On Dec 6, 2007 11:07 PM, Sean Boran <s...@boran.com> wrote:

If we manage to abolish the law now, the next will be worse. We don't agree
on a few essential point, where he doubtlessly has more expirience. My
particular trouble with his line of argument is:

* Tonnere apears to me defeatist, pessimistic and has no trust in the power
of the public whatsoever. While this is maybe justified, I certainly
wouldn't do anything about a law if I thought that way.
* He makes predictions about the future. I refuse, on the grounds of
principle and heisenberg, to make such predictions. For me it is very clear
that: If the consumer gets a lot of new duties and restrictions, and the
industry gets a lot of new rights to exercise freely, then the new law is
definitly worse then the one we have.

The Future is uncertain at all times, we can do something now, and maybe
make it matter, or we can abandon all hope.

Each pick his own.

Forwarded conversation
Subject: Swiss DMCA
------------------------

From: *Florian Bösch* <pya...@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 2, 2007 5:54 PM
To: chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

Hi,

The new copyright act that the swiss goverment approved contains a dangerous
and hidden sting. You can read about it on the home page for the
referendum<http://no-dmca.ch>(
no-dmca.ch), basically it means you cannot circumvent drm, you may however
for private purpose, but you cannot distribute, mention, talk about,
advertise etc. the means to do so.

this is rather silly, and I'm pretty unhappy about it. Please help me fight
this law in any way you can.

Thanks,
Florian
----------
From: *Marco Meile* <li...@natural-geek.org>
Date: Dec 2, 2007 8:15 PM
To: chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

Wir sollten kommendes Wochenende in den verschiedenen Orten wo wir uns
grad aufhalten, Unterschriften sammeln.

Ich schau das ich zum naechsten Chaostreff kommen kann, und schau das
wir in St.Gallen leute zum sammeln zusammentrommeln koennen.

Gruss Marco

PGP: 49F8 C29E 4F4E E438 BD69 0BCE D1DA 4B0C 7C32 C715

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GCS d-- s-:- a-- C++ UL+++ P-- L+++ E--- W++ N+ o K- w--
O-- M V- PS+++ PE++ Y+ PGP++ t 5 X++ R tv- b+ DI-- D+
G++ e+ h++ r y+
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

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Chaosli...@chaostreff.ch
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----------
From: *Norbert Bollow* <n...@bollow.ch>
Date: Dec 3, 2007 3:49 PM
To: pya...@gmail.com
Cc: chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

Florian <pya...@gmail.com> schrieb:
Doing a referendum at the current stage is IMO a tactically and
strategically very bad idea.  That would only have the effect of
strengthening the position of the pro-DRM lobby.

If you want to join us in the fight against DRM - great.

There are good ways for taking effective action, but in the current
situation, a referendum campaign is not one of them.

Greetings,
Norbert.

--
Norbert Bollow <n...@bollow.ch>                      http://Norbert.ch
President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG    http://SIUG.ch
Working on establishing a non-corrupt and
truly /open/ international standards organization  http://OpenISO.org
----------
From: *Florian Bösch* <pya...@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 3, 2007 4:12 PM
To: Norbert Bollow <n...@bollow.ch>
Cc: chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

I see your point, I really do. But what do you suggest amounts to take it
lying down that:

* our law gets written by the american content industry
* you can sneak harmful laws in under the radar
* you can get parties and consumer orginizations to line up nicely and trust
them not to vote against it (only two bloddy votes against), and not start a
referendum at all...

Well yes, you're right, maybe it's wrong, but it's the right kind of wrong.

Cheers,
Florian
----------
From: *Tonnerre LOMBARD* <tonne...@ffii.ch>
Date: Dec 3, 2007 4:18 PM
To: Florian Bösch <pya...@gmail.com>
Cc: Norbert Bollow <n...@bollow.ch>, chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

Salut,
That is wrong, it has actually been written by the European content mafia,
and has been released by the European Commission as «EUCD». It diffunded to
Switzerland with some more serious formulations.
Also wrong. It has been known for at least 2 years now, and people have
worked on this legislative proposal for ages. We even had public meetings
on this subjects, have published amendments, and other things.

I'm sorry if you slept through it all like all the others.
That is indeed true, but it is mostly caused (in my opinion) that we left
this item slip for too long and that our work power was very low. Plus some
other organizational problems in my opinion.

