Hans Mestrum has posted a from-the-audience video (Windows Media) of my talk at Le Web 3. It’s twenty minutes of me supposedly on the topic “Blogging Our Way to Democracy.” It consists of several small riffs, loosely joined. And I don’t think I stick the landing. [Tags: leweb3 politics me_me_me vcasts]

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Le Web 3, which I thought was an outstanding event and a very good conference—great for networking and community, with excellent speakers trapped in a traditional conference framework—is now enmeshed in a controversy that confounds me.

If two of the three leading presidential candidates came to a US tech conference to talk for twenty minutes each about their Internet policies, it’d be considered a coup. At Le Web, however, some attendees feel cheated and betrayed.

In part, perhaps it’s because Le Web was a genuinely international conference. I happen to enjoy politics, so I was happy to hear from the French politicians (even one who I thought treated us like pommes de terre de couch). Others obviously don’t share my interests, so perhaps it felt to them as if two soccer stars bumped other speakers to promote their books. (But the candidates were talking about Internet policies, so the analogy isn’t exact.)

Some apparently resent the intrusion of the traditional media. They came in with the candidates, elbowed people aside, and left with the candidates. On the other hand, one of the candidates, and Loic, pushed back on them. Le slap across the media’s face.

Then there’s a personal layer. Loic Lemeur (Disclosure: I count Loic as a friend. Plus Le Web paid my plane and hotel expenses) has blogged in favor of one of the candidates. He was quite gracious to the other candidate, but some have accused Loic of inviting the candidates in order to advance his own career, and perhaps to advance his company’s interests. If you see no other value in having the candidates attend, then I suppose personal motivations become the best available explanation. And how could any of us not be tempted by the opportunity to be noticed by possible future presidents? But since the candidates’ appearances at the conference seemed to me so obviously a positive, I don’t need to resort to Loic’s inner motives.

None of this has been helped by the post-event conversation, much of it quite angry, and further fueled by an ill-tempered, late-night response from Loic, for which he quickly apologized. Frankly, the swirling path of anger is too exhausting and unpleasant for me to follow.

Finally, there’s the possiblity that there’s simply a cultural divide here, and I’m just not getting something. Perhaps there’s a subtext or a history. My own understanding—it may well be deficient but for now it’s all I have—leaves me feeling bad that a first-class event is being torn down for what I thought was a net (and Net) positive. [Tags: leweb3 loic_lemeur politics france]

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Zack Exley—Kerry’s Internet manager, co-organizer of the RootsCamp a couple of weeks ago, and co-organizer of the New Organizing Institute that’s putting young’uns into the field as political organizers—wants a revolution.

It’s not that he’s calling for the overthrow of the government or death to capitalism. In fact, what he’s really callling on us to do is to expand our vision past wondering whether we should have a single-payer health insurance or whether we should stop serving macaroni and cheese in school cafeterias. So, there are no specifics in his call, beyond a passing light reference to tri-lingual kids breathing fresh air. But, I know from having had dinner with him a week or so ago that he wants us to be thinking about how radically different the world can be now because of the confluence of historic factors. We can work far less. We can enjoy far more. We can do so much more good.

So, Zack is calling for a revolution in vision. I like it.

Hope is the new fear. [Tags: zack_exley politics]

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The conservative candidate for the presidency and Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, comes to address the conference. He talks quickly and I’m taking notes on the simultaneous translation, and not keeping up.

He begins by saying the Internet is important. He focuses on the need for France to catch up in Internet as a business opportunity and culture. The government should make the France a leader in Inteornet. It should have boosted things. The miracle is that we nevertheless have people like you, Loic, were able to invest in Internet despite the lag. The lag is also cultural because we did not build the tools for the Internet. We had a difficult debate on IP rights. I was very much in favor of protecting IP because there’s no creativity without protection. But law enforcement isn’t the only possibility. There are win-win solutions that I wish we had spent time devising. The Internet must be one of the four or five priorities of our R&D efforts. France recently set up several global centers of excellent in IT, but France is not investing in the Internet. We are last but one in the effect of the Internet in boosting our economy in Europe. We need e-government, Internet in education, in medicine. I want to invest in free sites for the public. We’re thinking of digitizing our archive. What is private must be respected but what is public must be genuinely public. I want broadband coverage. We should learn from what works in the US.(“That doesn’t mean there’s only one culture,” he quickly adds.)

