Wednesday 28 October 2009

Watching you: Surveillance and the EU.

Open Europe has published a new report taking stock of how the EU is impacting our civil liberties....  Everyone should read it: "How the EU is watching you: the rise of Europe's surveillance state"

Quoting the Open Europe blog: "There are lots of juicy proposals in the pipeline including: a target to train a third of all police officers across the EU in a “common culture” of policing; the mass collection and sharing of personal data including DNA records into an EU-wide database; controversial surveillance techniques including ‘cyber patrols’; the creation of a fledgling ‘EU Home Office’ with powers to decide on cooperation on police, border, immigration and criminal justice issues; an EU “master plan” on information exchange; the transfer of criminal proceedings among EU member states; a three-fold increase in the number of controversial EU arrest warrants; access to other member states’ national tax databases; and EU laws on citizens’ right to internet access."


The road to hell is paved with good intentions...

Also on: HAX & The Telegraph


Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party -  Putting privacy first.

Talking privacy in person - How worried should we be?

If you're in the UK you can take the opportunity to catch these seminars on privacy....

First, Cory Doctorow is talking about privacy at the Battle of Ideas in London on Saturday - trying to answer the question "How worried should we be?"

That's 'Rethinking Privacy in an age of Disclosure and Sharing'
on Saturday 31 October, 1.30pm until 3.00pm, Upper Gulbenkian Gallery

Then, a little further down the line, the Open Rights Group is organising a talk by cryptographer, technologist and author Bruce Schneier on the title of:  'The Future of Privacy: Rethinking Security Trade-offs' 
on Friday 4 December 2009 at  18:30.  St Albans Centre, 18 Brooke St, London
 
That looks like two interesting topics....  Can't someone get those onto Youtube???

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party -  Putting privacy first.

Thursday 22 October 2009

Bad habits, bad government - Fudging the figures

You may remember the fuss about government statistics on piracy being based on adjusted, interpolated figures sourced from industry lobbyists.

Heresy Corner has a super piece on 'Abusing the evidence' (about amongst other things, sex trafficking) that shows that the use of selective statistics to support UK government policy making is endemic.  As the Heresiarch puts it..
"The government has loudly proclaimed its commitment to "evidence-based policy-making" while instead pursuing policy-based evidence making."

Statistics is only evidence if it is honestly presented - and scientifically valid.  Fudging the figures will just lead to bad policy - and bad government.

Do I mean will - or has?

Wednesday 21 October 2009

An Open Letter to the Music Industry

Rick Falkvinge, leader of the Swedish Pirate Party, Piratpartiet, has issued an open letter to the music industry - following a speech he made at a music industry event in Manchester. While reports of the event are interesting for the reaction the speech generated, Rick's letter is a 'must read' for anyone interested in digital rights and the future of copyright.  Right on the button....

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party -  Working for copyright reform.

Monday 19 October 2009

UK Government out of touch on copyright

The UK is one of the main movers behind the Council of Minister's refusal to accept  'innocent until proven guiilty' as a guiding principle for cutting internet access to suspected copyright infringers...  However, at home things are far from quiet in opposition to the government's plans. 

Tom Watson's early day motion on illicit file sharing continues to gain MP's support, while the Open Rights Group has published the results of a survey that shows that supporting cutting people off from the internet for filesharing is a clear vote loserSixty eight percent thought that internet users should be disconnected only once evidence had been considered by a court - a pretty resounding chorus in defence of our rights to 'innocent until proven guilty'.

If you are one of those sixty eight percent then write to your MP and tell them so...  and also write to your MEP (right away!) and tell them to put pressure on the Council of Minister's to accept Amendment 138 as proposed by the EU parliament - it's the first and best way to ensure just due process is protected in law.

Meanwhile the government get a knocking too in the recently published report by the UK All Party Parliamentary group on Copyright.  It has lots of interesting reading, with details of the evidence from a wide range of parties on both sides of the debate.  On illicit file sharing the group concludes

"We conclude that much of the problem with illegal sharing of copyrighted material has been caused by the rightsholders, and the music industry in particular, being far too slow in getting their act together and making popular legal alternatives available.

We do not believe that disconnecting end users is in the slightest bit consistent with policies that attempt to promote eGovernment, and we recommend that this approach to dealing with illegal file-sharing should not be further considered.

We think that it is inappropriate to make policy choices in the UK when policy options are still to be agreed by the EU Commission and EU Parliament in their  negotiations over the “Telecoms Package”. We recommend that the Government terminate their current policy-making process, and restart it with a new consultation once the EU has made its decisions."

Which is pretty blunt, given that this is a cross parliamentary group.

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party -  Working for copyright reform.

Sunday 18 October 2009

A royal view on copyright...

I was reading the paper at the weekend and came across an interesting article by Pelle Snickars, head of research at Kungliga Biblioteket  - the Swedish Royal Library.  The article discusses the Google books project and the ramifications of the internet on the availability and distribution of our common culture - in particular it draws attention to the majority of the books being scanned which are not in the public domain - but not commercially available either.  Orphaned works that are effectively lost to our collective online heritage.  It is a state of affairs that he ascribes to over-extensive copyright.. 