                               Tonnerre
----------
From: *Florian Bösch* <pya...@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 3, 2007 4:30 PM
To: Tonnerre LOMBARD <tonne...@ffii.ch>
Cc: Norbert Bollow <n...@bollow.ch>, chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

Well it doesn't really matter by which mafia we get screwed over does it?

Yes afterwards everybody's sorry, I admit it first of all, I didn't give a
damn because I (naively) thought
that _somebody_ will look after this and make some waves  before it gets
that serious.

Whatever caused it to be slipped trough so smoothly, it again doesn't
matter, it happend,
it's bad, it makes me feel sacked.

What're we going to do about it so we can sleep at night and look ourself
into the face in the mirror, now that another thing.

----------
From: *Tonnerre LOMBARD* <tonne...@ffii.ch>
Date: Dec 3, 2007 4:41 PM
To: Florian Bösch <pya...@gmail.com>
Cc: Norbert Bollow <n...@bollow.ch>, chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

Salut,
Yes, but they have only exercised their right to provide input to the
legislators. What you name as a systematic failure is indeed only our
own failure to react appropriately. The system itself did its work,
there is no obligation of the parliament to stop this type of legislation
if no or hardly any input has been provided.

(How should they even tell?)
Well, at least we should not start stupid referenda against it becuse we
are bound to fail right now, and if we do, we will give the content mafia
a great opportunity to test their legislation in court.

We are indeed taking action in this area, and everyone is welcome to help
us by joining the discussion on the FSF Europe mailing lists. However,
what I see as the real problem here is that there are indeed people who
do things like this petition without being in contact with us. It shows
that we still have a major problem of communication to solve.

                               Tonnerre
----------
From: *Florian Bösch* <pya...@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 3, 2007 4:45 PM
To: Tonnerre LOMBARD <tonne...@ffii.ch>

They will test it in court anyway, regardless of what we do. The only way to
get them not to test it in
court is not to let them pass the stupid law to begin with.

Now you're beeing unfair to yourself. I have a major problem of
communication to solve, and I'm working
on that right now. I mean to say, I'm not alright with this law beeing
passed, and I will do whatever is left for me to do against it, however
little that is.
Yes it's not very likely to succeed, granted, and I acknowledge that the
whole thing doesn't fit whatever was planned. But trying is all one can do.

----------
From: *Tonnerre LOMBARD* <tonne...@ffii.ch>
Date: Dec 3, 2007 4:53 PM
To: Florian Bösch <pya...@gmail.com>

Salut,
Yes, but what could be worse than a referendum pro this law? Or a failed
one? It is not an applicable subject right now. The public is not
sensibilized sufficiently.
Yes, but still we, the activists in .CH, do anything but we don't know
what the others are doing and thinking. We need to change that NOW.

                               Tonnerre
----------
From: *Norbert Bollow* <n...@bollow.ch>
Date: Dec 3, 2007 5:12 PM
To: pya...@gmail.com
Cc: chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

Not really.

The major battle was over Art 39a(4) which the content industry pushed
hard to get deleted from the draft law.

We won that battle.

If we had lost it, I would have started a referendum campaign long
ago.

For a time it looked like we might lose that battle, and I even got
to the point of registering a domain name that I thought would be
good for the referendum campaign in case it would be needed.

If you read the media release from the relevant meeting of the legal
affairs commission of the national council, you see that Mr Visher
(who chaired that commission) described the commission's resolution
as "referendumsfähig" (capable of surviving a refrendum) which
shows that he was very aware that there'd be a referendum with
reasonable chances of success if they had given in to the content
industry's demand to strike Art 39a(4).
If we had been able to recruit more lobbyists at the time when it
mattered, and/or if we had been better-organized, we might have been
able to achieve more than we did (I believe Tonnerre has some details
on that online somewhere), but sleeping through the main phases of the
political process and afterwards saying "oh, let's make a referendum"
is simply not going to help our side.  We need to act in such ways
that we will be politically taken seriously at the time of the next
conflict.

Please join at least one of the organizations which are active in
lobbying (FFII, Digitale Allment, SIUG) so that such important topics
will never again sneak by under your radar, and let us work together on
campaigns that have a reasonable chance of achieving something positive.
----------
From: *Florian Bösch* <pya...@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 3, 2007 5:14 PM
To: Norbert Bollow <n...@bollow.ch>
Cc: chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

I'm aware that Abs 4 is generally considered an escape clause, but it's
completely moot.

