Netizens-Digest Sunday, February 20 2000 Volume 01 : Number 354 Netizens Association Discussion List Digest In this issue: [netz] About a Loss for Netizens [netz] Re: Proposed e-commerce self regulation in Canada [netz] For every park bulldozed we will build two new parks [netz] Re: IP: Policing the Internet: Anyone but Government ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2000 22:42:43 -0500 (EST) From: ronda@panix.com Subject: [netz] About a Loss for Netizens On Friday night, January 28, the Netizens mailing list administrator received a very sad message. The message asked him to take Kerry Miller's email address off the mailing list because Kerry had died on January 18. After asking another mailing list administrator if he knew any further details, we were told that Kerry had indeed died on January 18, of a heart attack after shoveling snow. He was 75 years old. Kerry Miller has been an important contributor to the Netizens mailing list almost since it began. He posted regularly and encouraged others to post by commenting on their posts. I remember Kerry's first email to me several years ago. I told him about the Netizens mailing list. He soon joined and participated actively and often. One time Kerry signed off the mailing list. I wrote him shortly afterwards asking how everything was and telling him about some of the new Internet problems that the Netizens mailing list was concerned with at the time. Kerry resubscribed and contributed again helping to make it possible to have a Netizen challenge to that particular problem confronting the Internet. I didn't know anything about Kerry's life until after hearing he died. I then learned from the moderator of the other mailing list that though he had never met Kerry, he had hoped to meet him several times. That Kerry had moved from Kansas in the US to Canada to marry someone he had met on another mailing list. I will miss Kerry very much. The Netizens mailing list is the poorer for this loss. I hope others will share any thoughts they have about Kerry and that we will all make an effort to contribute a bit extra to make up for the fact that the Netizens mailing list and the Internet have lost one of their important contributors. Ronda ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 00:26:30 -0500 (EST) From: jrh@umcc.ais.org (Jay Hauben) Subject: [netz] Re: Proposed e-commerce self regulation in Canada This was posted on the Universal Access Canada list in a thread responding to a request by 31 commercial entities who want Canadian government money to set up their self-regulation: > From: Judyth Mermelstein Subject: Re: E-COMMERCE: CANADA BUSINESS LEADERS LAUNCH PLAN TO CREATE'CYBERCOURT' FOR WEB DISPUTES At 17:41 -0500 2000/02/11, Colin J. Williams wrote: >Judyth, > >Since any meaningful protection can only come from our own laws, should >we not be puting together some ideas on what such laws should contain? > >Any protest would, I suggest, be more effective if we could lay out some >ideas in this area. > >One of the areas of concern is privacy. The government's Bill (C-54 -> >C-6) seems to have stalled in the Senate. I agree that the protection must come from our own laws. However, the way that law works in Canada and most other nations, a transaction performed by electronic means is no different from one performed by other means. What the "e-business" people are trying to do is to *remove* their Web-based activities from their existing legal jurisdictions. As the law stands, a business located in Canada is obliged to respect federal and provincial laws and municipal bylaws respecting licensing, taxation, consumer protection, worker safety, minimum wages, etc., etc. Whether it does business by operating a retail outlet or by selling its products by mail-order or by permitting on-line orders, it must operate within the laws in force or face the consequences. What this group of 31 companies is demanding is not really exceptional, in that a great many people profiting from the "privatization of the Internet" and the big push for "e-commerce" as a creator of wealth for the investing classes are seeking the same thing -- a declaration that Internet-based commerce is somehow to be exempted from all the existing rules. They want "Cyberspace" to be run by the corporations for their own benefit. They want their transactions exempted from sales taxes, their profits exempted from corporate taxes, their workers excluded from benefits (usually, the employees are called "independent contractors" but are paid less than salaried workers although they must pay their own "employer contributions", get no vacation pay, and are not covered by workman's compensation if injured on the job), and their customers to be prohibited from the normal legal recourses against the seller of defective goods, the author of fraudulent advertising, the company which takes the money and never delivers the merchandise, etc. As shown in the original item, these companies want to make their own laws and establish their own dispute mechanisms, and they are asking *our* government to provide the funds for creating this new corporate-run legal system which would apply to all e-commerce. What is needed, then, is not so much a new set of laws conceived specifically to govern e-commerce in Canada as a recognition that a business located in Canada is NOT exempt from Canadian law (or the relevant provincial and municipal laws) just because it operates via a Web site. Yes, we also need to beef up the existing laws to cover new situations, such as data-mining and the surreptitious collection and sale of personal information, but the main thing is to say --loudly and clearly-- that if something is an illegal practice for a merchant in "meat-space", it's just as illegal when done on the 'Net, and that we Canadians do not care to have our rights as citizens privatized into the direct control of those from whom our government is responsible for protecting us. Say what you will about the ineffectuality of our parliamentary