Inform/Overview: Difference between revisions

ISPM (name to be reviewed) is a collaboratively-authored resource for helping people explain the Internet and associated technological, cultural, political and social issues to others, specifically policymakers. It will have carefully crafted explanatory strategies, well-chosen metaphors and appropriate supporting presentational material to allow someone with limited time to clue their representative in on Internet matters, and guide them into making and promoting policies which "preserve choice and innovation on the Internet".

ISPM attempts to solve the "[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes series of tubes]" problem. Technologists and scientists are woefully under-represented in many legislatures, and the pace of change in technology and on the Internet is very fast. Legislators are usually in favour of the benefits the Internet brings but, given the wide variety of subjects about which they are expected to know, often have only limited understanding of the technology, and of how legislative proposals may affect those benefits. Additionally, the Internet is also often a threat to the business models of established companies in the offline world, who may be influential in the political process. This combination leads to a particularly high risk that poor legislation, written and voted for by people who do not fully understand what makes the Internet what it is today (or occasionally, those with a vision of an Internet at odds with Mozilla's goals), will have detrimental effects on it, and stifle future innovation.

The Mozilla-like way to make an impact on this is to enable a grass roots, distributed educational effort whereby individual people and groups help to inform their policymakers, one person at a time. These educators need support. They need a resource which gives them the best available explanations, metaphors, similes and other educational tools to help policymakers understand the Internet worldview. ISPM is that resource.

It is envisaged that ISPM will have four types of page:

'''Technical''' pages would be a best-in-class explanation for non-experts of a technical issue or topic, such as "IP address", "[[Netpolicy/ISPM/Distributed_Denial_of_Service|DDOS]]", or "Bandwidth". The aim would be to produce something which was policy-independent and agreed upon by technologists on all sides - i.e. the technical facts.

'''Social''' pages would explain a particular social issue from an Internet perspective, in a way independent of jurisdiction or specific legislation. Examples might include "[[Netpolicy/ISPM/Privacy|Privacy]]", "Pornography", or "Identity". As with technical pages, the aim is for this level of content not to take positions.

'''Policy''' pages would build on the previous two types of page and consider a policy issue. Again, it would be explained in a way not specific to a particular jurisdiction or piece of legislation. Examples might include "[[Netpolicy/ISPM/Cybersecurity|Cybersecurity]]", "Network neutrality", or "User content indemnity". It would attempt to explain the different positions on the question, and draw out a "Mozilla view".

'''Legislative''' pages would build upon all of the below and draw together the ISPM resources relevant to a particular specific piece of legislation in a particular jurisdiction. Examples might include "Marco Civil (Brazil)", "ACTA (International)", or "[[Netpolicy/ISPM/Cyber_Intelligence_Sharing_and_Protection_Act_(USA)|CISPA (USA)]]". The page would be a gateway to all you needed to know to engage with and answer the questions of a policymaker who was considering their view on that piece of legislation. These pages would have a shorter useful life than the others, as legislation either fails or is passed.

Some sample content which demonstrates and expounds these organizational and content principles is available relating to the USA's [[Netpolicy/ISPM/Cyber_Intelligence_Sharing_and_Protection_Act_%28USA%29|Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA)]]. There is one page in each of the above categories; the other three are linked from the CISPA page. Each page has per-section explanatory notes on the right hand side which attempt to explain the rationale for the structure of each page.

Building a community around ISPM is key to its success. A resource no-one uses is a waste of time, and a resource no-one improves is on its way to becoming a resource no-one uses.

As we establish the culture and style of ISPM, we will be able to publicise it more and get wider involvement. Our users would be anyone who wanted to talk to a policymaker; we would hope that a link to the ISPM page on a particular bill would become part of the "Further Reading" or "Resources" sections of emails and websites set up by campaigners sympathetic to Mozilla on a particular bill. This would, of course, include Mozilla campaigns where they existed. We would hope that organizations which used ISPM in this way would come to see its value and would spend time curating and improving the content which related to their particular areas of activity.

In the places where ISPM takes a position on a policy issue, there is a risk that the consensus among those doing the editing may not be the same as the consensus among Mozillians. While we should take this occurrence as a signal that we should stop and check that ''we'' are on the right track, it does indicate the need for some guidance that we can unite around. So, we can perhaps mitigate this with some high-level "worldview" documents which set out in broad terms the type of Internet that we would like to see, and the principles we apply in trying to get there. Those documents may be Mozilla-specific (such as the Manifesto) or they may be written for ISPM.

To an extent, 'the Wikipedia problem'. As ISPM will be several orders of magnitude smaller than Wikipedia, we hope that we will not need to create the process and bureaucracy on which people who push a community in this direction thrive.