[Values-ethics] Re: Talking about Values, Ethics and Netiquette - difference between 1/1 e-mails and mailing lists - tech exclusion

[Claude Almansi]

Dr Ebbeler

Could you please explain why it is OK to send "a lot of e-mails (the same
[I] received)" in Bcc and it is not OK for me to put Geert Lovink in Bcc,
please? "you are sending them" is a crass exageration, Geert's address was -
and is again - the only one in Bcc, because worms use personal addresses as
spoofed senders.

So maybe your contacts all have broadband  and aren't bothered, as you say.
I'm not personally bothered, I have broadband too.

But  there is a big difference between sending an e-mail to someone you know
and sending an e-mail to a mailing list, where you don't know the members or
their condition of access to ICT. You see, there are still people who don't
have broadband access in the world: WSIS 1 was about this, and this is a
WSIS-connected list with people who don't. But of course, the e-mail with
the big attachments was your first one to this list so you didn't know that,
you didn't know that the big, proprietary-format  attachment problem had
already been discussed here - with Richard M. Stallman raising the issue.

Do a Google search for netiquette mailing lists attachments, please, you
will find hundreds of pages about the subject, for instance:

>From Erasmus Student Network guidelines at
http://www.helsinki.fi/hyy/esn/netiquette.html (site of the Students' Union
at the University of Helsinki)

"What you should not send

(...)


  a.. Pictures or attachments. Large attachments tend to fill up people's
mailboxes which causes them to be unable to receive more e-mails. Moreover
some people still use a slow connection to read their e-mail and downloading
pictures and other large attachments can be annoying and moreover cost time
and money for them. If you want to send a photograph, a map, etc. to the
list, please put it on a web page instead, and only write the URL in your
mail.
   (...)"
.Or from  "Vrolijk kerstfeest???" (well, we are approaching carnaval now
too) by Jan Van Hee:
http://www.khbo.be/cgi-bin/display?list=mathlist&msg=88 :

"Stuur nooit ongevraagd attachments naar een mailinglist die niets met de
zaak te maken hebben. Als je een zinvol attachment wil meesturen zorg er dan
voor dat het niet te groot is (sommige mailing lists hanteren een grens van
50 KB) en zorg ervoor dat zoveel mogelijk mensen het kunnen lezen (gebruik
een zo universeel mogelijk formaat, bvb. liever tekst dan Word-document). "

Big attachments ARE a no no on mailing-lists - yours were way above the 50kb
limit mentioned by Jan Van Hee in the latter quotation. Please also note his
advice about prefering plain text to Word documents if you want to reach as
many people as possible. And again, what was the point of the 722KB if you
could have conveyed the same content in 4KB by linking to your site?

A music project through the internet is interesting per se. But sound files
still require broadband, even in streaming. 30 million people (quoting your
info) viewing www.46664.com is an exhilerating event, granted, but it was
not for people on dial-up. You mention research and development several
times in your project description, true. But developping lighter music
formats to make it available to people on slow connexion is not mentioned in
your "The role and responsibilities of the VRO Foundation to establish World
Visions Festivals" section (p. 4 of your Word file), or anywhere else in
your documents. Sure, the project is still in progress, but your blitheful
ignoring this aspect in your e-mail communication does not point to it being
included in your agenda.

Other puzzling elements in this section:

III b, the part about legal firms to develop the legal infrastructure,
including the copyright protection. Such a development has been going on for
years now in the Creative Commons project, which you don't mention.

III d Internet providers offering free use of internet access - Many ISPs in
por countries would have difficulties doing so. And I can't see the
connexion with IBM hosting the communities - this is great, but it still
doesn't solve the question of accessing communities, and of uploading music
there if the connexion infrastructure is poor.

And further down, page 5, point 7c, in the section on "The role and
responsibilities of "Individuals" and the "Communities" points to a very
limited range of this free use:  "They must use the Internet provider’s
subscription exclusively for the purpose for which it is intended (i.e. to
transfer information to and from the platform and their personal computer /
workstation)"

III e  "  Application software houses: To provide the community members with
licensed copies of the application software for use through-out the
competition. (We are assuming 5 to 20 sets per community)" This clashes with
your "Open-Source" declaration in your powerpoint. And what about after the
competition? Why not rather encourage the present development of
non-proprietary music software?

I'll stop here. Had you shown respect of people's internet access conditions
in your first e-mail to this list (and others), these points would have been
less worrying. A budget of 3'470'000 euros for a development project is
reasonable. But what development and for whom is actually involved in your
project remains unclear.

sincerely

Claude Almansi