democracy - -- at least we get to vote once in a while and our elected representatives have some obligation to respect the public will or they risk dismissal. Allowing business to write its own laws and police its own behaviour and judge its own conduct without reference to the public good or any form of government control is a TERRIBLE idea, and you can bet these guys won't stop with Cyberspace -- in a year or two, they would be back with a claim that it's unfair to make them operate any differently off the Web than on it, that it's unfair to tax non-electronic sales, etc., etc. What we are looking at is just another wrinkle on the World Trade Organization approach -- every important decision about life on the planet should be removed from the hands of governments and placed in the hands of the corporate decision-makers against whom individual citizens shall have no recourse (unless they happen to be majority shareholders); when a dispute arises, it will be judged on its commercial merits by an appointed tribunal whose mandate does not include taking other factors (or people) into account. It's tragic that our political system is geared towards a close connection between the politicians we elect and the corporate contributors to their election funds, and as a result most of the people in Parliament will "go with the flow" when told there's no need to discuss the impacts of privatizing public property, deregulating corporate conduct, and abandoning the constitutional responsibilities of "responsible government". Unfortunately, that is the case and the only thing that puts a brake on the gallop back to the "good old days" of the robber-barons is a major public outcry. In short, if we want to keep the laws we have, we have to fight for them or some b$%^&*s will simply abolish our rights, for favours received and future considerations (like corporate directorships after retirement from the House) or because they are too dense to realize what they're doing. Much disgruntled but determined to speak out, Judyth &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Judyth Mermelstein "cogito ergo lego ergo cogito..." Montreal, Quebec Canada &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 11:03:43 -0500 (EST) From: ronda@panix.com Subject: [netz] For every park bulldozed we will build two new parks There was recently a post on Nettime that was interesting as it pointed out that those who use the Internet as a means of communication or education or for scientific or social purposes are seen as the enemy of those who are hyping and encouraging only commercial usage. However, the post seemed to say the battle was over and the commercializers have won. Today in the newspaper in NYC there is the report of the folks who built a community garden in NYC and who had the garden bulldozed yesterday, before the court could hear a petitition they had filed for an injunction to stop the bulldozing. Also over 30 people were arrested. This is similar to the e-commerce attack on the Internet. But also the response of the community garden supporters is something important to keep in mind as well. That the battle is far from over. Following is the post sent to nettime. As nettime is a moderated mailing list, one never knows whether or not they will send the post to them to the list. This raises an interesting issue as well of the nature of moderation on a mailing list on the Internet. Catherine Liu and Peter Krapp write: >Life goes on -- off and on-line despite denial of services! Late breaking >news! >Every time a new technology has been introduced, something about it must >be tamed and made secure so that the consumers can adapt and develop their >mass relationship with the new medium (television, telephone) or means of >transportation (railroad, automobile). What is new about the Internet is >not so new. It is difficult to remember what was promised by these new It isn't that the Internet isn't new, but that the effort of those with power trying to convert it into the old form of passive media isn't new. The Internet is new, the symbiotic ralationship between the human and the computer where people can communicate with people around the world without any cost, this is new. But of course there are those not so happy to have people online communicating and instead want the online voice of people turned off, and only the sound of cashregisters ringing or the traditional media telling how to perceive the world. >technologies, and what their long term effects and affects really became, >once their potential for profit was realized. -- Reminders of the >not-so-newness of new technology always sound "academic" -- precisely >because the promise of newness itself, as a function of modernity, has >been fully commodified. But you make it sound like there is no contest. And there is a contest. And the result of the contest isn't yet determined. >Every space, on and off-line is more and more under threat of full >saturation with advertising, and the profit margin is now at the center. I just read an article in the Wall Street Journal saying how the venture capitalists are requiring that those dot.com's they fund have significant advertising campaigns. Thus the advertising barrage we are subjected to is the venture capital mantra to take over the Internet for commercialized activity. >Disinterestedness -- that is a disregard for profit making or >commercialization has been increasingly suspect -- is a virtue of the >past, a philosophical category handed down from times when time was still >a plentiful resource and not a fissured, fractured trace element of >commerce. Its more than disinterested- the basis of the Internet comes from actual resource sharing, of both human and computer resources. That is the essence of the technology that has given birth to the Internet. Hence the effort to turn this medium into a resource exploitation medium is hostile to its very nature and can only be done by changing the nature of the Internet and its technology. Despite