 |
15. July 2008 – 10:48 by Bengt Feil (TuTech Innovation GmbH)
|
The American Republican Party (GOP) launched a site to gather comments and suggestions on policy issues by its supporters. The website is called Republican Platform Committee and allows everybody who is willing to register can participate in what the party describes as:
…seeking your input as we develop the policies and principles upon which we should stand for the next four years. On this website, you can share your thoughts, participate in polls, and communicate directly with the policymakers who will be shaping the party’s agenda. All comments and feedback will be reviewed and taken into full consideration as we prepare for our convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Techcrunch points out that among the topics suggested, e.g. national security, energy and gas prices, health care reform, judicial nominations, “Protecting American Values.” there is no specific mentioning of tech related topics on the website which would be a perfect fit for the medium. As an additional way to reach out to interested citizens the GOP also launched a Facebook app aimed at the same purpose. The site uses text and video based communication as well as polls to discuss the topics at hand and is moderated.
The old elephant GOP seems to be quite up to date when it comes to modern campaigning. One may hope that such a step towards eParticipation will also be part of the federal government program regardless who wins the election. As far as campaigning goes: This effort may help to convert the Ron Paul enthusiast to John McCain if he is smart enough to use this tool and pick up the right topics. I think the Democrats will have to introduce answer to this soon and their already made good steps towards it with BarackObama.com.
Posted in News | No Comments »
|
|
3. July 2008 – 11:48 by Bengt Feil (TuTech Innovation GmbH)
|
The so called telecom package is a collection of amendments to existing European laws which will drastically change the organization of telecommunication in Europe and especially of the internet. The package will be the framework for the national laws concerning telecommunication. The purposed law has produced a lot of harsh criticism among members of the online community. This uproar is nothing less than the self-organized participation of the effected stakeholders of this law.
To better understand why the telecom package is criticised in such a fierce manner here are some statements form digital citizens of Europe. Laquadrature.net posted a document containing the most important regulations which will be put into place by the law. It also points out the problematic issues that laquadrature.net think could result from the law. For example it may be that the law would allow the Commission to “impose technical standards on content filtering and monitoring computing so called ‘trusted computing’. The Commission would be able to give the concerned by these regulation recommendations following a quick and undemocratic procedure, at the request of any national regulation authority (ARCEP, CSA, HADOPI in France, OFCOM in the UK, PTS in Sweden).” Another example is that the implementation of “technical measures” to prevent infringement of intellectual property can only be achieved by deep packet inspection or by using spyware on consumers’ computers. Slashdot thinks that the whole Peer-to-Peer infrastructure in Europe may be endangered by this. P2P is used for many legitimate purposes like Skype, the distribution of free and open source software and media content. Following the argumentation of laquarture.net and many others (as for example Members of the European Parliament) the different amendments may be a threat to privacy and freedom of internet users. It may also damage the European economy by hindering innovation.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in News, Trends | 5 Comments »
