4th Binaryfreedom Meeting , May 10th, 2007
From BinaryFreedom.INFO
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[edit] Meeting Notes
- Chris: I showed the people at the meeting the dotCommunist manifesto by Eben Moglen. We agreed to create our constitution based on that, plus additional items such as our mission to help humanity by liberating the digital/technological world. Everyone agreed, so you can put back the section about Al Jazeera, since that is part of the dotCommunist manifesto.
- Peter: [dotCommunist Manifesto]
- Danny: Um... no. What I thought we agreed to was to go through the dotCommunist manifesto and pick out things for inclusion in our constitution; but each of those things would need to be discussed, same as the points in the draft. In particular the whole Al Jazeera thing was not discussed at all.
- Chris no we agree since is too long to only get the main values out of it like the points at the end. see the last points of it. since this points mention freedom on all
digital means and electronic age and "freedom of information" to have independent media is OK. this TV station is one of the more democratic ones and free on earth, is not a political party.
- Chris: We agreed that we are not going to affiliate with any political parties, but that this won't stop us from doing things with them and working with them on our issues. Without changing our goals and we can sympathize with them as long we don't bend our core goals this will get our group known and respected by this other groups so they can take us serious like the work I been doing in Boston for the last year and is bringing finally benefits,
- Chris: I also made clear we are a progressive group that will try to filter non progressive people from joining so we all have some core values in common. For example, we don't want a group of people to take the Binary Freedom idea and make it a vehicle for proselytizing a certain religion. This does not however stop us from talking to any groups, progressive or not, about our goals (as long someone feels comfortable doing so and the group is humanitarian (non violence and non-oppressor since this will go against our social and freedom ideals even in the digital world) and bend the whole thing. There are still some minor loose ties but we are getting there.
- Danny: This was not agreed upon at the meeting. Several people including myself thought that "progressive" is one of those words that doesn't really mean anything, or means different things to different people, and didn't understand why we would need to stick particular political labels on the group other than "we are for digital freedoms, free software, and free culture". Also I do not recall the "... and the group is humanitarian (non violence and non-oppressor since this will go against our social and freedom ideals even in the digital world) ..." being discussed at all at the meeting. There was common ground on finding common ground with other groups being totally cool, and if in the context of talking to those groups we want to put labels on ourselves, that's fine; but IMHO those labels should not carry over to publicly-viewable materials on Binary Freedom.
- Chris: Yes it was, and just agreed that it will not be mention on the constitution BUT WE ARE PROGRESSIVE because we are humanitarian an a social group upon a freesoftware group for the fact we are more than freesoftware this is just one of our fights, and that is how the group was form and the founders want it to be and I just talked to them again and we WANT TO STRESS THIS. this is not and option. is one of our base ideas when we form the group.
- definition of progressive:
- 1. favoring or advocating progress, change, improvement, or reform, as opposed to wishing to maintain things as they are, esp. in political matters: a progressive mayor.
- 2. making progress toward better conditions; employing or advocating more enlightened or liberal ideas, new or experimental methods, etc.: a progressive community.
- 1. favoring or advocating progress, change, improvement, or reform, as opposed to wishing to maintain things as they are, esp. in political matters: a progressive mayor.
- Chris: Daniel Clark took notes but don't know were they are. I though they were in the wiki.
- Danny: Posting now :-)
- Chris: The rest of the stuff we talked is about:
- The FreeCulture people are looking for a place to use as a cultural center. In this space all our related groups could join forces and have meetings, install-fests, etc.
- Chris talked about the idea of Binary Freedom offering services to groups to move to Free Software, for variable but mandatory donations. This would be a source of funding for Binary Freedom, which Binary Freedom would use to move more people to Free Software and teach people about dangers to freedom in the digital world.
- We are also seriously looking to see if we can form a [freegeek] group in Boston. There was some talk with Elizabeth about using this space [Boston Free Culture] is planning to get.
