Received:	8/25/03 8:32:02 PM
From:	florian schneider <fls@kein.org> Add to People Section
To:	prep-l@geneva03.org
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Subject:	[prep-l] freedom of movement?
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hi you all! in addition to the backlog which may not be utlimately clear, i don't want to miss to make my position in the debate as transparent as possible: i was and i will be insisting on a link between the struggles for freedom of movement and freedom of communication (which is, btw, no binary at all). and i strongly suggest to put this link in the center of a call for the mobilization to geneva in december. i am deeply convinced that politically it would be a desaster to limit the outrange of our activities to critizising exclusively so-called "Intellectual Property" (IP). even the official WSIS program is not that naive to reduce their notion of an information society to what is happening on the clientside of computer networking. i am vehemently against downgrading the ongoing struggles around globalization and informatization to a somehow moralistic notion of "sharing". in contrary any intervention in geneva in december, which doesn't want to fall back behind some crucial experiences of the 90ies, has to draw a line from the resistance of illegal immigrant workforce exploited in the hardware manufacturing of border regions to the virtualization of border surveillance in the postmodern controls societies, from the campaign against the sueing of users of file-sharing tools to the struggle for generic medicines, from the self-organizing of immaterial workers in the affect-industries to the fights of sans-papiers who will clean up the conference halls, after all the deleguees were meeting. these issues did not come through the backdoor, but have been mentioned clearly from the very beginning, i.e. in the first invitation to the meeting in april http://www.geneva03.org/moin.cgi/AprilMeeting or were stated explicetely in the demonstration on may 29th in geneva (which btw, was not only taking place infront of the WIPO headquarter, as it was displayed in the first drafts, but also in front of the WTO and the international organization for migration, IOM). i am afraid during the chat this afternoon one could get the impression that this is merely a flamewar between me and jamie king. but i think, the issues are very essential and highly decisive: do we really surpress one of the constitutive contradicitions of the late capitalism (as it has been pointed out in many researches, pamphlets and campaigns), are we ignoring the realities of a vaste number of people who are directly and indirectly subjected to what is called information society -- just in favor of some conceptual ease or laziness? i assume nobody here really doubts on the legitimacy of global citizenship and global freedom of movement as such. may i quote again the relevant passage of the latest version of the call: http://www.geneva03.org/moin.cgi/GenevaCall1 > This means leaving the false dichotomy between "real" and > "virtual" behind, and both shaping and subverting the > technologies that are now part of the everyday life of more > and more people. > It's about refusing and resisting both, war and info war, border > management and digital rights management, exploitation of > immaterial work and informalized labor. > It's about freedom of movement and freedom of communication > which we intend to bring into existence for every human being > on this globe BY ANY MEANS NETWORKING and ask you for your opinion? this part of the whole text may not be as perfect as it should be, but it makes only sense, to work on it furtheron, if we can find a broader agreement. looking forward to your replies florian

Received:	8/25/03 11:50:03 PM
From:	"Armin Medosch" <armin@easynet.co.uk> Add to People Section
To:	prep-l@geneva03.org
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Subject:	Re: [prep-l] freedom of movement?
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hi all, i have so far been a lurker on this list, followed it with great interest and not been saying much. therefore i feel i have not much right to suddenly intervene in this debate. on the other hand i feel i should. to my opinion there is very clearly a link between freedom of communication and freedom of movement. just replace 'free' with 'unfree' and it becomes clearer. nation states and the EU are (and have been) creating an information architecture of control mainly directed against immigrants, with databases and now soon, biometric identity cards. 'virtual border' means that the border is everywhere. privileged westerners just dont feel it. if you dont belong to that class, soon any underground station, any shopping mall, any security camera becomes a border to cross. with new technologies - and i am not talking about a far away future, but things right around the next corner - people can get tagged and located wherever they are. the elements of this information architecture, however, are secret, totally intransparent, supported by laws which are made in closed sessions by the council of ministers, and so on and so forth. the freedom of movement, supposedly one of the goals of the EU (forgive me if i go on too much about the EU, its just the place where i live) has already been taken from us. remember the travel bans at the time of Genoa? it was first tested on so called football hooligans. in England people with prior convictions for hooliganism could not go to the european championship in Netherlands/Belgium in 2000. they had to bring their passports to the local police station and report there regularly. there was no big public outcry, especially not in the left-liberal media, probably because there is a consensus on side of the liberal elite that the people affected by those travel bans are stupid and potentially violent proletarians who deserve no better. the next step was the proposition of similar laws to restrict freedom of movement for so called anti-globalisation protesters. berlusconi and schroeder seemed to agree on this one, at least. again, demonisation of 'violent protesters' in mainstream media makes it relatively easy to introduce such laws that impose travel bans on political activists during certain events (g8-etc-). as far as i know such legislation has not been implemented yet, but again, the information architecture (swapping of databases of national secret services) is being put in place and travel bans can be introduced even without proper legislation, simply because 'they' can, because they have the means to do it. on the other hand, intellectual property issues, especially in the field of software development, seems to become a non-issue. its a battle that has already been won by the free software movement. instead of wasting energies by opposing monopolies and legislation people have started two decades ago to develop alternatives, make their own worlds. there is a growing body of work in the software field that is under the GPL and similar licences. this is giving us operating systems, internet servers, wikis, web-logs and many things more. all the important tools for online communication and also applications for your desktop exist under free licences, already. sure, in the area of pharmaceuticals, industrial processes, patents, copyright on