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Digital Advocacy Talk at Mesh

While there are great liveblogs and media coverage of my talk on digital advocacy at the Mesh Conference, I've posted a synced version of the presentation and an MP3 recording of the talk.  The talk owes a lot to Ethan Zuckerman's exceptional presentation on the same subject at the ETech conference earlier this year.  I begin with three stories – the experience of Fair Copyright for Canada, Stephen Taylor's challenge of a CBC report, and the Apple 1984 advertisement as a political mashup.  I then consider ten things that make digital advocacy effective:

  • organizing power
  • online and offline
  • mainstream media
  • educate
  • action
  • speed
  • digital tools
  • localized
  • government 2.0
  • general purpose sites

4 Comments

  1. Normal Human says:

    And this relates to normals how
    One must remember that we all are not lawyers.
    While i respect the angle of Mr. Geist, there does come a time when civil disobedience does not only become needed but necessary. Change is hard for many, and now we need change, just like USA does. Without this change we all will not only suffer , but all the so called industries that claim to need these things will too.

    There continued short sitedness will be there undoing.
    I say let em have this law and lets have the lawsuits begin. The lawsuits on 12 year olds, grand mothers, YOU , them , everyone.

    It is what they want.
    They do not want you to enjoy entertainment.
    After all they call you a \”consumer\” not a customer.
    Why?
    The customer is always right and you cannot be right…..

  2. Too Much Law = Abuse
    Civil disobedience is necessary, however, when you have obnoxious lawmaking which results in a plethora of unenforceable laws it lends itself to political abuse. In England they have so many of these \”petty\” laws that the general public consensus is that you \”choose which law you\’re going to break\” on a daily basis.

    This sort of situation is a tyrant\’s dream (even in a representative democracy) as enforcement can then be used as a political tool. Ask yourself: who is more likely to be investigated for their \”civil disobedience\” (i.e. violation of these petty laws)? A vocal supporter of the political party in power and their policies or a vocal critic? As a small example vocal political opponents of the Clinton administration in the US there were regularly selected for tax audits.

  3. Abuse
    we are victims not customers/consumers….victims god damn it!

  4. Anonymous says:

    WildHorse
    I have had an “unlimited” data card for several years. Recently I was contacted by bell telling me that I can only use 250 megabytes/month. I would like to know my rights and how can the promote an unlimited device with limitations? HELP!!!!!!