Just a few quick responses...
It's not in the commercial interests of the
mega corps to go this far, and there are just enough regulatory
bodies about
to rein them in.
This is what I would call the 'Super-optimist scenerio' :-)
Maybe, but I think you need to separate a logic of capital from the
conscious decisions of managers of megacorps. If there is profit in
locking stuff down, then it'll be locked down.
Second, when talking to MPs and their assistants in Reading, and to
industry/policy wonks at research seminars, I found it very
difficult to
persuade them that anybody really cared about the issues I raised.
We care. That should be enough.
My MP has been very attentive to the issues I have raised, and
continual changes in copyright law are very likely to happen (thanks
Cliff!) and now he is more aware of the broader changes and the
reasons for them.
For me that has been, and remains, a far more effective strategy
than sitting
on my hands waiting for an economic base to appear.
Without an economic base Free Culture as a movement will be dead
within a few years. There is no way of keeping the organisation going
when there are no members etc. When people move on from this list, as
they inevitably do, there will be nothing to stimulate new members...
Who pays for the website? The mail list? The information campaigns
etc etc etc? Classic problems that everyone continues to think can be
ignored because we can "do it in our free time".
Anyway who is talking about sitting on hands??? We'll need to do it
by writing grants, soliciting donations and selling T-shirts.
Constructive engagement is, currently, a *much* better option for
us than
flippant comments like that. iCommons is a baby organisation that
remains
very open to change, and as-yet unbeholden to the "network
ideology" types
that David mentions. If everyone in FC-UK engaged with it then it
could
become a very interesting and worthwhile organisation.
Right. That's why they completely ignored all the constructive
engagement decisions that were taken in the morning meeting that we
attended about the iCommons values because *actually* they didn't
agree with them. And frankly, the ethics of Jimmy Wales inviting lots
of wikipedians who agree with his position (as a member of the board)
to attend and shore up his support is extremely problematic.
I was frankly rather disgusted with the way that meeting played out
and I recommend people read the minutes to see how the game was played:
http://wiki.icommons.org/index.php/ICCC_Meeting
How can one meeting completely over-rule the decision of another just
because it is later in the day? Not a good sign for the future of
iCommons, humming is one thing, tipping the vote in your favour is
quite another.
(Update: for some reason the IRC logs seem to have been taken down...
this is very curious.. does anyone have a copy of them?)
http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/irc/icommons/
That's a very downhearted and negative appraisal, which isn't
exactly very
fair on the people in FC-UK who do work hard in their rare moments
of free
time :-( Here are achievements I think we can be proud of, in no
particular
order... please excuse me if I've missed you out in this hastily
assembled
list:
Its realistic. Free Culture needs cold hard FACTS. That is what
convinces policy makers and politicians and it is what the newspapers
like to quote to their readers "10,000 books lost every year from
culture!" etc.
And what do we give them? Projects that no one uses and that mature
so slowly that they have no effect.
There are many tools to use in developing a good campaigning
strategy, but I
have two favourites.
I don't disagree with anything you suggest for strategy as ideas
providing people are encouraged to meet up, be members, pay dues and
form solidarity and responsibility in order to get things done.
Best
David
_______________________________________________
fc-uk-discuss mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/fc-uk-discuss