What will you do with your right to circumvent copy protection measures if
you can't obtain
a programm to do so because it's illegal for everybody to give you one?

the content industry only gave you this because they _know_ the article is
so paradoxial and open to interpretation that whoever has power to hold the
argument up in court wins by default.
----------
From: *Tonnerre LOMBARD* <tonne...@ffii.ch>
Date: Dec 3, 2007 8:05 PM
To: Florian Bösch <pya...@gmail.com>
Cc: Norbert Bollow <n...@bollow.ch>, chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

Salut, Florian,
Nevertheless we got the best we could under the given conditions. Maybe
in a few years we will be strong anough to make another copyright revision.
Under the current public awareness there is nothing we could win with a
referendum. But we could indeed lose what we have achieved so far.

Please don't forget that this is a trend. Maybe we will be able to abolish
in a number of years in favor of something better. For the time being we
have to live with what we got.

                               Tonnerre
----------
From: *Florian Bösch* <pya...@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 3, 2007 8:17 PM
To: Tonnerre LOMBARD <tonne...@ffii.ch>

Hi,

I think your reasoning is flawed. There's 4 different outcomes.

1) No action: The law comes into effect.
2) Referendum does not succeed: The law comes into effect.
3) Referendum does succeed but the Law is still approved by the people: The
law comes into effect.
4) Referendum succeeds and the Law is struk down

Since you prefer 1 you shouldn't be concerned about 2 and 3. You're
concerned about 4, extremely unlikely as it is.
So if we _manage_ to strike that law down this time, do you really think a
worse law will have it easier? If people show
as much awareness as to strike a law down they don't like already, are they
going to let it pass when it's much worse? I honestly don't think that's a
real danger.

Cheers,
Florian
----------
From: *Florian Bösch* <pya...@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 3, 2007 8:19 PM
To: Tonnerre LOMBARD <tonne...@ffii.ch>
Cc: Norbert Bollow <n...@bollow.ch>, chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

Hi, (sorry for duplicating it, but forgot to reply to all) :)Cheers,
Florian

----------
From: *Tonnerre LOMBARD* <tonne...@ffii.ch>
Date: Dec 3, 2007 8:34 PM
To: Florian Bösch <pya...@gmail.com>
Cc: Norbert Bollow <n...@bollow.ch>, chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

Salut,
Not necessarily. What you have to consider is the future. We should never
leave burned ground. The worst we could possibly get is a copyright
revision which is approved by the swiss citizens. Also, imagine what
happens if we send the legal proposal back to the drawing board now,
and it is redrafted without the provisions we reached, and then it is
passed because we are burned out by the current actions and not in
top form anymore.

Currently, the awareness is way too low to win this case. Most of you
were not even aware of the EUCD trap which was hidden in the omission
of the word "public" in various articles talking about exclusive rights.
We are not currently in the position for such a task.

We can get the referendum or we can leave things as they are, either
way I think it is safe to say that the best we can get is what we have
right now.

Even worse, we will be known as people who are counter productive.
Referenda are not really a productive thing to do because you cannot
contribute, you can only throw things away. This way we will never be
entrusted to model the copyright of the future.

                               Tonnerre
----------
From: *Florian Bösch* <pya...@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 3, 2007 9:19 PM
To: Tonnerre LOMBARD <tonne...@ffii.ch>

In every strongfelt decision there's an element of irrationality.
It's ultimately a question weather you will do the right thing because it's
the
right thing to do, or if you choose to be less stubborn and afflicted with
principles
and wait for a better day.

I think your choice is great, I admire the patience and strategy of it. I
just couldn't
make your choice of moderation and preservation.
----------
From: *Tonnerre LOMBARD* <tonne...@ffii.ch>
Date: Dec 3, 2007 9:37 PM
To: Florian Bösch <pya...@gmail.com>

Salut,
Without this I could never do a second campaign. You have to consider every
step you take very carefully if you do lobbying, which is what a lot of
people don't understand when they send parts of dead animals to
parliamentarians. (Which has been done during the software patent debate.
There was nothing more damaging to our campaign in all of that time.)

