[governance] open standard for "facebook crowd" interactions; & WiGiT 6.24 & 10.18

[Lee W McKnight]

Parminder,

Agreed open specs alone will not solve problems, but the ideas being discussed onthe list are nonetheless of value.

But they may be very helpful in shaping behaviors, and even influencing legislation/regulation.

For example, due to the breaches of privacy expectations of users by serial offenders Google, Facebook, and now mobile apps developers,  it feels like for the first time in US history there - may - be a general privacy law passed. OK, 2nd time if we want to quibble, but limitations of ECPA are wide.

So yes more legislation is coming; as is (some) regulation. 

Defining at global level is of course far far more challenging still than getting meaningful legislation through eg a politically divided US Congress.

Returning to open specs for a moment, now is perhaps opportune time to mention 9th WiGiT June 24 9-11am meeting/webconference; and 11th WiGiT, October 18, exact time tbd.

But the venue and place is known: TEDxHarlem, Apollo Theater, New York City. 

As you are aware, Internet Rights and Principles will be discussed in a separate session at TEDxHarlem.

If (some) folks want to jump in and help develop privacy and data-re-use specs for WiGiT, and more broadly for sharing - information, data, devices, network, content, applications and services including cloud services; the 6.24 webconference would be a good time to join in. Since by 10.24 Version 1.0 open specs will be announced, with as extensive hook for - your concerns - as  - you all define.

Lee

PS: WiGiT is a Virtual Organization and hence neither here nor there. We will be posting docs describing how folks/organizations can self-subscribe to WiGiT, by June 1st, at http://wglab.net 


________________________________________
From: governance at lists.cpsr.org [governance at lists.cpsr.org] On Behalf Of parminder [parminder at itforchange.net]
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2011 9:09 AM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
Subject: Re: [governance] open standard for "facebook crowd" interactions

On Monday 16 May 2011 06:28 PM, Norbert Bollow wrote:

McTim <dogwallah at gmail.com><mailto:dogwallah at gmail.com> wrote:


On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 7:45 PM, Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch><mailto:nb at bollow.ch> wrote:



Suppose someone invested a lot of effort into building something
which meeting similar communication needs as FB, but with better
privacy properties. Network effects would likely cause this new
thing to be very unattractive to potential early adopters because
"everyone is on Facebook" unless sufficiently rich APIs are
available to effectively integrate the users of facebook.com
with the users of the new site into a single social network.

Even if we assume that suitable APIs for doing this exist *now*,
in the absence of any effective governance mechanism that takes
adequately into account also stakeholder interests which may
conflict with those of Facebook Inc. and the perceived interest
of the U.S. government, the company is not in any way obligated
to play along -- and the risk that they possibly wouldn't is
probably enough to prevent anyone from making the above-mentioned


Very much agree with Norbert's analysis.

There is this school of thought among many progressive techies which still holds that by practice alone (making better and more open alternatives) we can keep the Internet as we want it to be. It is time that we all recognised that this is not true. Neither markets, nor voluntary tech contributions, are enough. Public interest regulation is  a must, and since the Internet is global, the legitimate processes and institutions for such regulation have to global - democratic in all ways - participatory, multistakeholder etc...

How this would be done is not an easy thing at all. But then we must at least begin to address the imperative. At least frame the 'problem' and start looking for the right way forward.

Parminder


investment.

Greetings,
Norbert
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--

Parminder Jeet Singh
Executive Director
IT for Change
NGO in Special Consultative Status with the United Nations ECOSOC
www.ITforChange.net<http://www.ITforChange.net/>
Tel:+91-80-2665 4134, 2653 6890. Fax:+91-80-4146 1055
[cid:part1.01060204.00080308 at itforchange.net]


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