As Florian correctly pointed out the demo in Geneva was not only to IP-focussed institutions (WIPO, WTO) but also to the IOM.

The evening beforehand the content of the action was introduced at a public meeting addressing freedom of communication and of movement; the discussion summarized some key developments in each area and went on to examine analogous tendencies in each field. Substantially this comprised a reflection on autonomy and its limits (of migrant labour, of communications production), the paradigm of management as the modern form of control and performance of power (digital rights, border management etc) and concrete connections (role of communications in migrant flows, use of communications in struggles against detention centers, the relationship between the circulation of pirate or 'grey' goods and the material economy of migrant subsistence).

We decided to this on the basis of a hunch, without a clear idea of the shape of the interconnection between struggles in these two areas. Those discussions have continued and become steadily more wide-ranging, confused, fascinating and rewarding - but inconclusive. ------------------

When we met in Geneva last April for two hectic days the only consensus I recall was that our work was not towards an independent media love-in, but should address broader questions, and at least three were mentioned: IP, border management and work. Since then other themes have also been raised, such as financial flows. Any call worth the name should provide ample space for all these thematics. Rather than scripting the agenda with conceptual finality this document needs to function as a device to allow people to co-operate, both those who have been in the process so-far and those who may want to become involved later. The structure should provide space and interface for autonomous initiatives.

Almost all of us have been highly sceptical about WSIS itself from the beginning, that it should not determine our agenda, our acts, a skepticism shared also by many in the CRIS campaign. Consistent with that I don't think it should dictate our schedule. The references to the HUB in Florence were important for me not because we went there with a clear plan and came away with a new political network (which we didn't really) but because in retrospect it was the first moment in a new cycle of struggles, even if we didn't know it at the time. HUB involved people working in innovative communications strategies, migration and agitation in the new world of work. Not all of these elements have been brought into synthesis and those which have hybridized are not yet mature, but that a process of recomposition began seems clear. This is the timeline, the schedule which attracts me: the time necessary to bring these elements, and the people who care passionately about them, together. Fuck the event, this is a work in progress, a site under de-construction.

------------------- I liked the style of Jamie's first draft enormously but felt that it overemphasized the IP aspect. As we work together on IP conflicts I now where he's coming from ;-)

The danger of playing into the official summit dynamics and agenda lay behind the desire to give the moment a 'festival like fashion' and turn it into a show of strength and potential 'by any means networking'. There is however a difference between being sucked into predictable oppositional dynamics and abandoning the contestation and conflict. I believe that there is a necessity for conflictuality in Geneva, just not at Palexpo where it runs the perverse risk of giving a legitimacy and sense of significance to a talk-shop and petty-governance disneyland.

"I am vehemently against downgrading the ongoing struggles around globalization and informatization to a somehow moralistic notion of "sharing"." Florian

I would also applaud Armin's extension of the field of freedom of movement to laws affecting individuals within the EU etc. and dissection of the modality used to achieve that. Likewise with his stress on the fact that the information society is 'labourers society' with the same disfiguring savagery and darwinian exploitation as yesterday, and as today.

On the other hand to interpret the progress of free software as a sign of a general obsolescence of the need to fight around IP strikes me as simplistic. The threat of jail for p2p users and the reality of death for millions in need of patented medicines are very real.Whilst the former may function as something similar to a migrant's risk of ending up in a detention center - a risk, but not the controlling factor of migrant action or subjectivity - by performing legal vilification on an individual as a simulacrum of control and management. The complexities of modern life and the basic conditions for modern production do not however enable the realization of such power fantasies. Instead we get the totalitarian state show five days a week after the news at lunchtime, repeated again at 6.30. The potential danger in this display lies in tis capacity to straightjacket the social appropriation of technology, in such a way as to keep the model of exploitation central to media-marketing-news companies alive. This is why the struggles around IP should not be foremost about consumption, but production, social relationships and the collapsing of the distinction between user and producer. In this light there is nothing 'moralistic' about 'sharing' (although Florian's comment suggests to me that the term is already fulfilling its potential as a wolf in a lamb's clothing) which I suggest is the form of social relation and mode of exchange proper to that nebulous movement now touted as the 'commons'.

I agree with Ionnek's comments about the signature of the call (Geneva 03) and its location.