http://funredes.org/mistica

MISTICA: Internet Commons Congress 2004

From: Daniel Pimienta ([email protected])
Date: Sun Mar 07 2004 - 22:23:57 AST

>Date: Sun, 07 Mar 2004 01:23:58 -0500
>From: Seth Johnson <[email protected]>
>To: [email protected]
>Subject: <incom> Call to Assembly: Internet Commons Congress 2004
>
>New Yorkers for Fair Use Call to General Assembly
>-------------------------------------------------
>
>Internet Commons Congress 2004
>
>March 24-25, 2004, Outside Washington, DC
>Scheduled Sessions/Participants:
>http://www.internationalunity.org/schedule.html
>
>
>http://www.internationalunity.org
>http://www.nyfairuse.org/icc
>Please forward this call to any other concerned parties you might know.
>Please visit the above links to register to attend and join in the fight to
>preserve the Internet commons.
>
>Today our commons is under attack.
>The attack is wide and pervasive. Even our right to own and use computers
>inside our homes and offices, is under attack.
>The time has come to assemble and declare our rights. We call upon
>advocates and organizers, authors and cow-orkers, readers and singers,
>politicians and students, grandmothers and children of all ages, and all who
>support the right of free human beings to the free dissemination and use of
>information rendered to the commons for the benefit of the public, to join
>us at the Internet Commons Congress outside Washington DC on March 24 and
>25, 2004.
>
>We live in a time of vibrant prospects and shameful travesties, brought on
>as we confront the implications of a new and broader and greater empowerment
>in furtherance of our common wealth and in engagement in our common
>governance.
>
>Today we possess:
> - The Internet: the means to disseminate and make use of published
>information flexibly and powerfully, on a worldwide scale
> - Computers: tools to process, select, combine, analyze and synthesize
>information at the digital and logical level, and
> - Logical Freedom: the power to devise means of applying these tools
>through the free use and expression of logic in code
>
>But today we also confront:
> - attempts to create irrational and wildly artificial legal and regulatory
>trammels on new conventions, such as VoIP, in order to keep control of the
>world's communication channels in the hands of old oligopolies, monopolies,
>and tyrannical governments
> - an intransigent U.S. Federal Communications Commission, arrogating to
>itself an unprecedented authority to declare exclusive rights policy and to
>regulate the design of digital devices on that basis
> - consolidated mass media and entrenched communications monopolies that
>subvert principles of the public interest with the willing concurrence of
>complaisant regulators and legislators
> - elected representatives who have made plain their intention to enact a
>new exclusive right to factual information in databases
> - forceful attempts in Europe to subvert the law banning patents on
>software, by patent establishment professionals and the large companies they
>serve
> - specious arguments by public servants and privileged contractors for the
>supposed reliability of "new voting technology"
> - attempts by the Bio-Medical Cartel and others to seize the fruits of
>logical, biological, medical, and pharmaceutical researches carried out at
>publically financed institutions of science and learning
> - an already well advanced and well funded plan to impose a redesign of
>home computer hardware so that running software that you choose would be
>made impractical, and analyzing and processing information in the manner you
>choose would be made impossible; the new design, backed by laws such as the
>DMCA, would result in the emplacement of wiretap and remote control hardware
>and supporting software in every new low cost home computer sold in 2006
> - massive ongoing and systematic violations of contract law and antitrust
>law and consumer protection law by Microsoft and its partners, by means of
>which most home users are left with no choice but to run Microsoft operating
>systems: most people are not offered any choice of operating system at point
>of sale of the hardware, and are therefore induced to employ systems that
>are difficult to use and easily parasitized, systems that are indeed so bad
>because Microsoft need not compete
> - a hundred million dollar campaign of barratry and red-baiting conducted
>by SCO, acting as agent for the convicted monopolist Microsoft, to induce
>businesses and individuals to steer away from exercising free control of
>their logic devices, away in particular from GNU/Linux operating systems;
>the assault led by SCO is only one of many of similar scale
>
>All these issues and more are part of a broad struggle by all the people, we
>who treasure our freedom and who wish to remain free to use our Net and our
>computers in all the ways that are both fit and just.
>
>We call all ready advocates and concerned constituencies to assemble at the
>Internet Commons Congress this March 24 and 25, 2004. Here we will forge a
>bond in our common cause of information freedom, detail our missions and
>callings and summon each other to join in common cause.
>
>Please click here for details regarding venue, schedule, logistics:
>http://www.nyfairuse.org/icc/
>Registration for attendance is free: http://www.nyfairuse.org/icc/reg.xhtml
>
>Those in attendance will issue calls for action, as shall we. We call all
>free citizens to join the struggle against englobulation of our Commons and
>our computers by the loose association and alliance of cartels, oligopolies,
>monopolies, and parts of governments, that seek to keep or take control of
>all the communications systems of the world.
>
>At the moment New Yorkers for Fair Use knows of a few efforts which we will
>forward at the Congress:
>- Continued Actions for Refunds: We hope to prepare materials to move the
>FTC, Congress of the USA folk, the Federal antitrust team, and the judge in
>the Microsoft case to consider effective action on the basis of gross
>violations of both the 1994/1995 consent decree, and the recent conviction
>of Microsoft. This effort needs several score affidavits dealing with
>anti-competitive practices at point of sale of low cost computer hardware.
>- Education of Regulators and Legislators and Attorneys about Home
>computer Hardware: We will explain and demonstrate the boot process today on
>untrammeled hardware and what the boot process would be like on Palladiated
>hardware, that is, hardware with hard DRM.
>- Procurement Policy Education and Action: We seek to collect and analyze
>the grossly inequitable policies and procedures by which vendors of source
>secret softwares keep their special privileged position in the machine rooms
>and desktops of government agencies.
>- Education of Regulators and Legislators and Judges about the Net: We
>will explain the fundamental principles which, for more than thirty years,
>have supported the psychic and moral and legal and engineering foundations
>of our Net. A popularly reported on issue directly connected with these
>principles is the "issue of Voice Over Internet Protocol".
>
>These four actions have been mentioned because organizations, tribes, and
>individuals from New York City have recently been working on these four
>efforts. We know that other efforts will also be carried forward at the
>Internet Commons Congress. Come and help!
>
>New Yorkers for Fair Use
>http://www.nyfairuse.org
>
>[CC] Counter-copyright: http://realmeasures.dyndns.org/cc
>
>I reserve no rights restricting copying, modification or distribution of
>this incidentally recorded communication. Original authorship should be
>attributed reasonably, but only so far as such an expectation might hold for
>usual practice in ordinary social discourse to which one holds no claim of
>exclusive rights.
>
>_______________________________________________
>incom-l mailing list
>[email protected]
>http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/incom-l

Este archivo fue generado por hypermail 2.1.3 : Mon Mar 08 2004 - 12:01:27 AST