"A series of independent studies have shown that cultural products such as books, music or films have a commercial value on the market during a five-to ten-year period. With some extremely few exceptions – and Google Book Search is about the General rather than the particulate – then demand drops dramatically. Even if  the "long tail" in the long term will perhaps extend the commercial potential for various cultural products, it is a consumption pattern that will continue for a further period. For example, when American copyright demanded that copyright owners extended their rights after 28 years, it was less than 15% that bothered to. The incentive to extend rights to a commodity that no longer generates profit was fairly negligible.

That almost nine out of ten copyright owners did not find it worthwhile to renew their rights ought to be a cause for reflection, but developments have rather gone the other way. As several network activists and progressive law professors have said, the extension of the terms of protection over the past decades have been unusually narrow-minded given how the Internet developed during the same period. Future historians will in all probability be asked how the lawmakers were thinking that could  lock in the whole cultural production of the 20th century at the same time as the Web was developing as a global distribution channel available to all citizens."
(translated by Bing.. with a bit of help from me..)
 
Laws should be about getting the best deal for society - but clearly today copyright fails to deliver.   It's no coincidence that Piratpartiet are advocating greatly reduced copyright duration to bring back the balance between creators and society.  If you don't believe me, go to the library and look it up...

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party -  Working for copyright reform.

Thursday 15 October 2009

MPs challenge the UK government on file sharing

A parliamentary early day motion on illicit filesharing is challenging the governments position on how to tackle filesharing.  It highlights that alleged offenders can easily conceal their (IP) identity, that not-for-profit downloads don't necessarily cause financial loss, and that cutting people off the net is unjust for others using the same connection.  Pretty obvious stuff - but the government clearly don't get it.  Great anyway to see the mainstream parties waking up to address the issues. 

So far eighteen MPs from five partys have signed  up....   More please!
(so much for two party politics!)

Update: now 26 MPs

Tips: Pirate Party blog " MPs start to get it"

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party -  Working for copyright reform.

Wednesday 14 October 2009

Morons on copyright? Tell it like it is..

Boing Boing & Michael Geist report on a submission to the Canadian consultation on copyright by Access Copyright - an organisation that collects copyrights for writers.  As BB reports - they came out as opposing the right to record TV shows at home, and the right to "format shift"  media (e.g., load a CD on your MP3 player, or put an old ebook on a new reader or phone). They also say that almost all commercial use, no matter how trivial, should require a license and not fall under fair dealing.

I would comment on how stupid this is - but I found I don't need to...   this quote from BoingBoings comments says it all...

"What a bunch of well-intentioned albeit deluded and ignorant frickin' morons. As a Canadian writer I am stunned and embarrassed by their comments. They neither represent the true needs of creators nor reflect the reality we are now living in. Excuse me now whilst I go back to pounding my head against the desk and mutter: "What the fuck were they thinking?!" - Robbo

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party -  Working for copyright reform.

Tips on living under Surveillance: Stockholm Edition....

I've blogged about it before but just today I thought Swedish readers might find themselves in need of advice on how to communicate securely in repressive environments

Actually.. it's not just - or not even Sweden - that is under surveillance now that parliament here has for the second time given the thumbs up for the FRA to tap all traffic passing Swedish borders.  It's enough to piss you off....  Whatever happened to principles?

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party -  Defending your privacy

Human Rights & Culture



Spend the time to look and learn.....

Privacy & Justice on the front line

It's one thing to write laws... And quite another to see them tested through the courts...

The week's big news - which admittedly got a bit lost here in the Swedish blogoshere with FRA in the news- is that a court in Romania has ruled the Data Retention Directive to be a breach of individuals' right to secrecy of communications. Which is GREAT news.  It's not immediately going to affect the legal position in other EU countries, but in the long term it's untenable that an EU country can conclude that EU law is in breach of our civil rights and that not propogate up to an EU wide judicial test. More on this at the Open Rights Group.

Meanwhile, closer to home, the Swedish appeal court has ruled against five publishers in the first case under Sweden's controversial IPRED legislation (Allowing media companies to demand details from ISPs on who uses which IP address). The court overturned the previous ruling concluding that the prosecution had failed to show that e-books on a password protected server were 'available to the public'.  If nothing else this is going to drive up the standards of evidence required to show a copyright infringement has taken place - which is no bad thing.  Congratulations to ephone that have stood up to protect their customer's privacy.

The third legal news this week is that the boys from the Pirate Bay are back in the news with allegations that evidence used in a trial in the Netherlands is fabricated.  Peter Sunde has a long explanation on his blog on why a company credit search presented to tie them to ownership of the Pirate Bay is a fake - and an official complaint has now been lodged.  Amongst other things the company that are supposed to have created the search record have no record of making the search...    Is the media industry so desperate for convictions that they are fabricating evidence?  It will be interesting to watch this one...

