Salut,

First of all, please excuse me for posting to this list with rather off-topic material. I hope that some of you will find this interesting and are willing to interact, and subsequently, come. I am also sorry that the date I picked is identical with the date picked for the Beer Event, but there isn't much time for it all, and I didn't have too much free time in my calendar. So, let's start...

I would like to invite you all to an introductive meeting into all the things we still require in order to get the swiss copyright reform into a better shape (for us).

The problematic ===============

The swiss copyright reform attempts to introduce DMCA-like legislation. It tries to criminalize any attempt to break a "protection system" of any type of content. It remains unspecified what a protection system is and what type of content can be protected.

Together with the upcoming DRM regime, this legislation is, in my opinion, a severe threat to the upcoming information society, as well as to OpenSource in itself. It also constitutes a severe discrimination of handicapped people and is a serious inhibitor to science.

The Council of States is soon going to make a decision on the issue. Soon, the National Council is going to follow. If everything goes like it did in our neighbor countries, the parliament is going to decide in favor of our fellow lobbyists from the BSA, Microsoft, Disney, MediaLive, the MPA etc. We don't have any lobbyists in the game up to this point, and nobody else is going to do this for us.

What we need to do is to present our parliaments with our side of the story, so they know it even exists. We need good arguments to decide against the plans, or to adapt ammendments which will change the current proposal to our needs. I think we can even count on the support of the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the IT area, as a lot of them do have interests in that area.

If we act now, we still have a chance to keep our country free from this type of unfavorable legislation.

Location and Time =================

On Monday, October 16th, 2006, from 18:00 to whenever we're going to finish.

We're going to meet there:

Nico Schottelius Hasenbuelerstrasse 15 CH-8625 Gossau ZH

This is easily reachable by car from Zurich: just follow the motorway to Rapperswil and drop off, following the direction to Rapperswil. In Wetzikon, go to the right right after the railway station, in direction to Gossau.

By train: go to Wetzikon, then take the bus to Gossau. Leave at the station "Gossau Moos". Then walk about 100m to the inner village, take the first street to the right and follow it to the end, then you'll see the house on the left side (that one with the huge pool).

Agenda ======

* Work at a common position to the current set of ammendments that the council presented * Come up with own ammendments to the law * Maybe: short introduction to lobbying (but I don't think we'll have time for that)

Most of the work has already been done by me, but currently, this is just my own work and doesn't have any basis in the "community".

Food and drinks ===============

Cannot be provided locally, you will have to take care of this yourself.

Registration ============

Anyone can come without any need to register. However, it would be nice if you could drop me a mail so we can tell how many people will be coming.

If you can't come at 18:00, it's ok if you arrive later. The participation is more important than arriving on the hour.

Hoping for a broad base,

Tonnerre