First IRC Meeting
Agenda
Note: most of the notes on this page were taken by
GarconDuMonde at the time of the meeting. Some of it has been edited slightly, or the order changed around, to try and make it make sense. The
chat log was reformatted and
attached by
AlsteR.
Concerns about financial plan
- there had been one concern mentioned on imc-communication about the plan to pay photographers in the global south.... people who were working on the book wanted to address that and any other questions or concerns people had.
- first, about the plan to pay photographers in the global south (everyone else contributing and working on the book will be unpaid)
- <@srcnyc-nyc> that was a suggestion from someone who worked on We Are Everywhere ... but we will check with photographers in the global south and ask if they would want that: so the issue of payment of contributors is one issue we'd like to hear from folks on ... and any other concerns folks have otherwise about the financial plan
- the financial plan can also be found at the indybook website: http://www.indybook.org
- the rest of the profits from the book will go to global
- < boud> just stating the obvious: it seems to me that noone from the Global South is participating in this meeting, so we risk being a little patronising by definition
- <@srcnyc-nyc> shall we table that then and take it up during the next chat on Wednesday?
- < boud> well, it seems to me a rather fundamental point - maybe we should rather a point to the agenda on how to get real participation from the global south
- process point: there is a second irc chat scheduled for wednesday, at a time which is better for many non-europe imcs. i think we might have a better idea of global south participation after that meeting
- it is early in the morning (on sunday!!) for ppl in latin america. also, in general, participation from asian imcs is not so highh in global politics.
- <@Alster> much that i like the idea of a book being written on indymedia, i really like this idea, i'm feeling uncomfortable with the idea that indymedia gets money from a commercial project. this is, however, assuming this will not be a book representing itself as coming from Indymedia but being a work of a third party, a discussion indymedia will need to have by itself, i.e. whether it's acceptable to take such donations and what it means if indymedia does it. I'm undecided about this myself.
- < boud> (i assume by "any more thoughts on this topic?" we're still doing the participation topic?) So i have a communication question - does indybook now have a publicly archived mailing list, which is the tradition of indymedia which global south imc's know about and use as a practical communication tool? IMHO having a publicly archived mailing list would help for global south people who may not use irc or not like irc to participate. On http://www.indybook.org/ i don't see one.
- <@srcnyc-nyc> in response to boud, we plan to use a wiki for editing and communication, but whether or not to also have a listserv as well was something we wanted to discuss
- < r7> [from uk/sheffield btw] info... indybook has an email a/c with aktivix but no list. one can be set up in short order if required with aktivix, tho this could as easily be done on list.indy i suppose[end]
- <@Anna-berlin> i think it needs to be made clearer who feels responsible for the book. if it's just a group of people in nyc who would like to have as much participataion by the network as possible, that's one thing. if it's meant to be a book by the network it's quite different. in both cases i think it will be useful (for the idea of wanting to have a good book) to have as many ppl from the south participate as possible. at the moment i don't see many people wanting to participate in general. a list only makes sense if there is a discussion going on, in my view, so i think outreach is important, but you can't force people.... participation always is a problem with indymedia, so i think to complain about lacking process also involves getting involved more.
- <@srcnyc-nyc> in response to Anna, it's the first description rather than the second that you stated ... we are not presenting this book as "by indymedia"
- <@sarsnic-houston> I tend to be kinda uptight about people getting money, but if none of the people putting it together are getting paid and the money is going to projects, I really don't know what there is to object to at all. Of course I understand that the photographers in the global south could be paid, but that doesn't exactly bother me either.
- <@gdm> i agree with sarsnic-houston about the money issue - i think it's ok if no one is getting paid and money is going to the indymedia network. also no probs for helping ppl with expensive stuff in places without much money, i.e. photographers in global south.
- <@Anna-berlin> i think it needs to be made clearer who feels responsible for the book. if it's just a group of people in nyc who would like to have as much participataion by the network as possible, that's one thing. if it's meant to be a book by the network it's quite different. in both cases i think it will be useful (for the idea of wanting to have a good book) to have as many ppl from the south participate as possible. at the moment i don't see many people wanting to participate in general. a list only makes sense if there is a discussion going on, in my view, so i think outreach is important, but you can't force people.... participation always is a problem with indymedia, so i think to complain about lacking process also involves getting involved more.
- <@Alster> i should be more concrete about what i said about the donation to indymedia: i'm wondering whether Indymedia will be considered supporting the product of a comemrcial publishing house and whether there will be an impression of indymedia getting this money with strings attached in the general public. as i said, this will need to be discussed by indymedia, not by this external project we're discussing about here. but this point of view may be of interest to the book editors, too, thus i'm mentioning it here. for a side note: please keep in mind that we need to use different measures for projects which are part of indymedia dn those which are not. Indymedia cannot influence how external projects work other than by goodwill, this also includes the way they work.