the hype that says that e-commerce is all, the people I talk with see the Internet as a means of communication or an educational resources or a means of social connection or of learning something different from what the standard press makes possible. >To harbor such an old-fashioned interest in disinterestedness is >to deny that financial gain is the only profit to be drawn, that capital >accumulation is the only aggregate that matters in the complicated >chemistry of the social. It has taken much effort on many people's parts to build the Internet. The very fact that you could send a critique of what is happening out on the Internet means that this is a different form of medium, a medium that invites the user to participate. The fact that I wanted to respond to your message, and if the moderators of this mailing list are willing to approve my message, that it will form a bit of a dialogue, means that there is something different happening with most other kinds of media. >The university, once a bastion of supposedly >disinterested pursuit of knowledge, has given up that ideal in favor of >potential profits to be had in distance education. This is a problem, but again there is a contest at the universities over this and the final outcome hasn't yet been declared. >The distance many citizens have from educational issues expresses >itself in another disinterestedness, which is the sheer pursuit of >consumption. Linguists, please note: in this current paradigm shift, >the meaning of the word "interest" will cease to denote qualities of >involvement, observation or attention, and it will revert to mean >nothing but capital gains. Interest, from now on, is a product of > capital, and all competing interests will be rooted out. My research shows the issue is something slightly different. In the past in the US at least the US government recognized the need at times to encourage input from those who didn't have a commercial self interest in an issue. Now those with a commercial self interest are called the "stakeholders" and those with a public interest are denied any ability to participate in decisions regarding what will happen. In the US this is part of the degeneration of government from something that represents the whole, to something that is only concerned with enriching a very narrow sector of the population. This is a challenge for citizens to deal with, just as what is happening on the Internet is a challenge for netizens to deal with. >The inherently political potential of a denial of pure consumerism is what >really frightens those elements of society and the media who, when things >fail to work, are quick to blame it on whom they love to call "hackers." It is interesting that the supposed attack comes just at the time that the Clinton administration has proposed a large sum of taxpayer money to support research into how to make the Internet secure. This proposal was before the supposed attack. And the Clinton adminstration didn't seem worried about the fact that the advertising and spamming barrage on the Internet has caused much frustration and problems for millions of people. The ad bombardment is welcomed by these US government officials, while they try to create a climate of public acceptance of spending billions for so called security research. There is no money for making access to the Internet available to all in the US but there is lots of money to protect commercial entities. >Indeed the danger comes from everybody who would use the Internet for >their own non-commercial ends of communication, not profit -- although the >process of turning even the minds of so-called "hackers" in more >commercially profitable directions is certainly picking up steam. This is an important observation. That those who challenge the commercialization of a communiations medium, those who work to spread and support the development of the Internet as a communications medium are targetted as the enemy by the e-commerce proponents and by the US government folks promoting e-commerce at the expense of all the general uses of the Internet. >As the computer technology magazine '2600' put it, the widespread misuse of the word "hacker" by the media to mean anyone who uses a >computer to their own ends instead of those of e-commerce or >consumerist service indicates a real paradigm shift: "With stories >like this, it's now become apparent >that the media is also misusing the word journalist." This is all a public relations campaign to attack the educational and scientific and artistic activity on the Internet. But instead of only critiquing the attack, what is the offensive of those who challenge the attack? If those who care about the Internet as a means of global communication only respond to the attacks, then there isn't much of a defense being put up. What is the offense? I have proposed in the past that the offensive is the support and spreading of the concept of netizen, as the concept of the citizen grew out of the effort to overthrow the kind. Similarly the concept of netizen grew out of the contest of those challenging the efforts to commercialize the Internet. Also it is a world wide battle, not a local one. And those concerned with the problem needs to find ways to support each other in their efforts. What those ways are need to be determined and discussed, much as the response to the offensive of the commercializers needs to be discussed. But it is easier to only comment on the later and to forget or not see the necessity to support the former. I am interested in people's comments on what they see as the ways to support the efforts to continue the spread of the Internet as a means of communication, to explore how the Internet is a means of resource sharing, both of human and computer resources, etc. A community garden in NYC was bulldozed yesterday after 31 people were arrested. This was all done while a court was going to consider the request for an injunction to stop it. An issue raised was isn't a community garden a park and thus subject