to litigators rather than artists. On the other hand, open
technology and an open Internet will allow millions of artists to reach
a wider audience, and not be subject to the whims of "what's trendy"
this week or the preconceptions of some entertainment lawyer in LA.
5. We have directly suffered the effects of illegal and unethical
predatory behavior by Microsoft. We have watched, dumbfounded, as the
U.S. Department of Justice did such a weak and half-hearted job of
following up Judge Jackson's finding of fact in the US v Microsoft that
a coalition of state attorneys-general felt compelled to mount their own
lawsuit.
6. We have further witnessed the US Attorney General offering a
settlement that invites Microsoft to simply walk away from these guilty
rulings, tantamount to issuing a Get out of jail free card to Bill Gates
and the Microsoft Corporation. The DOJ has in effect condoning the very
same practices which were found to be illegal in the Finding of Fact. We
consider the actions of our government to be as morally bankrupt as
those actions by Microsoft.
7. During the antitrust action itself, Microsoft launched major smear
campaigns against the Linux and open-source community. Microsoft's
fear-mongering, fraud, and misinformation against the only viable
competitor to its monopoly went completely unremarked by the U.S.
government.
8. The proposed CBDTPA does not merely reprise the numerous sins and
errors of the SSSCA, it would actively reward Microsoft by federally
mandating so-called "rights-management" technology on which Microsoft
holds a blocking patent. In other words, at the very same time that the
DOJ appears to be contriving a way to let Microsoft escape the
consequences of illegally exerting monopoly power, Senator Hollings is
proposing that another branch of our government pass a bill that creates
a new monopoly for Microsoft.
9. We have seen the FCC acting in direct opposition to the goals and
spirit of the sweeping 1996 Telecommunications Deregulation Act. This
bill was supposed to provide the innovators (ISPs) with access to build
better networks. It was supposed to foster an explosion of new services
and lower prices through competition. Instead, the Act has been used and
abused by the RBOCs (the baby Bell Companies)to prevent those ISPs from
getting that access.
10. Further, the FCC has allowed the mergers of the RBOCs into a
handful of anti-competitive super telecom companies. And they have
allowed the Cable Industry MSOs to consolidate into a handful of
anti-competitive super cable conglomerates. We have further witnessed
the world's largest ISP, AOL, merge with the worlds largest video and
audio content provider cable company, Time Warner. All these mergers
were sold on the promise that their economies of scale would produce
better media content, dramatic improvements in telecoms, innovations in
service, and universal consumer broadband access. None of these promises
have been fulfilled; broadband access is still spotty and expensive, and
even digital TV is stalled. And as for "better media content"... don't
make us laugh.
11. We have witnessed the recent passage of the Tauzin-Dingel Bill
through the House of Representatives. It appears that being allowed to
merge into "super entities" is not enough for the RBOCs, the cable
operators and AOL Time Warner. Now they want to be able to deny service
to competition so they can rake in monopoly profits and control access
to retail broadband. The notion that the major phone companies need
protection from the ISP business community is laughable. Under this law,
nearly 10,000 ISP and Internet businesses could be be legislated out of
existence in favor of four phone companies and a like number of cable
MSOs.
12. We are witnessing a push for the adoption of the proposed CARP
(Copyright Arbitration and Royalty Panel) report, which would propose a
system of royalty fees that traditional broadcasters are exempt from.
This discriminatory scheme would flat-out kill Internet radio in its
infancy as a industry. The only players that could afford to be
webcasters are those same firms that presently own existing radio or TV
broadcast frequencies. Thus the old business model is preserved, in
preference over innovation.
13. And after all these legislative and regulatory efforts, that
provide nothing more than corporate welfare programs for a handful of
major corporations, we have NOT seen a serious effort by our government
to extend privacy rights to our personal communications on the Internet,
nor any serious effort to combat Spam on the Internet. We were better
off letting ISPs self police, than with ineffective government intrusion
that has generated an explosion of Spam Email and lost personal freedoms.
The combination of ill-conceived laws and regulations pandering to
corporate special interests with an unrestrained Microsoft constitutes a
critical threat to the Internet, to the tech culture and values of the
Internet community, and (ultimately) to the freedoms of all the people
who increasingly enjoy and rely on the Internet.
It is up to us to take action. Geeks built the Net. We put in the
development time to invent the new technologies and write the software.
In the post-Arpa period, we invested our own money in BBSs and other
services when people looked at us and said, "What's an Internet?". Years
of sweat and millions invested to build our products and industries. The
phone companies didn't do it; the broadcasters and studios didn't do it.