I plan to restore investor confidence in our country. More accountable, more transparent. Greater confidence in employees. I want France to stop being the country that enriches Switzerland, Belgium the UK, putting to the edge those who want to make money. My message is simple: We need your capital, your intelligence in France. I want us to have a major higher education reform. Our young should be in the level playing field. Universities should be viewed as tax-exempt areas. Encourage young people to take patents. Tax breaks for young people creating companies.

Huge possibilities. Internet breaks down distances. It’s sort of university campus on a global level. Generates intelligence. Brings people closer together and can be an instrument of emancipation. I’m thinking of China. I’m thinking of poor countries. Anyone can disseminate their movies in place of Hollywood. Anyone can be a journalist. Anyone can post his goods. A new area of freedom of expression opens.

It’s a means of cultural diversity. It cannot be a single culture or economy. It must derive its creativity from the multiplication of small companies that innovate. Some become monopolies that inhibit innovation, and we must not that happens.

The dissemination of anti-Semitic information is not ascceptable. Not everything is permitted. I’m not afraid of the word “internet regulation.”

Internet makes school and education even more necessary because of the flow of knowledge that needs interpretation and assessment.

Let us make the new Internet continent the continent of new liberties, that includes rather than excludes. Let us make the Internet continent of the transmission of knowledge, and not the transmission of lies. The continent of sharing of cultures, not of the leveling of values. [Wow. Does he know he’s contradicting himself sentence after sentence?]

You have in your hands the liberty and progress of the world. Realize you must think of what others might do who do not share your values and ethics. The liberty the Internet serves must be that of universal rights. Internet with rules. Huge responsibility on your shoulders. The new citizen of the world is aware of his responsibility and his liberty is bound by values.

He leaves without any questions. And Esme Vos, who I am sitting next to, says Sarkozy speaks perfect English.

I feel like i’ve been lectured by a guy who has no actual understanding of the Internet. I don’t know about French politics, but personally, I sort of hated him. (This is not a well-grounded opinion.) [Tags: leweb3 france politics sarkozy]

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The panel on the future of broadcast seemed to me to have the right religion. They talk about control returning to the group formerly known as the audience, including control over schedule as well as content.

Now there’s a session on and by video bloggers. Vinvin of Bonjour America is a popular favorite with the crowd; the clips are amusing. Xolo.com shows a cllip of some vlogging they did for Mini Cooper, over which they were given complete creative control. He shows a clip from Invisible Children. Mobuzz.tv showed a Rocketboom-y clip, complete with an Amanda-ish post-ironic presenter. anil of Mobuzz doesn’t think TV is dead.

The panel is cut short because one of France’s presidential candidates, François Bayrou (UDF), is here. “I came because the blogosphere is very important to me, espcially as a candidate not necessarily supported by the powerful traditional media.” (laughter) There is the danger, he says, that political control might be taken by industrial forces, especially the media. “The only space for completely free speech is now the Internet.” He says the Dean campaign showed how powerful a force it can be. And, he says, the Internet embodies a new vision of society. It enables citizens to be not merely pasive recipients of information but to be active providers. [I don’t know French politics or where he stands on issues, but he is very likable.]

Now he’s joined on stage by one of the most important journalists in France (Jean-Pierre Something…sorry). Le Web 3 is being taken over by the need to break out of broadcast strictures. in other words, it’s turning into a media circus, as the media say.

The Important Journalist begins what seems to be a longish question, but he’s interrupted by the moderator who instead takes questions from the audience, to the applause of the audience. Ah, media hostility? What doesn’t it deserve?

Q: You say we should all work together, but what’s the relationship between the leaders and the lead at this point?
A: Our French crisis is deeper than any crisis in the past 50 years. It needs a new answer with some very precise reforms. The old right wing is divided and weak, as is the old left wing. I will build support among democrats among both wings. So, what kind of relationship? Control by citizens. It’s very important to me that citizens can control and lead, and today we have the tools to control, the tools to lead. The Internet is one of these tools. Yesterday we didn’t have the tools to control because radio and television are not tools to control and understand, not tools to teach.