to the laws governing parks, since the city government had encouraged people to set up community gardens. Clearly there are those who want to end all parks and instead building on them. But the parks have grown out of a long struggle of people to have parks, and so it isn't that those who want to end all parks can just have their way. One of those fighting to save the community gardens said that "We will build two new community gardens for every garden they destroy." That is not a direct quote but a paraphrase. But the sentiment is in fact the needed sentiment for understanding the challenge of our times. That we have parks, that we have the Internet, is some of the future in the present. For every effort to commercialize the Internet, can we muster 2 efforts to create new and interesting ways to spread and develop the resources sharing that is the essence of the Internet? Cheers Ronda ronda@panix.com - -------------------- http://www.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 08:44:45 -0500 (EST) From: ronda@panix.com Subject: [netz] Re: IP: Policing the Internet: Anyone but Government In his NYT article "Policing the Internet: Anyone but Government", http://www.nytimes.com/library/review/022000internet-security-review.htm Steve Lohr wrote: >But when President Clinton met last week with more than two dozen >representatives of the Internet community, a big role for government was >not on the agenda. The president asked what could or should the Government >do. Not a lot, the Internet elite told him. The message: It's an industry >issue. It didn't seem there were many folks from the Internet community at the meeting with President Clinton. Certainly it was not a meeting with "representatives" of the Internet community. There was a time when the U.S. government recognized that it needed to hear from those who did *not* have a commercial self interest on an issue, if it was to try to figure out how to determine the public interest in an issue. President Clinton doesn't seem to have any conception that this is the case, nor does this NYT reporter. Instead *only* those with a commercial self interest, or those closely tied to those with the commercial self interest, are invited to discuss issues of public concern. Such discussions are *not* able to determine the *public interest* because the public interest has been excluded from the discussion at its outset. The meeting with President Clinton last week was *only* to determine what those with a commercial self interest would desire. And it was to the exclusion of any of the public's interest regarding the Internet. The public's interest regarding the Internet has to do with the problems caused by the fact that those with a commercial self interest are being encouraged by the U.S. government to disinfranchise the public and its needs regarding the Internet. Those with a commercial self interest cannot determine the public objectives nor carry out such objectives. The Internet is a communications infrastructure. As such it needs the public to have a way of overseeing what happens with it, of determining the goals of the public policy regarding it, and of having a vision that directs its development. Then the question of what role for the public in its development, and what role for the private sectors needs to be explored. This means that the academic community, federal and state and local government, the citizens, the education and library communities, and many others have to be involved in what in determining what is needed for the development of the Internet. Instead the Clinton administration has disinfranchised all but a few large commercially oriented entities who are only seeking their own self interest in their activities regarding the development of the Internet. A similar problem arose in the development of the predecessor to the Internet, in the development of the ARPANET. In the early 1970s DARPA was asking for studies of what to do with the ARPANET, and there were recommendations that it be given to some private common carrier. However, at that time the Government Accounting Office recognized that there would be a problem giving the ARPANET away to private business interests. The ARPANET had been paid for by the government, and if it were given away, the government would have to pay again for what it had already paid for. Instead of the ARPANET being given away to a private entity, it was given to a government agency which took over its administration, the Defense Communications Agency. That made it possible for the development of the ARPANET to continue, rather than it being frozen to meet some narrow commecial objectives. The Internet is a very important computer communications infrastructure. Its future well being requires a broad vision and protection for the public interest. That is impossible, if the U.S. government continues to disenfranchise the public and instead only allows for and calls for what a very narrow sector of the U.S. population wants for the Internet, what a few big corporate entities feel they need to increase their commercial advantage at the expense of the users and netizens who need to participate in determing the future of the Internet, along with those citizens not yet online. The Internet grew up via public direction and funding and support for computer scientists who gave it its birth. They have all been excluded by a US government policy that fails to understand either the Internet or the needs of the public. There is a need for a change in US government policy regarding the Internet, not for any further so meetings between the US President and the so called "representatives" of the Internet community, which only include those with a commercial self interest in Internet development, and excludes the public and the public interest. Ronda ronda@panix.com Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/ in print edition ISBN 0-8186-7706-6 ------------------------------ End of Netizens-Digest V1 #354 ******************************