A contract for the web

Update: they indeed a final version of the contract. I received this e-mail:

Dear Lander Meeusen,

Many thanks for your email. It's actually quite timely. We are moving to the next phase, which is having the stakeholders endorse the final document.

Over the past year, we have turned the 9 founding principles into a global plan of action to protect a free and open web that is truly for everyone.

We’ll launch the Contract for the Web at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Berlin on November 26. But we wanted to share it with you early and ask, will you be one of the first stakeholders to endorse the Contract?

By endorsing the Contract for the Web, you agree to support the initiative, promote its objectives, and uphold its principles and clauses. You'll be expected to demonstrate your organization’s progress towards implementation and ongoing adherence to the Contract to remain a named endorser. Read the Contract and endorse on behalf of your organisation by November 19th.

If you’re planning to be at IGF 2019 in Berlin, we’d love you to join us to celebrate at our launch event. Please RSVP by November 19th to be added to the guestlist. Space is very limited, hence this invitation in non-transferrable.

We are glad to help, so please let us know if you have any comments or questions!

Kind regards,
Juan

Too bad all the links fell away:
https://contractfortheweb.org/contractfinal/
https://mailchi.mp/webfoundation/endorsethecontract

The only tricky part is this little sentence: "You'll be expected to demonstrate your organization’s progress towards implementation and ongoing adherence to the Contract to remain a named endorser."

This sounds like paperwork to me. And I'm under the impression that the Pirates, although intellecualy and ideologically very strong, don't have a lot of time, manpower and energy for this kind of efforts.

I would go through and sign it, though. the worst thing that can happen in my opinion, is that if at any point in the future we don't have time for the 'paperwork', we stop being an official endorser.

1. If we sign as PPBE (which atm I'd be for), we have to fill in a form[1]. We'll need to decide what to fill in and who fills it in. The one I think would create most discussion would be "Why does your organisation support the Contract for the Web?".
2. The contract is ready as far as I understand and will be presented 26/11
3. As @vanecx said, it's not sure if they allow political groups to sign it (although I do see at least one congresman and one minister).

From this, I propose the following:
1. We mail [email protected] from a general ppbe mailaddress (I guess we use [email protected] because that is the one listed on our website).
2. We think about what we want to add to the form. For this I made https://pad.parley.be/p/contract-for-the-web
3. We don't really have a good way of making such general decisions yet, but one thing we wanted to experiment with was a combination of consensus both on loomio as well as the labs. I feel we have it here, but it hasn't been brought up on the lab. Since the contract wont be presented before 26/11 I think it's not a bad idea to wait until then and talk about it next lab of 30/11 (I made the suggestion on the pad https://pad.parley.be/p/Piratelab2019-November )

We don't have to wait for that to send the mail asking if we can join as a political party, so the question then is who can and will sent it?

Edit: I notice on the form that there is no choice for a political party. There is however an "On behalf of my civil society organisation". Can we use that? (We should ask them in the mail.) Especially since ppbe isn't a registered party anyhow.

[1] https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfo3NnhGhg64vlcQmu3xrgIZYeAlc1u6mkUzUQOlRDtO3lXpw/viewform
[2] https://contractfortheweb.org/2019/11/06/how-public-voices-shaped-the-contract-for-the-web/

They allow political groups to sign, I asked them and they replied clearly yes (apparently it was implied in their answer to Lander, but I read it again now and it wasn't clear in my opinion).


[FR] Ils permettent aux groupes politiques de signer, je leur ai demandé et ils ont répondu clairement oui (apparemment c'était déjà dit dans leur réponse à Lander, mais je l'ai relue maintenant et ce n'était pas explicite à mon avis).

About my issue with signing a Contract that Facebook and Google also signed, there was this, published last days : https://www.liberation.fr/debats/2019/12/02/on-ne-sauvera-pas-le-web-en-dinant-avec-ses-assassins_1766848

"On attendait du fondateur de la promesse émancipatrice du Web autre chose qu’une molle ambition contractuelle qui serve de clause de bonne conscience à des entreprises prédatrices de nos libertés et de nos droits. On attendait de Tim Berners-Lee qu’il continue de désigner les coupables, et non qu’il leur fournisse un alibi commode. Car tant que la table des négociations se trouvera dans la salle des marchés, le Web continuera de mourir."

Quick DeepL translation : "We expected from the founder of the emancipatory promise of the Web something other than a soft contractual ambition that serves as a clause of good conscience for companies predatory of our freedoms and rights. Tim Berners-Lee was expected to continue to point the finger at the perpetrators, not to provide them with a convenient alibi. Because as long as the negociation table is in the trading room, the Web will continue to die"

About the organizations that already signed : I don't see EDRI, Quadrature du Net, Framasoft, Free Software Foundation... actually, except the Open Knowledge Foundation, I'd say I never heard of any of the other digital rights organizations listed. So do they just sign for their own visibility? There is even a "bike-hostel.info" signature... :/

(just a detail for @Lander Meeusen : GitHub has been bought by Microsoft a few months ago, but even before this buying it was already a problem by being a centralized place with lot of power, so I wouldn't put them on our side of the issue)

Thanks for this useful info, Renaud! I guess it's not a good idea to sign then.

Quadrature du Net and Framasoft aren't big organisations either. They may be well known in France, but for most people they aren't known. I also don't think they have the resources to snoop the web for such projects and make a founded decision on whether to support or not. FSF is all about software freedom, so unless the contract explicitly states that online service providers should have 100% FLOSS stacks, I don't see them sign this as this.

Two that I do know are EFF, which I do believer is an organisation we can trust and duckduckgo about whom I'm conflicted, but at least give benefit of the doubt.

Anyhow, I don't think we should blow of a project just because some problematic actors claim to support it. Microsoft says they "love open source", that doesn't mean we should stop supporting floss. I do agree that it can be seen as red flags.

For me important questions are:

1. Do we agree with the intent of the project (this can be the intent that has been made explicit, or a hidden agenda we believe the project may have)

2. Do we agree with how the project is run

3. Do we agree with the content of the contract

I think the article you shared is about either intent (was the project intended to bring FB and such on board) or how it's run (if this wasn't the intent, why are they there). And even then we should see if we agree with the sentiment of the article or not.

I'll see if I can find the time this weekend to look deeper into it, but ATM I'm still leaning to signing it.

https://ga.pp-international.net/t/endorsement-of-contract-for-the-web/184

Pirate Parties International just agreed this afternoon during their General Assembly to endorse the Contract for the Web.

That seems like something worth sharing on the facebook page and othrr channels. We could share he news with a link to this discussion so people can see how he belgian piratez think about it. Good publicity for this forum as well, which is less accessible than fb. (Or at least less accessed.)