[sudo-discuss] government shut down & open web

[Eddan Katz]

The availability of government services during an emergency is often most compelling to regular folk.

The fact that property damage submission forms to FEMA were only available in .doc following Hurricane Katrina was a persuasive anecdote in the open standards debate.


sent from eddan.com

On Oct 4, 2013, at 9:47 AM, Eddan Katz <eddan at clear.net> wrote:

>> From: Peter Harter <farrington at gmail.com>
>> Date: October 4, 2013, 9:39:32 AM PDT
>> To: "netpolicy at mozilla.org" <Netpolicy at mozilla.org>
>> Subject: government shut down & open web
>> 
>> As you may already know many US government websites have shuttered, so to speak, as a result of the budget shut down.  Reminds me of how Internet freedom issue campaigns have rallied attention by altering or closing websites.
>> 
>> Seems to me that this moment is a possible opportunity for Mozilla to educate the public about the importance of the open Web and how it is all around us every day.
>> 
>> During the previous shut down in the mid 90s people became fed up with a lack of access to government services such as visas for overseas travel.  I don't know if it was a simple pressure point of very wealthy and well connected people that got fed up with Newt Gingrich and wanted to have their vacations to go forward.  But that is one of the anecdotes one heard at the time.
>> 
>> Do people that care about the open Web care at all about a lack of access to government websites?
>> 
>> For example, people do care about a lack of access to national parks and how that disrupts their vacations, ruins the income to businesses dependent on those parks and pushes those workers into poverty and onto government assistance.
>> 
>> Is there an example that we can think of to make a similar cascading deprivation narrative connecting the shut down of government websites to a broader impact that burdens us all?
>> 
>> This I think would help underscore the point that Harvey made to me a year ago or so -- that the open Web needs to be a regular part of a kitchen table conversation, akin to what it took or many to move clean air out of the environmentalist extremes and into the very mainstream.
>> 
>> I can't say that the shut down of the US government is that tipping point for the open Web.
>> 
>> But since we've all seen the shuttering of websites as a timeworn tactic for two decades now, I thought I should raise it with you all here for contemplation and for discussion perhaps during the Mozilla Summit.
>> 
>> Peter
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