Telematics Freedom Foundation is a

non-profit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

which aims to bring citizens, in the age of

telematics Telematics is an interdisciplinary field encompassing telecommunications, vehicular technologies ( road transport, road safety, etc.), electrical engineering (sensors, instrumentation, wireless communications, etc.), and computer science (multimedi ...

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

, mobile phones and the web, all those freedoms and rights that the

Free Software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

Movement has already brought to PC users worldwide.

Projects

TFF is working on a definition of "free telematics" as the freedom to run a web service, for any purpose, study its inner workings and adapt it, accessing the source code, redistribute copies of it, and above all verifying it is actually performing as expected, which are all essential prerequisites for any reliable and transparent

e-democracy E-democracy (a combination of the words electronic and democracy), also known as digital democracy or Internet democracy, is the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in political and governance processes. The term is believe ...

systems based on the web. A formal draft proposal, based on

, is currently under development. Telematics Freedom Foundation is an advocate of the concept of Continuous Democracy, which stands for the power of citizens to practice

democracy Democracy (From grc, δημοκρατία, dēmokratía, ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation (" direct democracy"), or to choose gov ...

not only at the time of

elections An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operate ...

, but on every single instance they might find it is needed, through constant discussion and confrontation between involved peers. From this viewpoint, it is also developing software for remote democratic organization, which will constitute a touchstone for the model of production, sharing and full control outlined by the idea of Telematics Freedom it is promoting. The Foundation is also working on the consolidation of a huge multimedia collection, the Universal Audiovisual Library. This will host hundreds of thousands of

Gigabytes The gigabyte () is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix '' giga'' means 109 in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one gigabyte is one billion bytes. The unit symbol for the gigabyte is GB. This definit ...

of audio and video contents in their original language, released under open and public licenses. It will serve as an exhaustive source of material to be freely remixed and published by content editors and providers, with the intent of spreading knowledge. One example of this will be the

Lazio it, Laziale , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 ...

DNA project (where DNA stands for Digital Nature Archive), a large set of raw full HD

footage In filmmaking and video production, footage is raw, unedited material as originally filmed by a movie camera or recorded by a ( often special) video camera, which typically must be edited to create a motion picture, video clip, television show or ...

region's natural landscape and cultural heritage, available under a

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

Attribution-Share Alike license. Moreover, to enrich the library and provide citizens with even more content to freely browse and view, the foundation is also promoting

participatory journalism Citizen journalism, also known as collaborative media, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism or street journalism, is based upon public citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, a ...

, through the "social video packs" project. Inspired by two successful experiments already implemented in Brazil, the "Pontos de Cultura" and " Estúdio Livre", it will establish a series of multimedia centers based on

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

, equipped for creation, editing and post-production of videos created by citizens, which will be equipped with a backpack containing a

camcorder A camcorder is a self-contained portable electronic device with video and recording as its primary function. It is typically equipped with an articulating screen mounted on the left side, a belt to facilitate holding on the right side, hot-swa ...

and everything they need to perform video footage on the road. Telematics Freedom Foundation endorses the adoption of the

Affero General Public License The Affero General Public License (Affero GPL and informally Affero License) is a free software license. The first version of the Affero General Public License (AGPLv1), was published by Affero, Inc. in March 2002, and based on the GNU General Pu ...

to guarantee transparency and accountability for

Open Source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

e-voting Electronic voting (also known as e-voting) is voting that uses electronic means to either aid or take care of casting and counting ballots. Depending on the particular implementation, e-voting may use standalone ''electronic voting machines'' ( ...

and

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

. In fact, under this license all running source code of a web application should be made freely downloadable from final users at all time, and this should actually give them reasonable practical means to verify the

they are accessing. In order to provide further concrete control, the Foundation also proposed that server rooms (or "cages") hosting free telematic services would be physically managed applying those same (or enhanced) physical security provisions that are currently applied to ballot boxes during an election. In practice, physical access to such servers would be enabled only while a few randomly selected or elected users (or citizens) are physically present. The foundation also launched a video website featuring socio-political and satirical content, www.popolobue.tv, which should serve as a model of a television democratically controlled by its viewers.The PopoloBue TV
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Notes

{{reflist Digital rights organizations

Projects

See also

Notes