- Peter: based on the experience of talking to people at the Jamaica Plain [Wake up the Earth] event, it seems to me that we have to have a multi-pronged approach. Not everyone will appreciate Stallman's four principles upon first hearing of them, whereas they will understand alternatives to Microsoft, free as in beer, etc. Once we have their attention, or if we see from talking to them that they already know about free as in beer, we can emphasize how free as in freedom is important. But we have to get their attention first. I notice by the way that googling [wake up the earth 2007] yields a plethora of Binary Freedom links :-)
- Danny: other random notes:
- Chris suggested talking about social benefits rather than technical freedom benefits:
- Tsunami - FSF [Sahana] [2006 social benefit award] at 2007 member's meeting
- Developing Countries, [OLPC], Kids from poor neighborhoods.
- Chris suggested the phrase "Binary Freedom: A progressive group of people fighting for digital-age rights."
- Chris suggested talking about social benefits rather than technical freedom benefits:
[edit] Binary Freedom: Goals and Constitution
- Danny: This document was gone through point by point, and each point had unanimous agreement. Since that is the case, please do not edit this, but instead start a new constitution page or discuss on the mailing list.
- add the points of the dotcommunist manifesto. http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/dcm.html see note below.
- Work towards the 4 freedoms of Free Software (list).
- Promote the ideals of free software and free culture. (possibly redundant with above, maybe also list freedomdefined freedoms)
- Promote freedoms beyond those promoted by free software and free culture where they relate to digital systems, such as Free Speech on the internet.
- Be an activist group with a lot of person to person contact. We encourage people to create Binary Freedom protests, rallys and campaigns to promote the goals of Binary Freedom.
- Form relationships with other groups, without compromising our ideals and without promoting theirs. We reserve the right to not form relationships with groups if no members feel comfortable working with those groups.
- Attend other organization's protests for the sole purpose of promoting Binary Freedom's goals. Create contacts and talk to other activists about our goals. Motivate other activists and organizations to accept the ethical ideals of binary freedom by finding common ground with them.
- Binary Freedom should not be directly affiliated with political parties, religious groups or commercial entities. This does not excluding working together towards Binary Freedom's goals with or taking donations from political parties, religious groups or commercial entities.
- Binary Freedom Branches may work independently by locality. Each local group will decide their own hierarchies, and make most other local decisions, such as whether or not to become an offical nonprofit.
- Binary Freedom Branches can not be for-profit entities.
- Binary Freedom members should not promote non-free software to the public during time they control.
- Binary Freedom members must not use non-free software when they are representing the Binary Freedom organization.
[edit] Note from the dot communist manifesto
and this SHOULD be our main goals that include freesoftware on it for a better society of the information. When people speak of ideas that revolutionise society, they do but express the fact, that within the old society, the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.
We, the creators of the free information society, mean to wrest from the bourgeoisie, by degrees, the shared patrimony of humankind. We intend the resumption of the cultural inheritance stolen from us under the guise of ``intellectual property, as well as the medium of electromagnetic transportation. We are committed to the struggle for free speech, free knowledge, and free technology. The measures by which we advance that struggle will of course be different in different countries, but the following will be pretty generally applicable:
- Abolition of all forms of private property in ideas.
- Withdrawal of all exclusive licenses, privileges and rights to use of electromagnetic spectrum. Nullification of all conveyances of permanent title to electromagnetic frequencies.
- Development of electromagnetic spectrum infrastructure that implements every person's equal right to communicate.
- Common social development of computer programs and all other forms of software, including genetic information, as public goods.
- Full respect for freedom of speech, including all forms of technical speech.
- Protection for the integrity of creative works.
- Free and equal access to all publicly-produced information and all educational material used in all branches of the public education system.
By these and other means, we commit ourselves to the revolution that liberates the human mind. In overthrowing the system of private property in ideas, we bring into existence a truly just society, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
[edit] Other issues/notes
- What does "binary freedom" mean? - freedom for all digital media - also no grey areas (it's free or it's not free - no middle ground)
- Need a "Regular member" definition
- freedomdefined.org
- Look at EFF's about page
