Why organizations turn statist.

At 09:44 AM 9/11/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote:
> A wonderful idea, Stephan! You might try contacting 
> EFF to see if a German branch exists 


The EFF is ultimately a business lobby group, because it gets
most of its funding from businesses.  It is therefore potentially
subject to the same corruption as other business lobbies.

Business lobby groups are intermediaries, and therefore serve
two masters, both the politicians and the businessmen, not one
master.  Frequently they serve the interests of the politicians
at the expense of their donors, at the expense of the goals
that the lobby group is supposed to pursue.

Suppose for example you have a lobby group that
represents the widget industry.

On the one hand, the CEO of General Widgets might ring them up 
and say: "We are being trashed by these great japanese widgets, 
and unless something is done about it we might have to reduce 
prices or improve quality", and the lobby organization has a 
little chat with some tame politicians about the terrible 
suffering the Japanese are inflicting on American workers.   
That is the way lobby groups are supposed to work, but seldom do.

On the other hand sometimes the politician (or a
gofer on his staff), rings the lobby and says:  "I need a
million dollars fast:  What potential political action gets the
chairman of General Widgets waking up in a cold sweat in the
middle of the night?  What could destroy the widget industry, 
and yet be politically feasible?"  Shortly thereafter the 
lobbyist has a little chat with chairman of General Widgets 
about forthcoming legislation.  The lobby group
gets a big bag of money, some of which it passes on to
the politician, and the threatened legislation evaporates 
until the next election.

To be a successful lobby group, the EFF needs to get its
fingerprints on legislation, so that it can make threats and
promises to businessmen in the computer industry.

Thus the EFF's best interests as an organization are contrary
to our desires and contrary to the announced aims of the 
organization.  Legislation, any legislation, is in their 
interests and legislation, any legislation is against our 
interests.

Our interests, and the EFF's interest are opposed with no
apparent mutual good possible.

Now it is possible that the EFF is virtuously pursuing its
supposed goals, rather than its practical interests.  We should
consider the available evidence in order to infer what it is
in fact up to.

According to Dave Barry the word "politics" derives
from the Greek "poly" meaning many, and "ticks"
meaning small disgusting bloodsucking parasites.

In order to be well funded, the EFF needs government
regulation of the net.  The kind of regulation that would be
most effective in ensuring large donations would be regulation
that compels internet businessmen to lobby the government.
for example regulations that make impossible, inconsistent, and
contradictory requirements on those who provide software,
hardware, and services, for example a demand that big
companies police the net in ways that even governments would
find extremely difficult, such as the British child porn
crackdown, or legislation which if properly crafted would 
have the effect of giving some businessmen a monopoly of 
some aspect of the net, and putting other businessmen out 
of business,  for example legislation that requires case 
by case approval of software, or legislation that compels
the businessman to invade his customers privacy, and also
prohibits him from invading that privacy unless he has a
waiver issued by the state.
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
              				|  
We have the right to defend ourselves	|   http://www.jim.com/jamesd/
and our property, because of the kind	|  
of animals that we are. True law	|   James A. Donald
derives from this right, not from the	|  
arbitrary power of the state.		|   jamesd@echeque.com

James A. Donald typed:
> The EFF is ultimately a business lobby group, because it gets
> most of its funding from businesses.  

Faulty logic.  A does not follow from B.  I have news for you: Most 
nonprofits get most of their funding from businesses.  In some cases, 
corporations offer funding because the organization exists to represent 
their corporate donors (such things are variously called industry 
associations, trade groups, and in some cases PACs.) Others give to 
organizations that are centered on a written mission statement, rather 
than on the flexible interests of the donors, and the give because it 1) 
improves their market or customer base in various ways, and 2) allows 
them to claim philanthropy and charity, which are marketable traits.

There's a very large difference between organizations that exist to 
represent the interests of members and donors, whatever those interests 
happen to be at the moment, and organizations with specific mission 
statements. It doesn't do well to confuse the two.  It's the difference 
between the Business Software Alliance and the Free Software Foundation,
between the Telephone Association of America and Voters' Telecom Watch.

> It is therefore potentially
> subject to the same corruption as other business lobbies.

This is assumption not fact.  The facts are that EFF accepts donations 
from companies that support our mission. If they expect to get some kind 
of trade association style "representation" for that, they are deluded.
What they get is our work to help the Net grow and flourish, which is 
good for their business. That's the perq they get. Nothing else. 

