GeekPAC

SgtXaos writes "The newly created American Open Technology Consortium has posted a draft of their position statement online. They propose to change that by forming a real lobbying force to educate and influence congress about issues near and dear to all of us geeks. Here's a chance to put money where our uh, er, typing is." Newsforge (also part of OSDN) has a story and interview with the founders.

Comments

Re:One possible strategy.

[Luguber123]

Uh, Nokia is from Finland as in Linux.

Re:They MUST change the name

[Anonymous Coward]

rtfp!

American Open Technology Consortium

Re:fracturing effort?

[Mr. Fred Smoothie]

I was under the impression tha the EFF was a 501(c)(3) (tax-exempt public charity). If so, they are prohibited from contributing to political campaigns or spending more than a certain amount lobbying to affect legislation.

There is a need for a non-tax-exempt PAC who can fill that role.

The big question in my mind is does this effort redundant given what digitalconsumer.org is doing? It's also unclear to me that the GeekPAC people understand the tax status of organizations whose primary purpose is to lobby to affect legislation or to contribute to political campaigns. I don't believe that such contributions are tax-deductible.

The GeekPac name

[PurpleHigh]

Why is everyone up in arms over the name "GeekPac"? Both the draft document and the article confirm that the name of the PAC is American Open Technology Consortium; GeekPac is just the address to which pledges are going. I'm sure that if the effort gains momentum, they'll can establish an email address that's a little more professional.

Re:They MUST change the name

[beme]

How about
AMERICAN OPEN TECHNOLOGY CONSORTIUM
?

(Which is actually what it's called.)

Re:fracturing effort?

[sulli]

Digitalconsumer got my attention because they had something the others didn't: an auto-fax tool to send messages to elected officials, and a well-designed website. geekpac is not there yet, but might get there. I would STRONGLY encourage the organizers to at least see where their effort is complementary with digitalconsumer - even if it's a separate org, the two together (or three, with EFF) can be more effective.

But the geekpac people have one thing very wrong. IRS section 501(c)4 is for organizations that explicitly lobby. (I know this because I am chair of an organization that is planning to incorporate under this section.) While the organization is non-profit, contributions to it are NOT tax deductible. The founders need to correct this in their doc if they want to be taken seriously by lobby/activists.

Look, SOMEONE needs to be really aggressive about this stuff. I don't think EFF is the answer - they are just not in-your-face enough. digitalconsumer is better on the specific issue of S.2048. Maybe geekpac will be the answer, but they need to be much, much more aggressive in their message.