[fc-uk-discuss] fc-uk meeting on saturday 10th of december in london

[Edward Griffith-Jones]

Quoting "David M. Berry" <d.berry at sussex.ac.uk>:

> Yes yes, but you are assuming it cannot grow to become a mass  
> campaign or movement.
>
> Firstly, should we have members then we have membership fees. If we  
> have fees we have money and can fund campaigns and researchers. If we 
>  have campaign that people like we have more members.
>

While this is a good idea, who is going to organise this? Who would be
treasurer? Who will set up the paypal account? Wouldn't we have to register as
FCUK as some legal entity e.g. a Community Interest Company (CIC) before we
could receive funds (or am I mistaken?)? The list goes on.

It is very easy to say "If we have fees we have money and can fund 
campaigns and
researchers," but who is actually going to organise this?

Ed

> Or we can spread ourselves too thin and stay small forever...
>
>
>
>
>
> On 19 Dec 2005, at 16:02, Edward Griffith-Jones wrote:
>
>> David,
>>
>> Of course we need to organise. Of course we need to co-ordinate. Of  
>> course we
>> need to work at national/European levels if we want to make  substantive
>> political change.
>>
>> However, do we have the time/volunteers/resources to realistically  
>> achieve this?
>> Are you not being overly ambitous? For example, the collecting  
>> society campaign
>> is a massive task which really needs either a) more people  
>> volunteering or b)
>> someone working full time on it. I am currently trying to tie  
>> Prodromos Tsiavos
>> down into helping us, but even that wouldn't be enough for the task  
>> at hand.
>>
>> Don't we need to step back and ask what we can realistically  
>> acheive? Can we as
>> a group seriously lobby national/european government without  funding or
>> full-time people working on it to provide continuity?
>>
>> I still think we need a constitution to clarify some of these issues.
>>
>> Ed
>>
>>
>> Quoting "David M. Berry" <d.berry at sussex.ac.uk>:
>>
>>>
>>> The inability to have any kind of political imaginary beyond a   
>>> localised mentality will consign Free Culture to the margins of   
>>> political action.  It is certainly clear that the constitution   
>>> appears doomed, and indeed that the tyranny of structurelessness  
>>> will  reappear shortly when we are informed of the new direction  
>>> of Free  Culture UK, post the decision having been made by a small  
>>> clique.
>>>
>>> The complete inability to understand the practical and political   
>>> value of constitutional forms of governance is strange. Moreso,  is 
>>>  the completely impractical and idealistic notion of weird   
>>> unstructured, unorganised, unnamed, and inactive 'groups' loosely  
>>> co- ordinating to loosely co-ordinate and hence get nothing done.   
>>> Politics (i.e. those legislative actions that have huge  
>>> consequences  nationally) are performed at a national and  
>>> increasingly European and  supranational level. By looking after  
>>> the local you are  leaving the  national and global to look after  
>>> itself (or more 'hopefully', that a  loosely-co-ordinated  
>>> looselessness will hopefully loosely, challenge  existing  
>>> political forms, by somehow, loosely, getting an email list   
>>> together and putting up a wiki).
>>>
>>> The reality, I suspect will be lots more legislation, policy and   
>>> corporate lobbying producing more draconian legislation, which   
>>> effectively will strangle local actions at birth (witness, for   
>>> example, the effect that the French national legislation proposed  
>>> to  make all GNU GPL projects illegal). Try fighting that with  
>>> local  pressure. Indeed, talking to 'experts', they tell me that  
>>> IPR  legislation is increasingly delegated to EU level as  
>>> directives, and  hence UK legislation will become more and more  
>>> about technocratic  implementation of European policy.
>>>
>>> If that is indeed the case, then even if you could pull off the   
>>> national campaigns (and somehow co-ordinate each group that seems  
>>> to  have 2 members in each of them) would that give you any  
>>> legitimacy to  those in power? Or indeed could you ever face  
>>> having the same kinds  of idiotic arguments over voting rights  
>>> EVERY SINGLE time you reform  a temporary national campaign...
>>>
>>> Best
>>>
>>> David
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 19 Dec 2005, at 15:10, Tom Chance wrote:
>>>
>>>> Quoting Ed Griffith-Jones <Ed at acrewoods.net>:
>>>>> I still think that we are going around in circles. Without a   
>>>>> constitution, we
>>>>> still haven't formally agreed (and voted on) how we as a group   
>>>>> make decisions.
>>>>> Shouldn't this be our first priority? Couldn't everyone onlist   
>>>>> help with that
>>>>> as it is such a central part to Free Culture UK? Can someone   
>>>>> volunteer to lead
>>>>> it? I promise to help out where I can if someone volunteers to   lead it.
>>>>>
>>>>> Everything else should come after that
>>>>
>>>> No, because the constitution may tie us into some formal  
>>>> structure  that's
>>>> totally inappropriate.
>>>>
>>>> To pick a (hopefully) ludicrous example, it could mandate that  
>>>> one  person from
>>>> every local project turn up to meetings for the meeting to be   
>>>> quorate. We could
>>>> then have a situation where a local group consisted of two very   
>>>> busy people in
>>>> Edinburgh who were unable to make just about any meeting. If we   
>>>> decided that we
>>>> needed formal network decisions to operate, the constitution  
>>>> would  make doing
>>>> anything impossible.
>>>>
>>>> Or another example. If we decide that we want to be a very  
>>>> flexible  network of
>>>> local projects, as Andreas suggested, then including mandates to   
>>>> campaign
>>>> nationally on certain issues, or requiring that we meet twice a   
>>>> year as a
>>>> network to elect press officers, campaign officers, treasurers,   
>>>> etc. may be
>>>> totally inappropriate. It would become a silly relic that we   
>>>> entertain with a
>>>> sigh twice a year before getting on with actually doing things...
>>>>
>>>> This is, I think, why Congress was so silly, but still  
>>>> worthwhile.  We aimed for
>>>> completely the wrong things (IMO, with hindsight), and the   
>>>> constitution process
>>>> is still bound around those silly aims.
>>>>
>>>> To rephrase your last point: everything we want to do should  feed 
>>>>  into the
>>>> constitution, and the constitution should *enable* everything we   
>>>> want to do.
>>>>
>>>> If I'm a heretic here, and everybody else is still interested in   
>>>> setting up a
>>>> formal national organisation with mandates to work on issues  like 
>>>>  copyright
>>>> reform, then I'll happily cheer from the sidelines whilst  working 
>>>>  on Remix
>>>> Commons and getting on with other more important things.
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Tom
>>>>
>>>> -- 
>>>> I am aware that emails to this address may be mistakenly caught  
>>>> as  spam. If
>>>> you don't get a reasonably timely reply, please try contacting me at
>>>> telex4 at yahoo.com
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
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