August 19 2009 Conference Call

Conference Call Notes

Drafted by Joe Andrieu, August 19, 2009

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Attendees

• Joe Andrieu
• Dean Landsman
• Doc Searls
• Alan Mitchell
• Renee Lloyd
• Judi Clark

Notes

Integrating developers with Legal progress

It would be great if we can sync up more with legal work currently in process. Unfortunately, a lot of lawyers don't have a mindset--or their clients who pay their fees don't have the mindset--to incorporate developers in their conversation. *The lawyers are too expensive to waste talking to developers!* The result is that there is a missing relationship between the lawyers writing the contracts and the developers who will code it /and/ the users who will use it. The problem is that building relationships cost $600/hour when done on the clock at lawyer rates.

There was a group at IIW who is working on this. It isn't very active right now, but there are a number of people who care about these issues. http://wiki.idcommons.net/ID-Legal

Members: http://wiki.idcommons.net/ID-Legal_Charter

There is a split of loyalty with Lawyers.

The customer appears as risk... hence the overbearing legal morass.

Joe heard 'the customer appears as "writ" '... as in the customer is taken as given.

The lawyers job is to protect companies from risk. That's how they view the company.

But lawyers fail to see a lack of customers as the real risk as companies transition from the industrial age to the information future.

So how do we do this?

Doc has been thinking about what one can do with EmanciPay. These are essentially agreements... Make a payment. Subscribe.

Ack! [From Joe... more later]

Having payments not = royalties.

The royalty system is not a relationship system, it is a deal system. There are entities created and given the role of collecting royalties.

If we are going to get away from a vendor controlled world, we have to envision the user controlled world.

The old way that organizations used to handle responsibility: deny it. What companies have learned is that if you listen to lawyers, you are not listening to people. So, companies are learning that these things can't be lawyer driven processes.

[Joe] However, it may not be that getting the lawyers together to figure out the one true Terms of Service agreement. Instead, innovation in the marketplace are driven by entrepreneurs, working with lawyers to make a particular business case work. Online retail wasn't led by Wal-Mart. It was led by upstarts like Amazon who forced Wal-Mart and Barnes & Noble and Borders to rethink and reinvent their business.

So, perhaps working with the ID-Legal (at IIW) and UD-VPI at Kantara http://kantarainitiative.org/confluence/display/udvpitech/Home would be a good way to drive from a use-case standpoint. Pick a business case and build the legal framework that supports that use case, with the user in charge.

Mailing List Cleaning

Dean is going to send an email to the list of folks who are currently getting Steering Committee emails, asking if they are still interested in participation.

happy hour seattle

happy hour los angeles

nyc happy hour

happy hour dc

austin happy hour

portland happy hour

WWOZ

Wonderful Wizard of Oz. A radio station in New Orleans. Supporters. Folks on the Cluetrain. Speaking our language and preaching from our hymnal.

East Coast in October

Still planned for Mon-Tues 10/12-10/13. Monday is a Federal holiday (it's one factor in why we have the room available), but we're going to do it anyway.

More soon.

Next Meeting

• September 2 2009 Conference Call