Nor did ABC, CBS or NBC. Nor Disney. Nor Warner Brothers. Nor United
Artists. Nor Microsoft, nor Intel, nor Sun. We did it -- working from
within government agencies, the military, universities, and businesses
of our own founding. We thought and dreamed and worked and persuaded and
occasionally even scammed the resources to build today's Internet. And
it's up to us to lead the way in taking it back.
But we do not fight for ourselves alone. We fight on everyone's behalf
for consumer rights and freedom and decentralization of power and open
markets. If the plans of Microsoft and Big Media and Hollywood succeed,
corporate oligarchies will control information access and distribution
with a grip no less stultifying than overt government control would have
been. No innovation that might disrupt the smooth flow of monopoly
profits will be permitted. Disruptive speech will be marginalized.
Barriers to the independent artist, the small publisher, and the garage
software developer will rise and rise and rise. The vast, wonderful
anarchic commons of the Internet will be tamed into a tacky, neon-lit
strip mall peddling nothing but bland corporate-approved crap.
We can prevent this future, but only if we act together to oppose it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Geeks, Hackers,
And Computer Users Of The World Unite!
The following document aims to provide the people of the Internet
community at large with a framework to organize in the cause of
defending our basic freedoms -- freedom of expression, freedom to
innovate, and the freedom of the Internet from control by abusive
monopolies of either corporate or government power.
We are calling out to software developers, to Internet service
providers, to webcasters, to content authors, and to everybody who feels
a passion for what the Internet really means as a communications entity
to the hundreds of millions of human beings that use it daily.
We are calling out to all user groups. To the open source community; to
the free software movement; to Unix fans; to Apple and Mac enthusiasts;
and yes, even to those who love and enjoy their Microsoft products.
It's time for us to unite and take a stand to preserve and extend the
basic freedoms of the Internet. To do this effectively we need to
educate the public and those in national public office; and at the same
time we need to create a channel for direct political action.
This will be a difficult task, and the only way we can see to do it is
by creating of two separate organizations with similar goals founded on
a common set of beliefs; GeekPAC and the American Open Technology
Consortium.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Common Beliefs and Ideals:
Membership in either organization is open to any person subscribing to
the following principles and when legal:
1. A fundamental belief in the freedom of speech, the freedom of
association, the freedom to innovate, and the freedom of commerce and
enterprise in voluntary cooperation with others.
2. A fundamental belief that the Internet is more than just routers
and wires; that it is a kind of new public space created by the vision
of the idealistic hackers who invented it; that it is sustained by a
network of living social contracts among its users; and that this new
public space merits both the highest degree of protection against both
the political intrusions of government and the market-control maneuvers
of corporate monopolists.
3. Support for free speech on the Internet. This includes opposition
to Internet censorship by government via legislation such as the late
and unlamented "Communications Decency Act" and the so-called
"Children's Internet Protection Act" that would have the inevitable
effect of chilling free speech directed to adults; opposition to
measures such as mandatory content filtering for public libraries; and
rejection of software license terms and laws such as UCITA that would
permit corporations to legally restrict critical review of their
products or practices.
4. Support for citizen broadband access; in particular for legislation
such as that part of the 1996 Telecommunications Deregulation Act that
promoted competitive access to communications networks for the purpose
of increasing consumer choice, and broadening service options.
5. Support for open protocols; that is, Internet wire formats and file
formats that are not subject to proprietary control, and which thus
promote the free exchange of information and citizen participation in
the Internet.
6. Support for the option of open-source; implying support for a broad
interpretation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act "safe harbor"
provision protecting reverse engineering for purposes of
interoperability and fair use, and implying opposition to contemplated
future legislation such as SSSCA/CBDPTA that would effectively lock out
and even criminalize open-source software development.
7. Support for a dynamic technology industry based on positive-sum
product innovation rather than zero-sum intellectual-property lawsuits;
implying support of software patent reform and the end of junk patents;
implying also opposition to the overly-expansive view of trade-secret
protection proposed in pro-DMCA litigation.
8. Opposition to legislation designed to artificially protect the
proprietary interests of holders of sunset technologies, especially
obsolescent computing/communications/media technologies such as POTS
voice telephony, VCRs, analog network radio and TV broadcasting, and
theater movie distribution.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK now how do we get there? We propose 2 organizations be created .......
The American Open Technology Consortium
The first of these organizations we propose to create will be the
American Open Technology Consortium. The role of this organization will
be to raise and allocate funds for the purpose of educating the public
and people in political office on technology related issues, in
accordance with our common beliefs and ideals. The focus of this
organization is domestic, and so we invite groups from around the world
to form OTC groups of their own.
