GeekPAC to fight for information rights

There's little question that plenty of people are annoyed at how difficult it is to rip movies from legally purchased DVDs into formats readable by handheld devices or media players. The lack of consistency in document formats is an ongoing headache for anyone who receives files that are only readable with certain software. Information rights management has become enough of a frustration that a group has formed specifically to deal with the problem head on. GeekPAC is a political action committee made up of volunteers who are taking their complaints straight to Capitol Hill.

Last year California Assemblyman Mark Leno authored AB 1668, a bill designed to encourage the state to adopt the Open Document Format as the standard format for government documents. Not surprisingly, Microsoft came out against the bill and it was eventually struck down in committee. CollabNet Community Manager and longtime FOSS supporter John Mark Walker was angry. Realizing that the open source community had no voice during the hearings and no way to fight back against the opposition's lobbyists, Walker decided to mobilize support from within the ranks of the FOSS community and let them do what they do best — rally behind a cause and prove once again that there's strength in numbers. So he founded GeekPAC.

GeekPAC's goal is to pull together enough funding — a mere $2,200 — to file the necessary paperwork to be formally recognized by the Federal Elections Committee as a Political Action Committee (PAC). Then the group will locate politicians or candidates in the House and Senate who support hot-button technology issues like copyright reform and net neutrality. Once identified, GeekPAC will help support their campaigns and lobby together for change.

"If all we do is fund some campaigns, create a few attack ads, and do the occasional lobbying, I'll be pretty disappointed," says Walker. "The real goal here is to educate people as to why they should care. Frankly, those of us who care about our rights in the information age have done a really poor job of communicating the importance or relevance."

Indeed, Walker suggests that ambiguous verbiage and a lack of communication with people outside the tech industry has been the biggest hindrance to effecting large-scale change. "One of the problems is that we insist on using terms like 'digital rights,' the usage of which basically leaves out a large percentage of the population. Most people don't know what that means, and they assume that digital doesn't include them, because they don't work in the tech industry and have little contact with people who do. So lots of digerati swing around their proverbial phalli and talk 'digital rights' this and 'DRM' that, and it becomes a kind of high-tech circle jerk that is constraining and ultimately self-limiting."

A better approach, he says, would be to frame these important issues as "information rights." Once people realize that the bills politicians are voting on aren't about obscure concepts but rather affect human rights at a basic level, Walker is confident GeekPAC will make great strides toward changing minds at the national level.

"It's really about the free flow of information and letting free markets do their job. Once you start there, it's a quick hop and a skip down the path of the founding principles of this great country," explains Walker. He goes on to note that these issues affect people at every socio-economic level, from patents that limit free market trade, to "information restrictions that affect our ability to adequately educate the public."

Walker asserts that without a total overhaul of the United States patent and copyright laws, the information divide will never narrow, and ultimately lead to larger problems down the road. "It's really about education, innovation, and reducing the bar to entry so that America can remain competitive in the 21st century."

One of the overriding reasons Walker chose to launch GeekPAC now is because this is an important election year and political issues are on the minds of many. Though he acknowledges people have been discussing these topics for years, talking just isn't enough.

"In the 10 years that have passed since the DMCA, we still haven't been able to mount a credible reform effort, and countless horrible things have taken place on our watch that co-opt our so-called inalienable rights. We must do more, and I can't think of a better time to do more than an election year," he says.

GeekPAC is taking a multi-faceted approach to locating politicians to support. The group's supporters and volunteers are encouraged to recommend candidates who they know believe in GeekPAC's goals and direction. Politicians can also contact the group directly and asked to be considered for backing from GeekPAC. Once chosen, candidates are asked to sign a simple pledge promising to "protect my constituents' fair use rights to information [and] support the use of open standards in government for the storage and archiving of public data."

Walker says GeekPAC is most interested in helping candidates who take a strong stance on open standards and open access, copyright reform, patent reform, and net neutrality. "Obviously, we'll be most enthusiastic about candidates who support all of those, but we will help campaign for candidates who support at least one of those items."

The name GeekPAC may ring a bell for those who have been around the FOSS community for a while. A similar group was formed more than five years ago but never quite got off the ground. Though the two organizations don't share any common members, they do have the same goals — and an affection for the domain name. Before GeekPAC morphed into its current state, it was known as BytesFree — a similar group, but without the political slant. Walker says he originally planned to stay with that name, until he learned that the geek-pac.org domain was available, and then everything fell into place.

Walker formally launched GeekPAC at last week's LinuxWorld Expo by hosting a Birds of a Feather get-together at the end of a long day of sessions. While current and would-be volunteers strategized and planned, Walker took a few minutes to share the group's vision with notable columnist and FOSS supporter Doc Searls.

Though GeekPAC's premise is strong, not everyone is convinced of its viability. LinuxWorld community blogger Don Marti says the idea is likely to fail, in part, because of a poor choice of names. He claims the inclusion of the term "geek" is insulting and suggests it doesn't relay the true goals of the group.

"Creative Commons is a great name. Electronic Frontier Foundation is pretty good," Marti suggests. "You have to get in some words that imply that the people in the organization actually make something useful and that the organization's goals are public goods. Network Growth and Productivity Council?"

Marti also notes that GeekPAC should include singers, podcasters, and other sub-groups affected by information rights. Though the underlying commonality among the members of GeekPAC is an understanding of how these issues impact the FOSS community, Marti says that's not enough of a reason to form a splinter group of nothing but techies.

"There's a community that already exists around these issues — why split off the subset of EFF supporters who happen to be into free software?" asks Marti. "Of course EFF itself can't be involved because they're tax-exempt, but the target is clearly the same people, and their friends and colleagues. A 'free software users for DMCA reform' group would be like 'cat owners for a balanced budget'."

At the end of the day, it won't be the group's name or membership demographic that decides GeekPAC's success. Walker says it will be "When politicians and candidates start referencing us by name because our influence is large enough to matter."