First, I'd like to express my gratitude once again to everyone who made the trek to Cambridge last Friday. I, for one, found the meeting extremely helpful. I'm sorry that so many of you were stuck here so long by the snow.
Next, thanks so much to John Parres and David Ulevitch for putting the acs.pholist together. Yes, I did sense that there was a good deal of interest among the participants in the meeting last Friday in the possibility of continuing the discussion online. I hope that's still true.
The format suggested by John seems just right to me. To keep the discussion manageable, it seems sensible to limit participation (though not lurking) to people interested in thinking and talking about the best possible design for either a compulsory or a voluntary alternative compensation system. That doesn't mean that, to participate, you have to believe that an acs is the best possible way of handling the distribution of digital media. Some of the attendees at the session last Friday clearly do not believe that. Nor does it mean (obviously) that criticism of specific features of acs proposals is out of bounds. (Such a rule would make for an awfully dull and unhelpful exchange.) Rather, it means that, when engaging in the discussion, participants would strive to help construct the best possible acs, rather than to demonstrate that all acs's are in some way fatally defective, inevitably inferior to digital rights management, etc.
It seems great to start with the set of folks who came to Harvard for the workshop. But there are several people with lots of expertise and interest in this area who either couldn't attend or who have only recently learned of the venture. I, for one, would be happy to have them involved in the discussion -- provided that they agree to abide by John's guideline. My own impulse would be to leave to John the management of admission.
A last procedural suggestion: The Berkman Center would be happy to house on our server an index page, containing links to current drafts of the many papers pertaining to acs's now in circulation. (We're also happy to provide space for the papers themselves, if anyone wants to post them here.) Interventions in the acs@pholist discussion could then link, when appropriate, to more extended analyses in the papers.
I very much hope this gets off the ground.
Terry Fisher
John Parres wrote:
First post! ;)
You are receiving this email because you were an invited participant in the
Berkman Center for Internet & Society's Alternative Compensation Systems for
Digital Media workshop. I consider it an honor and privilege to have
participated with you in such an historic gathering.
As Terry Fisher mentioned on Friday there is a real desire to maintain our
dialog and momentum so we have created this new, focused email list:
acs@xxxxxxxxxxxx
We took the liberty of subscribing you to this new discussion list. If you
would rather not be subscribed or you would rather be subscribed under a
different address please contact me directly to make the adjustments.
At one point we considered conducting the discussions on the Pho list but
the 'tragedy of the commons' factor led us to create a new list dedicated
specifically to those who earnestly seek alternative compensation systems in
the face of P2P anarchy. The core group of subscribers, like yourself, are
able to post to the ACS list unmoderated. Others are welcome to subscribe
as well but their contributions will either be unmoderated or moderated by
myself and hopefully others on the list (any volunteers? please? ;) to
maintain focus. Those who do not wish to work towards alternative
compensation systems need not apply :) This structure is an experiment so
of course we can modify it at any time.
All messages to the list will have [acs] added to the subject line for your
filtering convenience.
A big shout of thanks goes out to David Ulevitch of www.everydns.com for
taking the time out from his busy final's week schedule to set up hosting
and administration for this list.
Again, it was a real thrill to share ideas with so many of you last week and
I look forward to our continued debates and discussions online.
JP
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