Membership in this organization is open to any individual, group or
business, American or International. AOTC will seek certification as a
501(c)3 that can legally accept tax-deductible contributions from
Citizens of the United States.
AOTC will cooperate, to the extent it is legally permitted, with
GeekPAC. The AOTC will also seek alliances with other organizations
including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Open Source
Initiative, the Free Software Foundation, the American Library
Association, and other organizations concerned with technology and
freedom issues.
GeekPAC
GeekPAC is the second proposed entity and is intended as a funding
channel to directly affect the outcome of elections and legislation. The
actions of GeekPAC will include (but not be limited to) the purchase of
political advertising that may impact the outcome of elections or
legislation and direct lobbying to congress, including the hiring of
lobbyists to represent members. Further actions may include contributing
directly to political campaigns of people seeking local, state or
national office. GeekPAC will be a registered Political Action Committee
(PAC).
Under McCann-Feingold, GeekPAC will not be able to accept donations from
businesses or foreign nationals. Contributions will not be
tax-deductible.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Call For Members and Donations
We are asking that all parties that support the principles and proposed
actions discussed here consider supporting either or BOTH of our
organizations, and join us as members. As much as we want all members of
the community to join us, the ONLY possible way for us to achieve our
goals is to put your money where your mouth is, or invest with sweat
equity.
For the AOTC there are 4 levels of suggested memberships:
1. Individual Members: $25.00 minimum donation
Individual members will receive a certificate of membership (electronic)
and a monthly newsletter.
2. Group Membership: $50.00 minimum donation
This would be for small groups such as LUGS. Members will receive a
certificate of membership (electronic) and a monthly newsletter.
3. Underwriter Membership: $500.00 minimum donation
This is for individual or Corporate members and will receive a framed
and signed certificate of membership, the monthly newsletter, and the
right to name a member of our Advisory Board.
4. Sustaining Member: $2,000.00 minimum donation
Sustaining members will receive a certificate of membership (marble
plaque), the monthly newsletter, the right to name a member of our
Advisory Board.
For GeekPAC there are 4 levels of suggested memberships:
1. Member at Large: NO minimum donation(give as you can)
2. Activist Member: $100.00 minimum donation
3. Cornerstone Member: $500.00 minimum donation
4. Patriot Membership: $1,000.00 minimum donation
Plus:
* All Members will get our newsletter.
* No group or corporate donations will be accepted.
* There will be a mechanism to directly support the individual
campaigns of politicians that support your causes.
Long-term Goals
The goals for AOTC and GeekPAC will be as follows:
1. To get our message to the people and our legislators; and educate
lawmakers hands-on and face to face
.
2. Specifically oppose regressive legislation, including:
SSSCA/CBDTPA, DMCA, UCITA, BPDG, CARP, CIPA, and Tauzin-Dingel.
3. Cooperate with organizations sharing our free-speech and
digital-rights concerns, including the EFF, the OSI, the FSF, the ALA,
the ACLU, and others.
4. GeekPAC will lobby directly on Capital Hill for our causes,
including via contributions to political campaigns.
5. Raise enough funds for both organizations, and if possible
contribute to the fund raising efforts of allied organizations.
Short Term Goals:
In order to accomplish anything constructive, we need to raise at
minimum $75,000.00 for the AOTC and $125,000.00 for GeekPAC. We will
create a Dream Team of Geek spokespeople that represent the entire
spectrum of the Internet and technology communities. Once assembled this
team will travel across the country on a whistle stop campaign educating
the people and our government on our principles. We need to bring our
message directly to the highest levels of that government, including the
White House. This effort will continue by sending a team to technology
expositions around the nation.
Longer Term Goals:
For AOTC our goal will be to create a membership that can support a
long-term commitment to funding $250,000.00 for sponsoring ongoing
education programs. For GeekPAC we for see a similar budget spent
primarily on lobbying staff. GeekPAC can have a significant influence by
providing a funding channel tool of small but frequent donations through
a Congressional review database linked to a commerce engine.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
We the undersigned are pledging our political and economic support to
the goals of the Open Technology Consortium and GeekPAC. To make a
pledge of support email geekpac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Pledges only, as we are
not yet legally in the clear to solicit funds.
* Name, State, Donation Pledge AOTC, Donation Pledge GeekPAC
1. Jeff Gerhardt, Illinois, $150.00, $150.00
2. Kevin Hill, Illinois, $150.00, $150.00
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