[BALUG-Talk] Bytesfree.org Political SIG

[Cyrus Mack]

Hi there,

I'm contacting all the LUG's I know of to see if there is any interest in
forming local political SIG's in an attempt to make sure that 'our kind of
people' are represented in this election year. If you're not familiar with
bytesfree.org, take a look at the blog - http://www.bytesfree.org/bfblog -
and the wiki - http://www.bytesfree.org/wiki - to get a sense of what we're
trying to do. The site was inspired by last year's aborted open formats bill
in California, ab 1668, after seeing how paid Microsoft lobbyists influenced
state legislative committees.

If you would be interested in helping update information for voters,
attending a monthly round table, or otherwise getting involved, please
consider joining the mailing list, the only one at the moment:
bytesfree-discuss at bytesfree.org . To join, it's the usual mailman thing.
Either go to http://www.bytesfree.org/mailman/listinfo/bytesfree-discuss or
send email to bytesfree-discuss-request at bytesfree.org.

The most immediate topics concern the upcoming primaries, which for
legislative office will be held in June. I'd also like to explore the
possibility of creating an open format ballot initiative. But mostly, I want
to organize LUG's and other interested parties so that never again are
issues concerning DRM, fair use, patent reform, privacy, DMCA, et al.
overlooked in an election.

I'm working with someone closely involved with SCALE to produce a launch BoF
at SCALE. You will hear more from us soon.

Thanks, and I hope to hear from you very soon.

-Cyrus
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