[d@DCC] Forming a more formal "interest group".

[Russell McOrmond]

On Tue, 13 Apr 2004, Jason Young wrote:

> Russell,
> 
> As you know, I strongly support such an initiative and frequently 
> pester you to that effect. The tone of this email may sound too 
> onerous though.

  I think the wonderful response to the message shows what I was thinking
of.  More than a few people offered in this forum (and in personal email)
to help sponsor me to go to RETHINKING COPYRIGHT.  This suggests to me
that there are people who have resources to put into such an effort.  
Those who do not have time, have money they are willing to put towards the 
cause.


  I guess I believe that the type of consensus building that you are
suggesting needs go go further than just a mission statement and a name.  
We have various unorganized resources available to us from "hand waving
speakers", people great at formal submissions to government (who could
extend this to interventions in court cases), editors (Ian Allan is
helping me with my next letter to Susan), and now financial resources.  

  What we are really missing is a person (or preferably people so we don't
burn anyone out) with organizational skills that can catalog these
resources, seek consensus, set priorities, and then call upon these
resources.


  There is money people are willing to send to me.  Better would be if we
had some legitimate/legal structure (non profit is ideal) that could
collect money and build consensus not only about priorities of what to do
with that money, but also consensus about who should be sponsored.  It is
a wonderful vote of confidence I received in email to have money sent my
way, but we need to build something strong enough that it will continue
even if the confidence in any specific individuals is no longer there.

> Aside from a *simple* mission statement and a website where you could 
> post information, I wouldn't worry too much about the front end 
> organization yet. Let the group grow organically. If something works, 
> keep it. If it doesn't change it.

  What we have right now is a growing number of people joining this forum
and participating with their ideas.  The diversity of people in this
group, no longer just a bunch of "open source geeks" that don't like the
USA's DMCA, is proof of existing growth.  We have writers, graphics
artists, musicians, and a mixture of software people. (Curious: do we have
anyone involved in video, or professionally in photography?)


  Setting up a mission statement isn't a simple task.  Chris Brand is
doing a great job with the petition which is going to become something we
can all sign onto.  I hope that it will become a critical document in the
upcoming election as we try to get all candidates to sign onto it as well.  
As we bring it to all candidates debates and ask questions about it, this
will draw even more people to this forum.


  This has not been a small amount of time on his part, and from being
involved in other organizations I know that mission statements are far
harder than petitions or other more "one off" activities.  *Simple*
mission statements are often even harder than longer ones, especially when
trying to build a group with consensus about such a messy area of public
policy.

> My two bits,
> Jason

Thank you!



BTW: Once there is structure to manage resources, we can set up an 
appropriate CMS on the website to allow volunteers to put up more relevant 
information.  A few static pages and an archive of this forum has served 
us well so far, but we have quite a bit more we could be saying and tools 
(like WIKI's) that could help us work together.

-- 
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> 
 "Make it legal: don't litigate, use creative licensing" campaign.
 A modern answer to P2P: http://www.flora.ca/makelegal200403.shtml
 Canadian File-sharing Legal Information Network http://www.canfli.org/


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