This looks like an excellent opportunity to get together with some
people that share our interests. I'm unfortunately going to be busy
with moving chores on the dates of the congress, but I commend it to you
all.
Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/
------ Forwarded message ------
From: Brett Wynkoop <wynkoop@...>
Subject: internet commons congress
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 14:34:54 -0500 (EST)
To: proclus@...
New Yorkers for Fair Use Call to General Assembly
Internet Commons Congress - March 24-25 2004
Please register for the Congress and join in the fight to preserve the
Internet commons.
Visit the Internet Commons Congress home page at
http://www.internationalunity.org.
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:
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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!
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