                               Tonnerre
----------
From: *Norbert Bollow* <n...@bollow.ch>
Date: Dec 4, 2007 12:58 AM
To: pya...@gmail.com
Cc: chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

That's not true.  It's actually very valuable:

1. Abs 4 makes reverse engineering of DRM systems legal, due to the
  explicit privisions in the Swiss copyright law allowing reverse
  engineering.

2. For DRM systems that are in active use and offered for use to the
  general public, reverse engineering cannot possibly be effectively
  prevented.

3. Abs 4 again makes it legal to include free software (that applies
  what has been learned about the DRM system by reverse engineering)
  which enables the intended use of DRM-encumbered data (and not
  directly anything else) e.g. in the computers that are sold as
  part of the FreieComputer.ch project.

4. Abs 4 again makes it legal for anyone who gets a copy of that
  source code to modify it for any legal purposes.  Based on 3. above,
  this is now something that even novice programmers are able to
  do.
----------
From: *Florian Bösch* <pya...@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 4, 2007 9:11 AM
To: Norbert Bollow <n...@bollow.ch>
Cc: chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

I see how your point 1, 2 and 4 are allowed. I just don't see how you read 3
into it.

I'm going out on a limb of course, but I would guess that nowhere the law
specially
protects distribution or advertising of copy protection circumventing
technology.

However Artikle 39 severly limits the right to distribute or advertise copy
protection
circumvention technology.

Hence my conclusion that Abs 4 is moot, since it may allow you do create and
use
copy protection circumvention technology, but it makes it impossible to
distribute
or advertise.

See it from another point of view: If your interpretation was right, Abs 1,
2 an 3 of the law would
be essentially pointless, but they're the main body of Article 39. That's...
a bit hard to believe.
----------
From: *Norbert Bollow* <n...@bollow.ch>
Date: Dec 4, 2007 12:35 PM
To: pya...@gmail.com
Cc: chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

Florian Bösch <pya...@gmail.com> wrote in response to an email from
Tonnerre:
There can be no doubt that if this copyright law revision fails due to
a referendum, another attempt will be made.  Even if objectively the
passage about the WIPO internet agreements in the EFTA contracts is
totally laughable, it's unfortunately being taken seriously in Swiss
political circles.  And if there's another round of copyright law
revision, you can expect the film producer, music publisher and media
corporations to not repeat the same mistakes that they made this time,
and to in addition commit significantly more financial resources to
the lobbying battle.  In my opinion, it would be foolish in the
extreme to expect them to again represent their interests as weakly as
they did this time.

One danger is that our political opponents might jump on the bandwagon
and support your referendum (possibly indirectly, by launching a
referendum campaign of their own) because they figure that they'll be
able to get a worse law passed if this one fails.

Apart from that, the only way in which your referendum could possibly
succeed is if the referendum campaign is not taken seriously at all,
and either completely ignored or responded to very poorly by the
pro-DRM interests.  Again that kind of mistake would certainly not be
repeated if contrary to all expectations the referendum succeeds,
and in a few years we'd then have to fight another referendum battle
against a much worse pro-DRM law.
----------
From: *Florian Bösch* <pya...@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 4, 2007 12:40 PM
To: Norbert Bollow <n...@bollow.ch>
Cc: chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

See there's a fallacy in this line of argument.
1) you try to predict a future that is uncertain (instead of the future that
would be certain)
2) Backing away from a battle now because it means fighting more battles in
the future is no good way to win anything, now or in the future.

----------
From: *Tonnerre LOMBARD* <tonne...@ffii.ch>
Date: Dec 4, 2007 12:55 PM
To: chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

Salut,
Sometimes the future is not hard to predict. For example, if you just fell
off the top of a high building, you would have to be George Bush in order
to ask for your situation not to be judged prematurely.
No, we back away from a box of Pandorra because we know that if we open
it right now, unprepared, we will end up having less than we have right
now.

But I think discussing this further is pointless. You are invited to join
our task forces in order to avoid not knowing about such problems in the
future, but I think there is no reason to continue arguing.

                               Tonnerre

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----------
From: *Tonnerre LOMBARD* <tonne...@ffii.ch>
Date: Dec 4, 2007 1:02 PM
To: chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

Salut,
I should say, if you want solution to the copyright revision problem, it
must be sought in a long term strategy. This is the only way via which you
can reach a sustainble solution.

                               Tonnerre

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----------
From: *Florian Bösch* <pya...@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 4, 2007 1:23 PM
To: no-swiss-dmca@googlegroups.com

Just to let you know what the ffii.ch feels.