If you don't believe this, I invite you to ask all of the RBOCs whether 
they give us money any more. They used to, but didn't listen and expected 
us to act like their PAC, particularly on Digital Telephony. Instead of 
fighting for RBOCs' "rights" we fought for YOURS. They don't fund us any 
more. We don't care.  Our mission doesn't bend to attract funders. It's 
stayed the same since day one.  You may think EFF didn't do a good job on 
DigTel, but we didn't do Bell Atlantic's dance, that's for sure. And why 
don't you ask our boardmember Tim O'Reilly whether EFF has asked him to 
stop combatting MicroSoft attempts to license how many IP connections 
people can make with NT Server, because it hurts our chances of getting 
money from Bill Gates.
 
EFF has certainly be *pressured* to behave like a PAC, and this was one 
of our many reasons for leaving DC. It became increasingly difficult to 
fund a DC-based organization that was *not* a membership-controlled 
lobbying organization.  We're betting on one thing: That the software, 
online commerce, and related industries, centered on Silicon Valley, can be
dragged into the politics that are threatening to stomp them.  It's been 
observed multiple times by several commentators that some key differences 
between this industry and older industries are 1) lack of philanthropy - 
almost no charitable organization support is seen from the computer 
industry at all, and 2) participation in the political process - there 
really hasn't been much action of any kind from the computer industry in 
legislative or legal issues in general, only on specific stuff like their
particular intellectual property rights, even though some of the 
political issues cropping up on the Hill threaten their entire market.
Most analysis concludes that these two lacking features are due to youth 
of the industry, and lack of anyone pushing them into action. So, we're 
pushing. If we fail, we won't be here in 1997.

EFF does not want to be a PAC. We *can't* be a PAC. We don't have the 
necessary skill set (we have a membership coordinator, we have civil 
liberties attorneys, etc.  We do not have professional lobbyists, nor do 
we have an on-staff media and PR communicator, as some examples.)  We'd 
like to see the industry recognize that what we're doing is vital for 
them, and to support it, but also to get their own trade associations 
going and working and actually engaged in the political process (for one 
thing, that further reduces any desire to try to get EFF to play that 
role, which we will not do. Less wasted time and effort pushing us, and 
less of the same from us pushing back.)

I hope this explains the situation fairly clearly.


> To be a successful lobby group, the EFF needs to get its
> fingerprints on legislation, so that it can make threats and
> promises to businessmen in the computer industry.

EFF isn't interested in being "a successful lobby group". That's CDT's job.
You may have missed some of the history here: CDT's core staff is our 
former policy staff. They split off because they wanted to do lobbying 
work, and EFF didn't.

> Our interests, and the EFF's interest are opposed with no
> apparent mutual good possible.

That's absurd.  I suppose you think ITAR and the CDA are good things? If 
not, then our work to defeat them is mutual good.
 
> In order to be well funded, the EFF needs government
> regulation of the net.  The kind of regulation that would be

That's absurd, too.  I suppose there's a hidden grain of logic there: EFF 
would have little or no reason to exist without some kind of bad action 
on the part of government when it comes to the Net.  This is true. We all 
would be really happy if that weren't the case and there was no need for 
an EFF. The day the government stops censoring and EFF can go away will 
be the happiest day of my life if it ever happens.  Hell, I could be making 
3x my current salary in the commercial sector. If you think I do this 
because I enjoy working 12 hour days fighting the largest government on 
earth, for a paycheck that only barely covers the bills, you have another 
think coming. At any rate, there is no logical connection whatsoever 
between the grain of truth here, and your conclusion (that EFF must be 
working to *increase* government control to keep itself alive).  There 
are many assumptions that one is required to make before arrival at
that conclusion from the data, and some of these conclusions are not 
only contradictory, but precluded by other observable facts.

[...]
> most effective in ensuring large donations would be regulation
> that compels internet businessmen to lobby the government.
> for example regulations that make impossible, inconsistent, and
> contradictory requirements on those who provide software,
[...]

In other words you are claiming EFF authored the Communications Decency Act?

[...]
> of business,  for example legislation that requires case 
> by case approval of software, or legislation that compels
> the businessman to invade his customers privacy, and also
> prohibits him from invading that privacy unless he has a
> waiver issued by the state.

In other words, you are claiming EFF is not really behind the Bernstein 
v. US Dept. of State suit to get rid of the only existing US "legislation 
that requires case by case approval of software"?

--
<HTML><A HREF="http://www.eff.org/~mech/">    Stanton McCandlish
</A><HR><A HREF="mailto:mech@eff.org">        mech@eff.org
</A><P><A HREF="http://www.eff.org/">         Electronic Frontier Foundation
</A><P>        Online Activist    </HTML>