[open-government] Sunlight Teaming Up With the Open Knowledge Foundation to Create New Lobbying Transparency Working Group

Tue Oct 29 23:20:46 UTC 2013

On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 01:33:15PM -0400, Eric Mill wrote:
> Could you give an example of how Google's corporate interests might
> negatively impact a mailing list we choose to host there?
> 
> All of the bad scenarios I can foresee are just Google Groups becoming a
> worse product, which makes us want to leave -- which would be the same

altough subjective, i think google has passed that point a few years ago.
anchoring this mailing list there, makes it harder for people to reach that
point in the future, due to this list binding them there.

> amount of work as leaving proactively. I can't think of a reason we'd be
> harmed in a way beyond feeling like leaving, by staying on Google Groups.

i'm sure there's at least one - in this topic relevant person - who is out of
privacy reasons reluctant to use a google service. my own relevance is
debatable, my reluctance not. 

if this is only about opening up the data, but not using it for making
corporate lobbying accountable, then i see no risk. a few european people
might be concerned about google lobbying in brussels:
http://ec.europa.eu/transparencyregister/public/consultation/displaylobbyist.do?id=03181945560-59
c.f.  http://lobbyplag.eu/influence (look for euroispa and american chamber of
commerce, these amendments have been leaked, unknown how much other material
has not)

if not for privacy reasons maybe for legitimacy reasons some people might have
also problems with participating in such a list.

so one consequence could be to have less participants on the mailing list, or
to have a strong contra-selectivity against certain factions of this crowd.

the okfn has a very smoothly running mailing list service, where no such
concerns arise.

-- 
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