_______________________________________________

----------
From: *Norbert Bollow* <n...@bollow.ch>
Date: Dec 4, 2007 2:01 PM
To: pya...@gmail.com
Cc: chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

I assure you that I'm fighting the good fight.  Very intensively.

From my perspective, the choice to be made at any given time is not
about whether to fight or not, but rather about which front we're
going to be fighting on right now and in the near future.

Concerning this decision, I choose to follow the advice of the Bible [1],
which is to make contacts among those who are essentially on our side
and who know and understand what is going on, and to listen to what
they say.

Greetings,
Norbert.

[1] see e.g. Proverbs 24:5+6 "A wise man has great power, and a man of
knowledge increases strength; for waging war you need guidance and for
victory many advisers."
----------
From: *Florian Bösch* <pya...@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 4, 2007 2:15 PM
To: Norbert Bollow <n...@bollow.ch>

Nevertheless it's a fact that:
- This law gets passed and we have _no_ way to get rid of it.
- The strongest form of disagreement still open to a citizen right now is a
Referendum

You are supposed to represent me, the worried students that write me, the
people who now flock to the mailinglist and offer their help with anything
they can.

And you are right, there is nothing wise or measured about any of this.
We're young, unpolitical, worried and out of control.
Living a digital life in our "democracy" makes us criminals everyday by
doing nothing wrong, we don't fight wars with a content mafia, we don't open
or close fronts, we're the insurrections of common sense in a world that was
isn't ours, but we are supposed to inherit it.
----------
From: *Florian Bösch* <pya...@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 4, 2007 2:19 PM
To: Norbert Bollow <n...@bollow.ch>
Cc: chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

(sorry for double posting robert, again)
----------
From: *Tonnerre LOMBARD* <tonne...@ffii.ch>
Date: Dec 4, 2007 2:33 PM
To: Florian Bösch <pya...@gmail.com>
Cc: Norbert Bollow <n...@bollow.ch>, chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

Salut, Florian,
That's not true. Art. 39b, for example, establishes an expert commission
which has to assess the impact of the law. If this commission finds
enough problems with the law, it could possibly be revised, and at that
point we will have a lot more at hand than just a philosophical "We
don't like it".
"When all you (seem to) have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."?
I'm afraid that we have no obligation to represent you, but we are doing
our best to do it nevertheless.

We need sustainable solutions, not quick, immediate suicide. If what you
want is a fast shot which kills you immediately afterwards, just for the
sake of shooting, I'm sure Klaus-Heiner Lehne has some tips for you on
how to do a «Schrotschuss mit Zufallscharakter». It won't help your
position on the long term though.

Erik Josefsson once compared this rather harshly to solutions for having
warm in the night. You can pee into the bed, which will give you a warm
sensation immediately but it is not a sustainable solution. I hope that
this parallel makes it clear to you why we do not prefer the approach
of doing whatever appears handy at first glance, just for the hell of it.

                               Tonnerre
----------
From: *Florian Bösch* <pya...@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 4, 2007 2:39 PM
To: Tonnerre LOMBARD <tonne...@ffii.ch>
Cc: Norbert Bollow <n...@bollow.ch>, chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

It's fine you don't want to befuddle yourself with anything as rash as
voicing your opinion. It's not however something that should by any means
bind me to do the same.
----------
From: *Tonnerre LOMBARD* <tonne...@ffii.ch>
Date: Dec 4, 2007 2:45 PM
To: Florian Bösch <pya...@gmail.com>
Cc: Norbert Bollow <n...@bollow.ch>, chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

Salut, Florian,
That is indeed true, however, I would prefer it if you would help us to
find and establish a sustainable solution, rather than to discuss with
us why we should support the referendum when we outlined that it would
be a rather bad idea to do so.

I will repeat this once more: this is not our last chance to influence
the copyright. There will be more revisions. And if you want to improve
the copyright of the future, join our working group and help us to do
so. We will be glad to help you take this way to sustainability.

                               Tonnerre
----------
From: *Florian Bösch* <pya...@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 4, 2007 2:51 PM
To: Tonnerre LOMBARD <tonne...@ffii.ch>

And I am fully sympathetic and apreciating the fact that you don't want me
to voice
my opinion.
My interpretation of bad idea however varies, widely, and I think both our
arguments
have respective merits and drawbacks, it's not for me to choose yours over
mine or mine over
yours. You do what you do, and I do what I do, and we both sleep sound at
night.

