Digital Consumers Unions

	Digital Consumers Unions		by Pat Gratton
	Created: 10/20/2001	Modified: 10/22/2001	Version: 1.01

The Need for Digital Consumers Unions
In The Need for Digital Needs, it is pointed out that the consumer facing digital technology market has failed to meet several important desires of consumers, and that these failings have been expensive to the consumer. For example: the desire for open, non-proprietary file formats has not been met, and this absence has cost the consumer the ability to communicate accurately, efficiently and inexpensively.

To correct these failures, consumers must organize into unions, determine their collective requirements and act in concert to ensure that vendors meet these requirements. The goals, operation and viability of such digital consumers unions (DCUs) are described below.

DCU Goals
Digital technologies are consumed by both corporations and the general public. Since these two groups have somewhat different goals, they will most likely be represented by different DCUs.

Corporate DCUs would seek to reduce costs and improve performance of purchased equipment and services. In particular, they would seek to:
–	Eliminate costs and performance loss resulting from failure of vendors to meet functional requirements.
–	Eliminate costs resulting from unnecessary software and hardware upgrades.
–	Eliminate costs resulting from absence of standards. (Where costs include difficulty in: sharing files, reading archived files, communicating through email, and integrating hardware and software components.)
–	Reduce lost work hours, lost functionality and expensive service calls resulting from poor usability.
–	Reduce lost work hours, corrupted data and consumed hardware resources resulting from insufficient security against cyber attacks.

Public DCUs would seek the same cost and performance goals as corporate DCUs, but could also seek to:
–	Represent the consumer in negotiations with digital service vendors. Consumers might require that vendors:
	–	Provide clear, standard privacy agreements.
	–	Limit access to and distribution of personal information.
–	Provide a forum for making informed decisions regarding tradeoffs. Tradeoff discussions might address:
	–	Privacy vs. public safety
	–	Privacy vs. consumer benefit (targeted discounts, advertising)
	–	Control of personal machine vs. access to digital goods
–	Assist in the establishment of employee privacy – at least for personal transactions which must take place during the workday.

Note: DCUs can have benefits beyond their members’ immediate interests. For example: Currently, we’re at an impasse on the debate over encryption. Law and defense departments object to non-escrow encryption because of the danger of abuse by criminals and terrorists. On the other hand, privacy groups object to escrowed encryption because of the danger of abuse by the government. DCUs would help the groups most affected by this debate, the corporate and private consumers, to determine and voice their position, and thus hasten the resolution. DCUs would help secure our digital infrastructure.

DCU Operation
DCUs would define requirements and use their collective purchasing power to ensure that vendors met those requirements. Requirements enforcing actions could include:
–	Assisting in the development of standards and requiring that products conform to them.
–	Requiring that hardware and software products be easily integrated.
–	Requiring that products have high usability and low operating costs.
–	Requiring that products be secure against cyber attack.

DCUs could also act directly by:
–	Negotiating contracts with digital service vendors.
–	Acting politically to support their requirements (on e.g., encryption and copyright law).
–	Challenging legal trends (e.g., patent abuse) that tend to damage the interests of the consumer.

In addition, DCUs might directly drive software development by:
–	Selectively funding Open Source projects.
–	Purchasing crucial software patents to ensure that they’re not used to restrict development.
–	Directly funding software and usability research which has widespread utility to consumers.

DCU Viability
To be successful, the benefits of a DCU must be strong enough that its members will fund it and back its decisions with their purchasing power. For corporate DCUs, the benefits are clear – reduction in costs and increase in performance. But for public DCUs, such benefits are too small and remote, and the protection of privacy and similar policy goals are too abstract to motivate the general public. To succeed, public DCUs must provide a more immediate benefit.

Such a benefit could be provided in the form of a personal information service. This service would provide a single online login and identity for the consumer – storing his personal information while controlling the access of service providers to this information. This minimum functionality could then be leveraged by the DCU to negotiate with service providers – e.g., to control the terms of the privacy agreement, or to limit distribution of the consumer’s personal information.

Note: Microsoft is currently beginning to offer personal information services through its Passport and Hailstorm initiatives. Competing with it are AOL and the Sun centered Liberty Alliance Project. However, all of these initiatives are driven by vendors, and thus are architected around the vendors’ interests. A DCU associated service should have distinct appeal in comparison to them – if it acts quickly. (Possibly, a DCU service could integrate with the Liberty Alliance Project, which appears to be more open then the other two systems.)

Digital Needs
Digital Needs is a book (in progress) that seeks to inspire and assist DCUs. It provides: a draft statement of consumer requirements, a corresponding draft implementation, and an analysis of the transition to the proposed implementation. In addition, it provides a more detailed examination of the possibilities of DCUs than is given here. For more information, see Digital Needs: Overview.