Q: Why are politicians so clear about the importance of the Internet but the Internet is absent from education?
A: I was among the first to stress the importance of technology in education, in abook in 1990. But the tech may not be sophisticated enough yet. E.g., translation software isn’t quite there. And I believe in the crucial imjportance of a one-to-one human relationship between teacher and student; tech will never be able to replace that mysterious relationships that makes something unclear become clear.

The Important Journalist does not get to ask a question. But he comments briefly afterwards, saying the old and new media should work together. [Stage two of grieving: Bargaining.] [Tags: tv television broadcast politics udp Francois_bayrou howard_dean vlog]

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The Washington Post asked four guys whether Bush is the worst president in history. It’s a silly question, of course, but elicited really interesting responses: Foner Brinkley Cannato Greenberg.

Brinkley is my favorite of these. He concludes that although Bush is probably not the worst, “He has joined Hoover as a case study on how not to be president.”

I am certainly not convinced W is the worst ever, if only because “worst” is such a rich term with so many possible axes (and axes to grind). So, I’ve put together my own list to weigh the pros and cons, in no particular order…

[Tags: bush politics]

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Edgar Bronfman, head of the fourth largest music company, acknowledged in an interview that his kids have downloaded music without paying. He declined to say how he dealt with them. As a commenter (iburl) puts it:

So the concequences for 14 year old Susie Q. Public downloading some stupid song that she could have legally taped off of the radio are that her parents and her a put through a protracted form of legal extortion, resulting in the depletion of their family’s life savings and plunged into debt, perhaps permanently effecting the child’s future education. The concequences for this guy… he has to give a stern lecture. Now we know why everyone loves record company weasels!

Here’s a basic moral test: If you think a punishment is unfair if applied to you or your kids, then it’s unfair if applied to someone else under the same circumstances. That goes for Bronfman, for drug-addicted right-wing radio hosts, and for certain sitting presidents who favor locking up coke users for ungodly lengths of time. [Tags: music justice bronfman bush hypocrites smug_bastards]

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David Isenberg has an excellent post on the implication (based, alas, on a misuse of something I’d blogged) that because we may not know exactly and precisely how Net neutrality will be applied in every instance, we therefore do not know what Net neutrality is. To use David’s implied analogy, we don’t know in every instance ahead of time whether a killing was a murder, we’re quite clear about what murder means. [Tags: net_neutrality david_isenberg wikipedia ]

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Ack. Doc just pointed out to me that I’m cited in the second paragraph of the current Wikipedia article on Net neutrality. Here’s how the article begins:

Network neutrality is a general principle of Internet regulation which states that a network is neutral if it satisfies all application needs equally. For example, a perfectly neutral network would not give better service to some web sites than others, and it is argued that it would likewise not favor web-surfing or blogging over online gaming or Voice over IP. It is also guided by the assumption that the public good is maximized by limiting Internet innovation to the edges, where things are often easier to change, rather than the core of the network.

However, it has no completely precise, agreed-upon meaning. One prominent net neutrality advocate, Cluetrain Manifesto author David Weinberger, expresses frustration at his attempts to reach a precise understanding: …I recently spent a day—sponsored by an activist think tank—with a dozen people who understand Net tech deeply, going through exactly which of the 496 permutations would constitute a violation of Net neutrality. Caching packets within a particular application area but not according to source? Caching application-based non-cached application-based packets? Saying “Hi” to all passing packets, but adding, “Howya doin’?” to only the ones you like? Patting all packets on the back but refusing to buy some lunch? The whole thing makes my brain hurt.[1]

Here’s what I just posted to the article’sdiscussion page:

FWIW, I agree that the paragraph that cites me should be edited out. It is unencyclopedic. It also is used to make a point that it in fact does not support. The fact that it’s challenging to work out the precise application of NN in some instances doesn’t mean that the meaning of the principle itself is unclear. It’s tough to figure out exactly how to apply, say, affirmative action, gay rights, or the end-to-end principle, but it’d be highly misleading to start an article on them by saying the principles are unclear. It’s the nature of principles to require thought, argument and politics in their application. So, I hope someone removes that paragraph.

(Here‘s my original post.) [Tags: net_neutrality wikipedia politics]

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Global Voices runs (and translates) Mohammed Hisham’s post urging Egyptians to see George Clooney’s Good Night and Good Luck because, he says, it describes Egypt today. It’s apparently a movie with unfortunately wide application… [Tags: gv egypt]

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