 Yes I do want sustainable change in the future, but I don't really see how
short term action excludes long term sustainability. What you and me do is
not
exclusive.
 ----------
From: *Tonnerre LOMBARD* <tonne...@ffii.ch>
Date: Dec 4, 2007 3:38 PM
To: Florian Bösch <pya...@gmail.com>

Salut,
I think we already explained that. It would both harm our position and
play the law into the hands of those who want stronger provisions, so
it would end up with less than we have right now. As a short form.

What I wonder, in your model, what are the plans for the time after the
referendum? Once the current law is rejected, what would you do?

Please explain it concisely and clearly and I will not object if it is
sensible. Otherwise, I would really prefer if we could decide to work
together in the working group instead of having this stupid discussion
on unrelated mailing lists.

                               Tonnerre
----------
From: *Norbert Bollow* <n...@bollow.ch>
Date: Dec 4, 2007 3:50 PM
To: tonne...@ffii.ch
Cc: pya...@gmail.com, chaosli...@chaostreff.ch

I think that comment was probably intended to be addressed at me,
and I think there it has some validity, in that when I accepted the
role of president of SIUG as part of that role I probably accepted
some degree of responsibility for representing not only the best
interests of internet users from what I believe is the perspective
of wisdom, but also the perspective of those who choose to describe
themselves as "young, unpolitical, worried and out of control".

I would have greatly preferred if I had been able to convince Florian
to choose a more politically wise course of action, but since there
seems to be absolutely no chance of success with regard to that, I've
intiated internally in SIUG the process that will probably lead to
SIUG making a public statement which is supportive of Florian's
campaign.

However I'm confident that Florian's strategy of positioning himself
as "young, unpolitical, worried and out of control" is likely to have
some positive effect.

Greetings,
Norbert.
----------
From: *Florian Bösch* <pya...@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 4, 2007 4:09 PM
To: Tonnerre LOMBARD <tonne...@ffii.ch>

- If the law is rejected it means raised awareness of the people for the
issue, this is good. We can all use that.
- It is a fact that this law was passed almost without resistance by our
elected representatives, they can ill afford to do such a thing a second
time if the public didn't agree the first time around.
- The raised awareness can be used as a watchful eye, guiding the drafting
of the next law with the damokles sword of a referendum.
- If the next law is indeed worse, arguing against it will be incredibly
simple. "Swiss DMCA rejected by the people, now worse, passed yet again!"
etc. pp

Yes I concede there's some dangers along the road should we unexpectedly
succeed with the Referendum, but winning the vote against the law isn't one
of them.

Cheers,
Florian

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From: *Tonnerre LOMBARD* <tonne...@ffii.ch>
Date: Dec 4, 2007 7:44 PM
To: Florian Bösch <pya...@gmail.com>

Salut,
Why would such a rejection automatically make the people a) aware of
the problematic and b) wise enough to decide when it will have been
solved?

How does awareness help?
Why should they not be able to afford it?
Do you really think that after a referendum, people would still care
enough if the problem recurred?
This assumes that you get mainstream press coverage. If you succeed to
achieve that, I will buy you a pizza (at least!).
Yes, because you are counting way too much on the public. Public awareness
and public pressure are unheard of in Switzerland since the creation of
the Canton Jura. The public is also the wrong partner to win legal
disputes. The public opinion is not very productive, it can only permit or
refuse something, not improve it.

And in order to create public awareness, do you personally have the funds
for all the information material you should hand out to the people.
Otherwise, you can forget the fuss about awareness anyway.

And before you really do this, you should get a clear idea of what you're
going to do if the referendum indeed succeeds to abolish the law. The law
has been made from an international treaty which has been ratified in the
pages immediately preceeding it (if you look at the Feuille Fédérale),
so it will have to be implemented in some way or other. So you will have
to prepare for a new session. And don't expect the "public opinion" to
do any lobbying work, that never works.

If you have an answer to all these problems which is not based on belief
in supreme intervention of public pressure, I will support your proposal.
Otherwise you are just spoiling our chances of revising the revision.

