FC: Public Knowledge hopes to turn geeks into, well, geektivists

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

http://news.com.com/2010-1074-943785.html?tag=politech
   
   Bring in the geeks
   By Declan McCullagh 
   July 15, 2002, 4:00 AM PT

   WASHINGTON--Gigi Sohn hopes that geeks have become so enraged by
   recent anti-piracy schemes that they'll finally want to fight back.
   
   The 40-year old lawyer, head of the Public Knowledge nonprofit group
   here, plans to recruit a ragtag band of technophiles and train them to
   become a corps of effective political activists on the Internet front.
   
   To Sohn, this means seizing on widespread discontent created by the
   attempts of Hollywood and the music labels to curtail file-swapping
   networks while promoting sweeping new anti-copying laws and standards.
   
   E-mail campaigns are easily ignored, and transforming online ire into
   effective political action is hardly a trivial task.

   Geek armies have always been eager to vent in online forums and clog
   the e-mail inboxes of errant congressional types. As far back as 1995,
   over 50,000 peeved Netizens signed an electronic petition slamming the
   Clinton administration's privacy-invasive Clipper Chip.

   [...]



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