- <@john-nyc> there are two ways indymedia would be getting money from this project: one is royalties: i.e. so much money for each copy sold. we will also be able to get as many copies at cost as we want and are planning to ship them out to other imc's to use as a fundraiser fo themeselves. so, this isn't like a foundation that is just handing us money.
- <@sarsnic-houston> I feel that the distinction between whether this is a book purporting to speak fro the whole network or just one group is a false one. We are all indymedia and all and there is going to be some tendency for all of our projects to take on a role of constantly redefining indymedia. Like the "I the Movie" didn't need to ask permission to call it "I". That being said, there will be things that NYC could do in the production of the book or in it's contracts that might piss some people off. But the idea that they should need to wait for some kinda clearance on every such detail is unworkable, so the alternative is that they go for it, and hopefully do a good job and remain open to feedback through a transparent and participatory process.
There was some agreement about this final statement by sarsnic-houston from several of the people in the meeting, although Alster subsequently disagreed:
- <@Alster> this is actually in transition from agenda items 1 to 2. I think we do need to make a distinction between external and internal, because if this project is considered part of indymedia, then I think Indymedia should actually very much ask for it to be a free (both money and licensing) book, as well as using a stricly participatory process, not a top-down few people editorial process, and not increasing the riches of a commercial publishing house. other than that, if it's external, Indymedia clearly cannot ask for that.
There was then some clarification:
- <@john-nyc> this is an external project that has been initiated by people who are active in indymedia and are reaching out to other imcistas to contribute in what we intend to be a participaory and transparent process. i can say more about the editorial process when we get to that part of the agenda.
Update on licensing issues
disinfo, the prospective publisher is offering the following:
- individual authors and photogs keep rights to their work.
- overall work belongs to disinfo. parts of the PDF will go up on-line but not all.
- clarification: Disinfo is open to having a low resolution version with security set to no printing, editing, extracting, etc. available for free online ... so folks could read it online at least. we asked about using a CC license and they said no.
- disinfo will have publishing rights in us, uk and ireland.
- will license in other countries, fees would vary.
- in global south, it would be nominal.
- half of any licensing fees would come back to us and would of course be routed back
there was some discussion about this: disinfo owning the license is not necessarily a problem - e.g. if it's GPL or GFDL or CC-SA-BY or CC-SA-BY-NC then it's free, no matter who "owns" it and i don't think this is an easy discussion - it might be worth it discussing with indymedia people who have already started thinking and discussing this type of question and we could benefit from that collective discussion that has already started:
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-license . However, concerns have already been raised:
the indybook people have talked to a few other U.S. publishers like South End and New Press and none were as interested in doing this project as disinfo is. Reviewing the discussion on imc-license is a good idea. but another part of the discussion goes beyond the question of which kind of license. and that do the benefits of doing such a project outweigh the negatives.
unfortunately, there is some empathy with the following statement from boud:
i think that any local indymedia publishing a book and distributing pdf files which are locked against even printing - "security set to no printing, editing, extracting, etc." would make indymedia look ridiculously hypocritical. publishing a book under a non-free licence is bad enough, but publishing pdf's which are locked against editing would IMHO suggest that we are destroying our own culture ... at the same time, i do understand the motivation of ny to do something and make compromises - please don't get me wrong - it's just a question of what compromises we need to make and whether or not they are acceptable
Chanders then asked if the thoughts expressed by
GarconDuMonde and
BouD were representative of the indymedia network in general, to which
GarconDuMonde responded with an "emphatic *yes*" - stating that experience with working with people in oceania (sydney and melbourne primarily) portland, uk, france, and brasil would support this, as well as possibly people from other parts of latin america and europe and even the USA and canada. Main.Alster then said: "I think that if people do not clearly consider this project to be external, which would allow it for being commercial, and they have not already supported it when they were not really clear about its nature, there will be a lot of objection (or worse). This or that way, I don't think you'll be making many friends within Indymedia by following this project under the current terms,but that's my personal view and I may well be wrong. The question is whether you care."
And Susan replied that she did care!
BouD suggested that if the indybook people look for evidence on books that have already been physically published and distributed under free licences, you might have a better chance persuading disinfo - or simply use one of the publishers who have
already published and distributed a book (or books) under free licences:
Many publishers have already done this, chances are that disinfo simply do not
know that they can still make a profit while publishing under a free licence, so this sort of compromise might have a better chance of being accepted in the network.
One of the problems has been than the way this has always been presented (or framed) is: the only option for having a cc liscense is to self-publish, or at least, will be to go with a publishing sitution that will get the book less notice than it needs and deserves. That's not necessarily true, and if people can come up with third options, maybe after the chat, or whatever, that would be helpful.
Final thought was that we should take the licensing discussion to imc-license and then after Wednesday's chat when we have more feedback, and the nyc folks will get together and discuss and report back ...
Using a Twiki for input and editing process
Thoughts about proposed book outline
(Suggestions for changes in structure, additional sections/articles)
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GarconDuMonde - 15 Oct 2006
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AlsteR - 15 Oct 2006
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