                               Tonnerre
----------
From: *Florian Bösch* <pya...@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 4, 2007 8:05 PM
To: Tonnerre LOMBARD <tonne...@ffii.ch>

Of course since you don't believe in public preassure that's a moot point.
You know the theory goes that our elected representatives represent us.
If the law gets rejected by the people, they obvious have been doing little
representing and something else, whatever that would be. Last I looked we
still
where a democracy, so this should matter.

No they wouldn't care automatically, but blocking a law once with a
referendum
shows that you can do it, and after all there _will_ then be more people
looking
at this then before, which cannot have no effect,  just because an effect
isn't quantifiable
doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Well, between now and friday evening I had a telephone interview with nzz
online, there'll be a podcast from
tagesanzeiger, Le Matin lausanne asked for an interview and a few other
smaller newspapers have asked. We did make the digg frontpage this time,
which matters in terms of exposure. It's not great, but considering the fact
that I have no clue how such things run and started friday doing anything,
it's not that bad either.
Next time will be different, of course, but the rules of the game don't
change.
I don't have an answer to any question. I do have no believe in supreme
intervention, either. But I believe we're living in a democracy. I believe
that this is a good thing. I believe it is important to express your opinion
about things you can not with a clear conciousness be silent about. I
believe my generation has grown up in a country that is alien to them, like
the internet is alien to the 50 somethings. I believe it is about time we
start changing things.

Cheers,
Florian

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From: *Tonnerre LOMBARD* <tonne...@ffii.ch>
Date: Dec 4, 2007 8:59 PM
To: Florian Bösch <pya...@gmail.com>

Salut,

As a side note, this is the last mail in this thread I am going to respond
to. It is a fact that you want to waste your time and waste our chances to
ambolish this legislation, but I would be even madder to waste my time
talking to you. That is a sad thing to discover, because I originally
thought that you were willing to help our causes (and that we could convince
you to cooperate with us).
That's just a matter of experience. This is not my first legislative
process I'm trying to influence, I have been doing this type of stuff
since 1998. And as a rule of thumb, we discovered that any time invested
in media campaigns aiming at something other than recruitment is lost
time.

We recruited quite a lot of people through Heise over time, but we never
won any votes with it.
Did that matter in the debate about data retention? Or in any other
surveilance related matters? No, it is and has always been rather
irrelevant.

The reasons for that are simple. Most people don't even know which
proposals their local parliamentarian voted for and what proposals
he or she brought in. They don't care, to them politics is just a
raise of blood pressure. They cannot make intellegible decisions on
who to elect. You can see that from the fact that votes are basically
flapping from election to election, because people keep trying this
and that party.

And then there are the people who believe in their party and elect it
as a matter of creed. These also don't care what they did, as long as
they're in their party.

Thus you cannot really expect that the parliamentarians will have to
face any consequences from not doing what their voters might have
wanted. The data retention legislation is a really good example, because
none of the lobbyists was in favor of it, it was won soleily through
internal lobbying by fedpol and SND.

There is no public conscience.
History shows that the number of activists declines for recurring issues
because of frustration ("They will repeat the process until we let it
slip"). Volunteer activists are not an infinitely available ressource,
there is a big burnout problem and due to increasing political
frustration which is also empowered by recurring actions is one of the
major contributors to it.

We all know that referenda can delay laws, there's no need to prove that.
This is not the first law being passed/revised and it certainly won't
be the last.
I'm talking about the action _after_ the referendum. This proposal _will_
return.
Yes, but there is no point in doing something just for doing something.
There is a saying that the road to hell is plastered with good intentions.
I know what your intentions are, but I also know that they will most likely
harm your and our aims. Thus I would have prefered to cooperate with you
on this issue, but apparently you're not interested in it. That is sad.

I will not officially support your referendum in the name of FFII, but I
will also not discourage people to sign it. Please be aware that you will
most likely win the referendum, and that then you're going to be standing
in front of a big question mark because the issue will not resolve itself.

Please don't be disappointed but I can't do more than that for you.

                               Tonnerre
----------
From: *Florian Bösch* <pya...@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 4, 2007 9:23 PM
To: Tonnerre LOMBARD <tonne...@ffii.ch>

I don't want to waste time, but it is a rather interesting thread.

But just one thing, how in hell are we _ever_ going to win that referendum?
We'd have to have the 50'000 signatures in the next two weeks all in one
place to even get close to a realistic
chance.

Cheers and big thanks for the interesting debate, I learned a lot (contrary
to what you might believe)

Florian