Pledge started for European focused digital rights organisation

Posted on July 24, 2005 under blog ,

 

I have just started a European version of the pledge I commented on in “Funding a European EFF?“.

The text of the DigitalRightsEU pledge:

“I will donate 5 Euros per month to support an organisation that will campaign for digital rights in the European Union but only if 250 other people will too.”

— Nicole Simon (Germany)

Inspired by Danny O’Brien’s pledge for funding a digital rights organisation in the UK, I would like to take this to the European level, because that is where most of the decisions are made today for Europe.

The amount of money and resources companies are investing on the European level to influence the outcome of laws to protect their interests is massive. Our rights are reduced each time politicians legislate on these issues, because they’re hearing only from the corporate business interests.

If we don’t let the politicians know what we’re worried about, we’ll inevitably end up stripped of the rights we presently have. We have to show them we do not only care but will fight for it.

If you would like to link to it, please use DigitalRightsEU as a tag and / or leave a trackback to this blog post (2) so I can track it.

The pledge says per month, but this is meant to be the equivalent of 5 Euros a month (or more), donated in a cost saving way – which in most of the cases probably mean yearly.

The limits of pledgebank only allow me to set 100 people and 2 months, I asked them to change it to “timely end to 31.10.2005 and make that 250 people”, so this will change over the next days.

If you add your name, please include your country.

Want to join the pledge? Just visit this webpage and add your name.

Why care for donating to an organisation like EFF for an European level?

In an age of information saturation, the right to record and exchange is as fundamental as the right to remember and to speak. If you don’t speak now, you’ll be rendered the 21st century equivalent of blind and mute.

Thanks to Garth for some fine suggestions like this in the pledge text. ;)

And yes, I screwed up on the limit – I did put 100 in there, managed to make that 10, but already asked for them to raise it to 250 – sorry for the confusion. :(

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2 Responses to “Pledge started for European focused digital rights organisation”

  1. Danny O Brien says:
    July 25, 2005 at 00:16

    Brilliant idea!

    Have you thought about supporting EDRi? Ian Brown, who was on the panel that inspired our pledge, is a board member, and they’ve been doing a lot of good work in the European arena. I really recommend subscribing to their newsletter, for instance: http://www.edri.org/edrigram

  2. Nicole Simon says:
    July 25, 2005 at 01:58

    Yes, a commenter in Nevon’s comments spoke of that, but I forgot to link to it in here. :)

    Saying one wants to give money to an organisation does not need to be just EFF, it can also be something like Edri!