Hey. Tom Hymes here from the FSC.
Sorry in advance for this loooooooong post, but my son is 2 today and we're going out, so I won't be able to hang around today.
Djilla actually sent me an email, which I replied to and forwarded to Connor, who should be showing up to post also.
I was actually alerted to this series of threads yesterday, but was swamped and not able to get here to post until now.
This is an awesome thread. So many good ideas, so many experienced voices weighing in. I read some posts late last night to a couple of FSC board members, to hammer home points that I've been making and to show them the level of... um, intercourse.
Board dialogue that results in a consensus decision is of course difficult, if not impossible, but I don't think that's the point. As has happened here, a discusssion takes on a life of its own, and if most people stick to the issue at hand a valuable progression of ideas unfolds. Now we need to figure out how to follow up on it.
I would just like you to know that there are people at FSC who take Internet issues very seriously, and have for a very long time. The old days of a video-centric org are over, but the fact remains that we are an association in transition. There are no obstacles to webmasters getting involved here, running for the board, joining one of the committees, or helping out in other ways. We just had BoD elections, but very few people ran, and there was not much interest from internet folk. I was kind of surprised, but I figure there's always next year.
I tell you right now, I have specific plans for getting our message out into mainstream media unfiltered through a reporter's sensibility. I'm sick and tired of being dependant upon them, hoping that they are fair, and usually being disappointed. Even in the best circumstances, the message is always tweaked. But I have a plan, and if it unfolds as it should, mainstream news alerts should include our articles now instead of just MSM and religious right propaganda. When that happens, I'll be looking to expand the chorus of voices that fully represent who we are.
We are also now lobbying in Washington, with a new lobbying group, the Raben Group, very cool, smart people who have a long history working with civil rights groups and are eager to get our message across. Did I say message, singular? I think we all know that one message does not fit all, and that we are in fact a cross-section of opinions and perspectives.
Likewise, do all the members of FSC have the same interests? No. Does FSC favor one group over another; say, a huge powerful video or Web company over a single webmaster working out of his/her home? As hard as it will be for some of you to believe, the answer is emphatically no. The fact is, we care deeply about every level of member, and I would say almost obsessively about the most vulnerable. I have seen it with my own eyes, when we could have taken positions that served the interest of big comapnies to the detriment of smaller ones or individuals, how determined the legal staff was to protect the weakest member, and I was very impressed and more than a little surprised.
So we have to somehow speak to the needs of all our members, and over the past year the membership base has expanded to include people who would never have considered joining, many of course because of 2257.
I am always available at
tom@freespeechcoalition.com and Connor is too at
connor@ynot.com. But we'd like to ramp up the dialogue, and get more aggressive about hearing what you think we should be doing, what our lobbyists need to know when they speak on your behalf in D.C.
What about an informal get together at Phonix Forum, where we can listen to you and maybe, maybe come to some sort of consensus about these issues? We can't of course have a thousand cooks making the meal, but we can try to take all your recipes and come up with a solid foundation of policies and proposals that represent the needs of webmasters without giving away any of our cherished rights, or give something away without getting something back in return!
Anyway, I'll be there, so we can do it as a group or people can hit me up one by one, or in an email. If emailed I usually reply with all my contact info and am then the easiest guy on the planet to reach.
And by the way, we are on record here as favoring filtering IN solutions, like .KIDS or tagging child-appropriate sites, but I am also on record as supporting both that and a code for use by adult webmasters that the filters will recognize. I am conviced that making such a code available on a voluntary basis takes the issue off the table and allows us to focus on solutions that may actually work. If it is misused by ISPs or other gateways, poof, the code goes away and we can say as a fact and with a straight face that we tried, but we are not going to stand for being censored at anything but the end user level. Period. I say, make good faith efforts, find a balance with what you are willing to do, never give away the store, support responsible business practices, and leave options available if your enemies try to violate your core rights. We will ten support legislation that targets actual behavior that all (or most) agree is egregious and illegal, and put the onus (or anus) where it belongs
We need to hear what you think those responsible business practices should be. I know that a lot of people want to censor the speech of others, arguing that the extreme stuff puts them in a bad light, but I can tell you right now that we abhor censorship of any kind and consider it an insidious cancer that kills the entire body in the end. But short of measures that encroach on others reasonable rights, we are open to all suggstions. In the near future, we will be querying our membership for their opinions on these and other issues, but feel free to let me know now if you like.
And again, sorry for the long post.
Tom