ideas, there are still some dangers, but in regard to software, no, i can only repeat, that struggle has more or less already been won. we dont need to duplicate that effort. there are highly sophisticated conferences and people and places where this work is going on. in regard to WSIS i am struggling to find a formula that is as easy and simple to understand as 'freedom of communication' or 'freedom of movement'. i think one thing that is important is the right to self- representation. how many tv programs has anyone seen made by migrants about migrants? by people from the so called third world (sorry, i am not aware of a more pc term, but it would be good to have one) about the 'third world'? everything is going through filters, through the western capitals, through elites with a western mindset. the communication flows are still very onesided, from the peripheries to the centres and back. i feel strongly that this should be adressed. it also crosses over into other areas such as participatory media, literacy, media literacy and so on. it touches basic issue such as alphabetism and education. in the end we cannot seperate those issues. without money, no schools, without good state schools only private elite schools, etc. etc. at the end of the day those things cannot be seperated. any approach that focuses on information technology only- or on other 'immaterial' areas such as IP - is doomed. what is interesting is to make the connections between those areas. part of the problem with the new economy was that it totally excluded the conditions of labour. it was presented as a new world where machines magically would increase productivity and make everybody in the (west/north/first) richer. the people who were assembling the chips and laying the cables and those who made the food for them and those who drove the minibuses and so on and so forth were considered a non-issue. IT was glorified. by focusing on the immaterial issues of the e-conomy we just repeat that mistake. so, labour rights in the new economy are a big issue, a real WSIS issue. but we are living in a world where even more basic human rights are being trampled on. the right to food, to have a shelter, clean water, clothes, even the most basic right, the right to live, are not universally considered these days (to put it very mildly). does anyone think that IP will solve all those issues? it is important to reconnect those things, to ground the internet experience in real world experience (and hey, i dont see real/virtual as a binary, its all part of the same bad world). the world summit on the information society should first and foremost serve the purpose of dismissing the notion of the information society. its a labourers society, a people's society. issues of gender, race, class, rich/poor, western/non, and so on wont go away, just because we are too lazy to figure out the connections between those things and the seemingly more abstract issues on the information/media front (which have been conveniently theorized and get media attention). the beautiful thing about free software is that it is about political freedom, not about getting something 'gratis' (for free). WSIS should be about reconnecting to the ideas of liberation struggles - thinking about people like Patrice Lumumba and Frantz Fanon. It is becoming an all or nothing thing. Yes, we have certain freedoms in the west. those freedoms are endangered and far from universal, but we can discuss such things, as we do, fairly openly on a list like this, for example. our freedom is not another export model (like another superior technology). it exists in a context where there is a lot of unfreedom all around. our freedom is tainted by this inequality. WSIS is an opportunity to adress global issues. we should not let it slip and behave just like another bunch of nice white middle class people who think that we have swallowed wisdom by the spoonful and want to wash ourselves clean by doing something good for our consciousness. all the best armin

Received:	8/26/03 12:33:34 PM
From:	"osfa_wewearbuildings" <osfa@wewearbuildings.cc> Add to People Section
To:	prep-l@geneva03.org
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Subject:	RE: Re: [prep-l] freedom of movement?
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hi, i am strongly in favour of connecting freedom of communication and freedom of movement in our call. i will try to briefly expose the reasons for it with two arguments that i hope that may add to those already expressed in the list: In todays network society - a name proposed by Castells to define our contemporary world, 1996- everything is connected, sometimes in a very direct cause effect way, and sometimes in a more rhizomatic way, however relevant. Highlighting some connections or some other connections, has therefore a political dimension. Not highlighting them, of course, has a political dimension too. Hegemonic powers, of course, only promote those interpretations / connections that reproduce and enhance their position. We should highlight those that question and weaken power, defining this way which is the battlefield where the fight will take place. Castells, - which might be even a little old now -, proposes that network society is the result of a particular assemblage of information society [ICT based] and global capitalism. Of course, we have come to realize that we could/can device other assemblages of ICTs and globalization that are emancipatory rather than disenfranchising, as they tend to be right now; i think this is what the anti-wsis is about [?] Following Castells, and maybe his discourse enhanced by the zapatistas, i can envisage a more or less loose thread or group of threads connecting information, knowledge, flows and migrations, that could be something like this: global war for markets / flexible production / centralization of command and management / decentralization of production and consumption / destruction of traditional economies / maquilas-sweatshops / agribusiness / media / global permanent war / migration / info-war on migration and dissidents / selective control of flows / info social control / criminalization of migrants and dissidents / exploitation of migrant labor... Another perspective would be that proposed by Negri and the Italian Operaista school. According to them, the driving power towards social networking, centrality of immaterial labor and globalization, isn´t capital, states and their technological driven transformations, but the multitude´s social cooperation, colletive intellect and ilimited desires. Capital is mainly trying to keep up with the initiative of the multitude: as it is quite obvious in the case of IP. Another thread can be put together from this perspective, also connecting freedom of knowledge and freedom of movement: the multitude´s expansive character, excess / social cooperation, networking, communication / ilimited and multiple desires / centrality of immaterial work / collective intellect / multiplying forms of being in space and time / continuous antagonic flows of knowledge, people, affects / globalization / ... hegemonic powers attempting to capture the collective intellect and social cooperation / hegemonic powers attempting to capture social driven flows. hope this could be of some help. in solidarity _ osfa love and peace, always better with cyborgs!