Every country or region has campaigns and elections, even if they are only propaganda campaigns or rigged elections (the people have a way of eventually unrigging these). The conspiracy theories, parties and groups, and political debates involved, be they world politics, U.S. politics or otherwise, require a new "open" ethic thanks to the Internet.

This has already had a significant effect: global NGOs like Greenpeace run open campaigns via the web at act.greenpeace.org; G7 political parties like the Green Party of Canada run an open policy debate and platform drafting wiki at lp.greenparty.ca; There are efforts to define "global simultaneous policy" at http://simpol.org - and similar efforts planned by the Global Greens at http://globalgreens.info

What does this mean? How do open content, free software, share alike and other licensing affect political forums ?

How can local issue forums, or party forums, be kept democratically controlled and avoid becoming controlled by a small clique that uses technical means to control or censor debate? How can this open-LOOKING politics be prevented from degrading into a particularly noixous form of technocratic "politics as usual"?