A new nonprofit organization aimed at welding file-swapping and open-source computing advocates into a political force is launching online this week.
Dubbed “Click The Vote,” an allusion to the successful Rock the Vote efforts focused at the MTV generation, the group hopes to make digital copyright and computing matters an issue in the 2004 election campaigns.
While not yet backing specific policies, the group’s early statements include support for legalizing music sharing along with a mechanism for paying artists, and support of “open computing” as opposed to the “trusted computing” initiatives supported by Microsoft and others. These technology issues should be viewed as policy issues in a modern, digital world, the group says.
“Openness and free speech is what has made this democracy thrive,” said organizer John Parres, a onetime advisor to Hollywood power broker Michael Ovitz and co-founder of the influential Pho digital music e-mail discussion group. “We’re concerned that things are going in the wrong direction, that we’re heading towards closed computing, encrypting speech, and those things are not conducive to a thriving democracy.”
The group hopes to tap into the momentum several online organizing efforts have gained this year, including the early stages of presidential candidate Howard Dean’s campaign, and the fundraising efforts of the political action committee MoveOn.
It’s targeted at the technologically savvy audience of file swappers and open-source programmers–a demographic perhaps best represented by the extraordinarily active Slashdot technology news site community. That is a vocal group in online circles, but it has not yet been felt as a powerful political force.
