I will forward this on to our lawyer, but in general, I agree with Britt. I think the nominal fee will NOT be a barrier to entry, and that we get in very gray water here w/nonprofits, etc -- which we want to avoid.
And as helpful as Berkman et al is, Eric (our lawyer) has to be the final say on this -- and has a great grasp of FEC issues. Thanks for the idea, but we need to stay out of the weeds. Zephyr Teachout Internet Organizing & Outreach Dean for America [EMAIL PROTECTED] Meetup at http://www.deanforamerica.com/meetup Get local at http://action.deanforamerica.com Contribute at http://www.deanforamerica.com/contribute -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Britt Blaser Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2003 3:56 PM To: zachary rosen; Josh Koenig Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [hackers] node hosting On Tuesday, July 22, 2003, at 12:05 PM, zachary rosen wrote: > The only concern is: if there is to strong a connection / correlation > between the Dean campaign and this non profit service then the > campaign is liable. __________________________________________ I suggest a memo of understanding with the Dean campaign that the campaign is our first beta tester. We should quickly add other campaigns as testers, especially congressional candidates. (We should especially support Ms. Gerry Mander, who's anxious to help Texas Democratic Congresspeople....;-) __________________________________________ On Tuesday, July 22, 2003, at 12:54 PM, Joshua Koenig wrote: > Offering non-partisan "Digital Town Hall" hosting is the only way to > go about it. If we offer the same class/quality of hosting service to > all candidates of all parties, then it's all good. Having started *many* businesses, I'd be careful of setting up as a for-profit (employees) ASP. Let's just develop the code and then let anyone, some of us and others operate a Blogspot or Red Hat kind of service. We need to focus tightly on code and not get distracted by hosting, which is a separate issue. The main reason to offer the code openly is to not distract ourselves with FEC concerns. __________________________________________ > We need a lawyer to look at this, but I see no substantial difference > between what we would offer here and what blogspot does. We would also > need any domain suffixes (e.g. *.fordean.net or *.fordean.com) to be > handled through a third party. I'm sure Professor Lessig, the Berkman people or EFF can connect us with the right legal resources. __________________________________________ On Tuesday, July 22, 2003, at 03:36 PM, zachary rosen wrote: > The node concept is just fine. The only thing that is stalled is the > so called "turnkey node hosting service" for the Dean campaign which > looks to > be nixxed due to FEC rules. If we offer the service to all comers at a nominal expense to donors who believe strongly in this project, we shouldn't have to worry about FEC rules. And it probably saves more trouble than the hassle of trying to turn hosting into a business. Please tell me if I'm missing something here. thanks.
