Brandon wrote:
There should be a political "arm" of PG, but have it be a seperate entity. Such entity falls under IRS section 527 (which is why they're called 527 groups). This would protect the tax-exmpt 501(c)3 status of PG.
As always, Wikipedia has the low-down: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/527_group
Thanks for looking up the particulars on the IRS section dealing with political advocacy groups.
Thoughts?
I think there should not be a political 'arm' of PG, but rather a general organization devoted to protecting *and* expanding the public domain. PG people can certainly help get it going but it should strive for inclusion -- to not make it an "inhouse" PG affair, but to involve many organizations and advocates. That will increase the effectiveness of the organization in its political goals. It's sort of a "united we stand, divided we fall" way of doing things. I think studying the NRA and seeing why they are very successful will give ideas as to how to proceed. For example, a lot of their power base comes from the millions of ordinary people who are members. This indicates that a public domain (and less onerous copyright law) advocacy group needs to somehow mobilize the ordinary person to join (this is the flaw, for example, with EFF -- they don't provide incentives for large numbers of ordinary people to join their cause -- only the digiteratti join EFF.) A couple years ago I reserved the domain "dmua.org" (which recently expired) with the crazy idea of creating a "Digital Media User's Association", which would unite the ordinary Joe who listens to CDs, watches HDTV and digital tv, plays computer games, etc., etc. with certain electronic industry partners who wish no DMCA and no legal restrictions on technology. If DMUA could provide real perks to members for joining (like discounts on certain equipment, coupons to get media, whatever is doable), many would simply join to get the perks. But the act of joining, even by inactive members, does help build the power base of the organization and provide some real $$$ to lobby in Congress, like the NRA does. When an organization has a million members, and quite a few million dollars in the bank, it does get the attention of many politicos. But a "PG Advocacy Group", say with one thousand members and maybe $50,000 in the bank won't get anywhere -- it's like spitting in the wind. Now I'm not saying a DMUA with 5 million members will succeed in rolling back copyright laws and defanging the DMCA, but it certainly stands a better chance than a few small, elite organizations that represent no more than a few thousand people in total. Jon