[CIMC-working] Re: some non-capitalist tech coops

[Doug Morris]

Ian,

I agree that we want to become more self-reliant economically.

I disagree about the "outsourcing" part of our work for stuff where there 
are sympatico folks doing things well.  Indeed, Indymedia would not have 
arisen with out that.  And in its media creations, indymedia is the work of 
coallitions.  Some indymedia locals are as much networks of various local 
efforts as entities. We are a network entity.  It is good to build on that 
as a strength.

Another aspect of this is people and groups of people tend to specialize in 
what they are good at. They gravitate to what the can do and like to 
do.  This isn't a law of capitalism.  It is what people in most complex 
societies -- capitalist, socialist, anarchist, cooperative, whatever -- 
tend to do.

We can all share in the grunt work and divy up fund raising responsibility 
(even to the point of dues), but according to our own means.

It wasn't practical for indymedia volunteers or the indymedia network with 
little money to own space and machines to have servers at first.  So, 
mutual aid took care of that.  Perhaps we can do that soon or 
eventually.  But, if there are an abundance of sympatico server groups than 
perhaps it is not a top priority.  Don't know about that.

Since there are tech coops out there that offer the space and somehow 
bandwidth, good.

Anyway, I disagree completely about buffers and outsourcing.

It takes a great deal of work to create a cooperative sector.

We are not just doing media.  We are trying to fight capitalism. It is good 
to support and create more and more types of ways to do this.

There is rarely a great deal of autonomy in complicated projects.

There are so many type of efforts: economic, hard tech, soft tech, legal, 
editorial, strategic (even).
If various groups taken on part of the burden of managing the interface 
with capital -- with techs de-profit-capitalizing/cooperativizing tech 
stuff and fund raisers de-capitalizing/cooperativizing finance and indy 
doing its part by working with open publishing (de-capitalizing media) -- 
then we become stronger together, not weaker apart.

In other words, we don't need to stamp the indymedia brand on everything 
and build everything in house that we do.  But, i believe it is very very 
good to encourage all sorts of semi-autonomous affiliated projects.

Part of the TMF fund is to help arts and film indymedia type projects get 
started.  If the funds were just in indy, it would be hard to see the space 
for that.  If we have overlap of efforts amongst diverse interests, we can 
include and support more and more types of efforts.  If we look for only 
internal effort for our interests, gradually, perhaps sooner than later, we 
will not be supporting change and adaptation and growth of diversity and 
cooperation.

As for bandwidth, in and where that is directly from corporations, I agree 
that we eventually should pay for that based on our donations.  Even 
Speakeasy is very different (hopefully) from Soros and Ford. And we want to 
be moving away from that reliance.

If isps are giving some indy a free ride, the small the better and the more 
distance from indy process the better, until we have our own funds.

Best, Doug

At 04:39 PM 12/16/02 -0600, you wrote:
>On Monday, December 16, 2002, at 01:40 PM, Doug Morris wrote:
>>Below are three tech coops that offer bandwidth and server space.
>
>Servers can be acquired fairly easily and require no long-term 
>relationship, but bandwidth always costs money -- someday that cost will 
>probably become marginal, but not yet.  We could buy our bandwidth at 
>normal rates -- the cost is not prohibitive -- but it is an ongoing 
>cost.  A tech coop is just a way of moving that cost to someone else, who 
>needs to be funded in some manner.  Many of them are funded through 
>sympathetic companies -- most of them small (with the exception of LoudEye 
>and perhaps SpeakEasy).  Even a single person could reasonably fund the 
>server...
>
>But the network servers are *the* most essential resource for Indymedia 
>(that you pay money for).  Tech coops are useful and good, but in the long 
>term I don't feel they are an appropriate solution for Indymedia as a 
>whole -- shifting the most fundamental service (the website) to outside 
>volunteers is not appropriate for Indymedia or the outside volunteers.
>
>Creating a principled resolution about accepting funds, such that 
>Indymedia won't have the resources to handle its own shit, seems 
>irresponsible.  It's just a way of outsourcing the corrupting 
>influences.  Maybe that outsourcing is a way of creating a firewall -- but 
>it also reduces reliability.  And I'm suspicious of all outsourcing ;)
>
>We need to balance purity with effectiveness -- not just with respect to 
>tech funding, but in general.  Yes, there's risks of becoming coopted -- 
>but that doesn't mean we should avoid all problematic situations.  I think 
>this is a challenge we need to step up to, not avoid.
>
>
>I'm not saying that you do feel we should avoid such situations, or that 
>you're advocating an excessively strict standard; I just wanted to make 
>note of my perspective on the situation.
>
>
>   Ian
>