[wsfii-discuss] The Empire Strikes Back: South Africa

Wed Feb 18 15:11:55 UTC 2009

Wherever a new sustainable business model appears, that creates
opportunities for everyone, including corporations. This should be already
crystal known for all including them. Internet is already a good example
of how something which is not corporate owned, created many new and
innovative business models.

This is not about demonizing corporations, there is nothing wrong with
them, however we should also not idealize them: We can not be so naive as
to believe their main goal is the benefit to society rather than their
incomings.

The problem which I'm referring to (and I guess Malcolm as well through
his analogy with the fisher and the need to eat) appears when the business
model instead of being based on the value add of their services or
products in a fair and open market, someone intends to gain advantage
because of his dominant position and capacity for blocking others, control
the real state properties for his deployment, own the spectrum, lobby
power on politicians, etc. That is, a modern sorts of
dominance/slavery/corruption. When this happens, and it happens, this is
not longer about fair business, it becomes a distinct story, and there
must be someone in front to prevent it.

Ramon.

> We dont know where this is really going.
>
> Obviously there is a status quo and many of the companies and
> organizations that some of us in this network have tried to work with
> over the years are part of that.
>
> Its possible that there is a limit to what amount of change can be put
> forward in a society and that maybe to some that threshold is being
> passed.
>
> Yet government regulatory agencies have always been threatened by the
> kinds of things we have talked about here and some corporations as well
> and we have seen that real innovation is possible.
>
> The key is to provide opportunities for corporations to get involved
> constructively in the process of this innovation because we could not do
> such efforts completely at the grassroots anyhow - at least not yet.
>
> Jeff
>
>
>
> ramon.roca at guifi.net wrote:
>> We didn't reach (yet) the point of a direct confrontation with the
>> regulatory agiencies, but also facing difficulties while trying to gain
>> space and momentum. Sometimes looks like there is some hidden interests
>> which don't like very much a sustainable business model where the users
>> building their own infrastructures.
>>
>> I don't have very much information on the mess potato project/village
>> telco case, but IMHO and inline with Juergen comments, I think that
>> makes
>> sense to find out how to cooperate internationally and build a general
>> understanding that the main concern of the countries and regulatory
>> agencies needs to be the development of the information society instead
>> of
>> protecting the status quo of a few corporate interests.
>>
>> Ramon.
>>
>>
>>> Hi Vicram,
>>>
>>> whom can we address for an international petition? How else could we
>>> support this issue from abroad?
>>>
>>> Thx
>>>
>>> JuergeN
>>>
>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: v1clist at yahoo.co.uk
>>>> [mailto:wsfii-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of
>>>> Vickram Crishna
>>>> Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2009 8:05 AM
>>>> To: wsfii-discuss at lists.okfn.org; Open Hardware
>>>> Subject: [wsfii-discuss] The Empire Strikes Back: South Africa
>>>>
>>>> Tragically, yesterday the South African regulatory agency
>>>> ICASA confiscated (without warrant or notice) equipment being
>>>> used by the Mesh Potato project in its Village Telco
>>>> implementation. The excuse (given verbally on the telephone)
>>>> was illegal use of wireless equipment, against which the
>>>> local telco (named Telkom) had filed a complaint on grounds
>>>> of wireless interference.
>>>>
>>>> It appears from discussions on the Village Telco list (at
>>>> Googlegroups) that the ISM band in South Africa is still not
>>>> free-to-use, and also that licensed wireless networks (but
>>>> not WISPs) must not allow their signals to cross roads (al la
>>>> Canute?). However, in this case, Village Telco evidently has
>>>> the requisite WISP license, so one must view the situation
>>>> with some gloom.
>>>>
>>>> Apologies for cross-posting: I know (through a recent round
>>>> of introductions) that many of our listmembers are already on
>>>> the Village Telco list.
>>>>
>>>>  Vickram
>>>> http://communicall.wordpress.com
>>>> http://vvcrishna.wordpress.com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Diese Nachricht wurde auf Viren und andere gef?hrliche
>>>> Inhalte untersucht
>>>> und ist - aktuelle Virenscanner vorausgesetzt - sauber.
>>>> For all your IT requirements visit: http://www.transtec.co.uk
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>>
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