In response to RHIZOME's recent shift to non-profit status, robin murphy
wrote:

Of course, I'm very happy that Mark, Rachel and Alex found a solution to
their problem but, at the same time, something about it was bugging me
and I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Several questions have come bubbling to the surface of my brain, none of
them meant to be criticism of RHIZOME but more a reflection of my
confusion about and resistance to what a not-for-profit status may mean
these days and whether there are still other strategies to consider:

1. Even though retooled, the plan for RHIZOME still sounds like a
business plan, what with publishing projects and all that are meant to
be (at least theoretically) profitable. This sounds like a good way to
sustain the project but also puts RHIZOME in direct competition with
other for-profit ventures with their status a possible unfair advantage.

Matt Mirapaul suggests in his New York Times article that these other
ventures will eventually use RHIZOME's strategy as a model. I'm not sure
I see this happening because there are a great many conditions to be met
for not-for-profit status, one of the most problematic being political
involvement. Would there be a "chilling effect" on posts about current
copyright, encryption and domain name legislation or partisanship for
the Zapatistas?

I don't see direct censorship as the threat but the bureaucracy that
accompanies not-for-profit status and the understanding that the process
is easier if a grantee co-operates.

2. RHIZOME provides a needed balance (at least to me) to something like
ArtsWire though both are part of the arts "middle management" in the
U.S. that I see fighting to preserve its funding. I'm not against people
receiving a steady paycheck for managing art but it still doesn't
address the problem of getting money to artists in a more direct manner.

3. RHIZOME also provides a balance to nettime and I would like to see
more discussion about how Geert and Pit et al do it beyond the "gift
economy" explanation and how RHIZOME may differ both philosophically and
in its results. Both are in the position of being "without borders" yet
still operate within the constraints of local customs and laws. Both
lists (and archives) are moderated and so are creating the documentation
that will define this period. How do these filtering methods differ and
how does that difference effect the documentation?