New Yorkers for Fair Use Call to Assembly: Internet Commons Congress 2004, Wednesday and Thursday, 24 and 25 March near Washington DC USA

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Date: 9 Mar 2004 05:17:08 -0500

At 8:49 am on Wednesday 24 March 2004 the first Internet Commons Congress
will be called to order by Dan Berninger, host of ICC 2004. We will meet
at the Shady Grove Campus of the University of Maryland, full address

Universities at Shady Grove
9630 Gudelsky Drive
Rockville, MD 20850

Information about our venue is here:

http://www.internationalunity.org/venue.html

In the next several days New Yorkers for Fair Use will publish calls for
volunteers to help accomplish specific tasks with near deadlines. Right
now we ask for

1. One or more volunteers to help record and transmit some parts of the
proceedings. In particular, we wish to demonstrate and also to use
GnomeMeeting and Ogg Vorbis and Speex and Speak Freely. We also ask for
help with broadcast systems.

2. One or more volunteers to show us a free operating system running on
Microsoft XBox hardware. We would also like to see a free operating system
running on Apple hardware.

3. One or more volunteers to help assemble a whole working (hardware only)
computer and help put at least one free operating system on the hardware.
We ask that you do this on stage before several hundred Congress Folk.

Write to secretary@lxny.org if you want to help. Please include the string
"Volunteer ICC" in the subject line.

Below is the NYFU Call to Assemble at the Internet Commons Congress 2004.

Our objectives are large. It is important that many workers in the Cause
come to this first Internet Commons Congress. Thus

Unaltered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of
this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED.

Jay Sulzberger <secretary@lxny.org>
Corresponding Secretary LXNY
LXNY is New York's Free Computing Organization.
http://www.lxny.org

 New Yorkers for Fair Use Call to General Assembly
 -------------------------------------------------

 Internet Commons Congress 2004

 http://www.internationalunity.org
 http://www.nyfairuse.org/icc

 Please forward this call to any other concerned parties you might know.
 Please visit the above links to register to attend and join in the fight to
 preserve the Internet Commons.

 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:

   - 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.

   - 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.

   - 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.

   - 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!

 --

 New Yorkers for Fair Use
 http://www.nyfairuse.org

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