Comments on: The Commission’s green paper on open internet and net neutrality

By: Martin

Martin — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:50:06 +0000

Of course it might. The actual work for me would be to set the questions in context, gather additional explanations for terms and stuff. (Beyond those in the official document.)

Although a simple contact form should do the trick as well. As I said I’ll be doing it in German however, probably earliest on the weekend. But you’re more than welcome to pick up on that idea.

More input won’t hurt the Commission, I’d say.

By: Eurogoblin

Eurogoblin — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 08:26:54 +0000

What is the next step in terms of setting up an online form? Maybe a WordPress plugin might work?

By: Martin

Martin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:54:11 +0000

Thank you, Lino. Great comment. And a brave move on your side, I must say. I actually haven’t thought that lobbyist are that stubborn when it comes to forms. It’s probably too transparent and doesn’t leave much room for imagination on the reader’s side. ;)

I admit however that I do think it could be a problem if the questionnaire gets analysed by different people, or even a machine. But who would it do harm? The reputation of the organisation submitting the form or the actual content being submitted? If you answer to a public consultation it should be the issue which is in the middle of interest. Not the author. I understand of course that I’m being very naive here. :)

By: Martin

Martin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:43:24 +0000

Exactly my idea, Eurogoblin. Thanks for your comment.

I have in fact started to do so. But I was lazy enough to do it on surveymonkey.com where they only granted me 10 free questions. Not really sufficient here. :-)

But I was really reluctant to send them directly to the Commission official, I’d have collected them first.

However what I will continue to do, is to set up such a form in the German language as I’ve yet to find an official translation.

By: Lino

Lino — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 08:14:07 +0000

Great post Martin. As an industry lobbyist, I will just comment on the format issue, ie why did the Commission not do an online form/questionnaire format (as they often do using the “Your voice” webpages)? Well probably because most lobbyist really dislike it! And have said so in the past. Even when they do put iup such a form, I think more than half of the lobbyists I know send in a position paper as awhole. Why? Because we lack discipline in answering teh questions in a linear manner, because we dislike boxes, because often when the submission comes from an association, it will take the form of a statement rather than a question-by-question response, etc. I personnally dislike the idea that answers to questions get analysed by different officials, ie John looks at all the answers to question 1 and Bob does the same for 2, etc as I think that often creates distorted views on complex questions.
To end however: pls encourage people to respond. This issue is one that could profoundly affect the Internet as we know it.

By: Eurogoblin

Eurogoblin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 08:08:31 +0000

Why don’t we set up our own form collecting answers to these questions and automatically e-mailing them to the Commission?