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Authored by wayneborean on Jun 27, 2015 17:50:21 GMT
I have an idea. What if we tried to set up a non-profit Foundation for the education of:
Programmers Hardware designers Lawyers Judges Patent and Copyright Office employees Politicians Trade Office employees
My idea is the Foundation would be based in the USA, but be International in scope (though maybe not at first).
We would be pushing Free Software licenses, Creative Commons licenses, promoting freedom to tinker, following lawsuits which impact on our areas of interest, opposing sealing of lawsuits, promoting access to legal information, educating, etc.
I'm probably missing things. And this may not be the right place to post, since it is the IBM and SCO section, but IBM and SCO brought us all together.
Comments?
Wayne
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Authored by wol on Jun 27, 2015 19:57:42 GMT
Hmmm ...
The idea sounds neat, but I can see a very big fly in the ointment.
You're not targeting Hollywood, one of the biggest sources of bad legislation (and with the money to brainwash people into believing ten impossible things before breakfast ... :-)
The big difficulty we have, is that most of the press is (a) sensationalist, and (b) won't let the facts interfere with a good story. Unless we can get good, insightful coverage in the gutter press, I think we're on to a loser whatever we do. That said, it's at least worth trying. The *major* effort needs to be aimed at legislators - the problem there is the lack of any sensible restraint in most legislatures. We at least USED to have the House Of Lords, who for the most part actually read and tried to understand most legislation. I believe the quality of our laws has rather gone down since the reforms :-( A revising house is rather a good idea - it can at least throw out anything that doesn't make sense, which would probably decimate (quite literally) most modern legislation.
Cheers, Wol
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Authored by wayneborean on Jun 28, 2015 14:20:06 GMT
Hmmm ... The idea sounds neat, but I can see a very big fly in the ointment. You're not targeting Hollywood, one of the biggest sources of bad legislation (and with the money to brainwash people into believing ten impossible things before breakfast ... :-) The big difficulty we have, is that most of the press is (a) sensationalist, and (b) won't let the facts interfere with a good story. Unless we can get good, insightful coverage in the gutter press, I think we're on to a loser whatever we do. That said, it's at least worth trying. The *major* effort needs to be aimed at legislators - the problem there is the lack of any sensible restraint in most legislatures. We at least USED to have the House Of Lords, who for the most part actually read and tried to understand most legislation. I believe the quality of our laws has rather gone down since the reforms :-( A revising house is rather a good idea - it can at least throw out anything that doesn't make sense, which would probably decimate (quite literally) most modern legislation. Cheers, Wol How would you address Hollywood? I'm not looking for specifics, but rather for the groups you think need to be targeted, and why. How would you address the Press (I live in Canada, where the Press tends to be a bit more reliable). Again, which groups do you think need to be targeted? As to Legislators, they can't be the major effort, at least not immediately, due to the costs of targeting them. Right now we have zero cash, and we'll be working with little to no cash for the first couple of years. Targetting those who the legislators talk to on the other hand would be far cheaper, though I'm not sure we would have the reach to immediately hit them. Another comment to follow ? Wayne
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Authored by wayneborean on Jun 28, 2015 14:36:59 GMT
My original post didn't cover a few points.
1) I am assuming that for the first 3-5 years the Foundation would have almost no funds, and very limited reach. We would need to plan around that. I'm going to assume that everything would be run on a volunteer basis permanently.
2) Programmers and other techies are familiar with the Groklaw name. While we can't use it directly (the trademark belongs to PJ, and without her permission I wouldn't want to do that), we can reference it. GrokTheLaw works, but we may want to run a contest and see if better names are suggested. We can however reference Groklaw. The name is well known in Tech circles, and in the Tech press.
3) Certain laws (the DMCA for example) are going to be campaigned against from the start, since it interferes with Freedom to Tinker.
4) By aiming at groups who are already familiar with what the original Groklaw did, we can hopefully get people onside to help (even if it is just retweeting). I'd also like to reach out to certain lawyers who already are familiar with Groklaw. Let's set off fireworks, and wake a few people up.
Yeah. I know. It is no plan of action. Haven't even considered going that far yet.
What this is, is a plan to make an initial plan, assuming enough people are interested.
Wayne
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Authored by wayneborean on Jun 29, 2015 0:52:29 GMT
I've been thinking some more - note that these are not final thoughts, I'm still working my way through this. Suggestions are welcome, but keep them at the low end of the planning phase. Yes, we do want to target politicians eventually, but at the present time, and for some time to come we will have ZERO backing. Politicians tend to listen to people who have backing, and that is something we need to develop before we get in too deep.
*****
Remember SOPA? The backers of SOPA thought that Google arranged all of the opposition to SOPA. Google arranged nothing, it was a true grass roots operation.
Groklaw was nothing when it started. It became something by attracting talented people, who attracted other talented people. Even more people were never involved, but were influenced by Groklaw because those of us who were involved talked about the whys and wherefores of how things worked. For every Groklaw member who posted publicly, there were probably a hundred or more lurkers. So say there were a hundred posters (I'm not going back to count - but I suspect that number is low). For a hundred posters, we get ten thousand lurkers. Ten thousand people have a LOT of reach.
That's why I've been thinking along the lines of an educational institute rather than a lobbying institute. We educate as many people as possible, and they educate people...
What I'm talking about is leverage. Since we can't use money for leverage, because we don't have as much as the large corporate entities who are often on opposite sides of issues with us, we need to use people instead.
Assume we get ten people involved to start. Assume that those ten people can within a year, attract/educate another ten people each (average - some may attract 1, some may attract twenty). Then assume that a year later those hundred and ten people, each manage to attract/educate ten people each. That's 1210 people. Go another year, and it's 13310. At that point, there's enough of us to have a serious impact.
Our aims are in line with the aims of Richard Stallman. Richard scares people, which is why he isn't as affective as he should be. Hopefully we can come across as reasonable people, who are working for the public good (Richard is working for the public good, problem is he doesn't come across as reasonable). If we come across as reasonable, it makes it harder for the opposition, whoever and whatever it may be, to demonize us.
That's what PJ did with Groklaw. She was reasonable, and evenhanded. This made it virtually impossible for people to believe that lunatic woman who was writing nasty pieces about her. I think that reasonable and evenhanded are a fantastic tradition to take from PJ and Groklaw. If we leverage it right, we can do an Archimedes, and move the world.
Wayne
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