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party -  Putting Privacy first.

Tuesday 13 October 2009

Secret Affair: This is the time for action (FRA edition)



"This is the time for action, this is the time to be seen"

Sadly I missed the demonstrations on Saturday against the FRA legislation - up for review in the Swedish parliament on Wednesday.  This legislation - which is in force since the first of January this year - allows state monitoring of ALL traffic passing Swedens international borders (mail, telephony, SMS, surfing etc, etc).  There are specific provisions to limit surveillance on traffic originating in Sweden - but all other traffic is fair game.... 

Which means if you don't live in Sweden THIS AFFECTS YOU!  Your right to privacy?  Those nice guys in Riksdagen are about to screw you over....

If that concerns you then write to them and tell them.  Lobby them to respect your privacy and vote against this legislation.

Write today...    write now........  do it.

Contact details here.  Supporting the bill and in need of your persuasion are Moderaterna (m), Kristdemokraterna (kd), Folkpartiet (f) and Centerpartiet (c)... click through for lists of names and mail contact details..


Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party -  Putting Privacy first.

Thursday 8 October 2009

Edwyn Collins & Featured Artist Coalition: trouble with copyright

Cabalamat blogs on The Pirate Party blog about the case of Edwyn Collins - who was barred by MySpace from uploading his own music because he didn't own the copyright - but he does.  The story was also covered in the Guardian but origininates from Edwin's wife and manager Grace on the blog on Edwyn's MySpace page..

According to the Guardian the villians of the piece are Warner Music group - who have been contacted by Grace but months later failed to resolve things.. (It's nowhere explained if Edwyn also owns the copyright on his recordings..)  The savvy Grace also comments "Warner's were one of the lead petitioners in the attempt to put those three stoner lads in Sweden in prison recently, remember."

What the Guardian doesn't mention (nor Cabalamat for that matter) is that Grace's original blog post is a response to the Featured Artist Coalition's "Air statement".  This statement of support for Lily Allen also includes this curious statement:

"Our meeting also voted overwhelmingly to support a three-strike sanction on those who persistently download illegal files, sanctions to consist of a warning letter, a stronger warning letter and a final sanction of the restriction of the infringer’s bandwidth to a level which would render file-sharing of media files impractical while leaving basic email and web access functional."


They are trying to play the nice guy by stopping short of an outright ban - but it misses the point....  Leaving aside whether file-sharing for non commercial use should in fact be an offence -
 
If you commit a crime in the street you are not banned from the street, if you rob a bank you are not banned from banks, and if you commit a crime on the internet you should not be banned from the internet. Moreover, a group punishment - affecting anyone in a household - is inherently unjust. 
 
Besides which.... What level of bandwidth stops you downloading a 3Mbyte .mp3 but let's you happily surf around bandwidth hungry websites?

So basically FAC.  Your position sucks.

Grace hits the point...
"The gig's up. You might as well take a position about when you want the sun to come up in the morning. It's over. Now let's get on with working out a wonderful new way for music lovers to enjoy music for free or for a small subscription that makes it legal and easy to hear ANYTHING and allows the artist to reap the rewards of such freedom of access. Viva la revolucion! "


 
Edwyn ROCKS!.. and get's my best wishes...
 



Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform

Wednesday 7 October 2009

Don't read me, read this

For up to date and informed information on what's happening across the pond with the Patriot Act check out Julian Sanchez' blog.. covering "the intersection of privacy, technology, and politics". 

Latest entries include this video fact check on Fox News reporting on Patriot reforms, and a great round-up of the state of play - which is not so great....

(Discovered through Privacy Digest)



Julian also blogs on this topic at Cato on Liberty.

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party -  Putting Privacy first.

Tuesday 6 October 2009

FRA, 138, Drowning dogs and heavy British Boots...

It's an interesting week in parliament this week... at least for those with an eye for justice and individual rights and privacy. 

In Sweden the FRA legislation (that means state monitoring of all international traffic (voice, mail, sms, email etc) passing Swedens borders is up for review.  It's already on the statute book.. but all it needs is four MPs from the ruling alliance to vote against, or eight to abstain and the law will be torn up.  The stakes are high...  not least as it will be a hot topic for next year's parliamentary elections if the opposition don't succeed in getting it stopped.

Meanwhile, over at the EU discussions on the Telecom Package and the famous amendment 138 come to a head tomorrow with another meeting between ministers and the parliamentary representatives (Piratpartiets MEP Christian Engström among them).  Much to the disgust of the Green group the parliamentary delegation have already agreed not to press ministers on other areas like net neutrality, but still they still want to see the parliaments proposals implemneted - making judicial review a necessary condition for disconnecting people from the Internet.  'Innocent until proven guilty' doesn't sound like such a controversial position now does it?

I've been impressed by the degree of communication both of the issues and the process and progress in the Swedish blogosphere - not least from pirates HAX, Christian and Rick.  Communication even when the Council of Minister's hide their negotiating position behind a 'Confidential' stamp.

Latest from HAX is a report on how the British have been lobbying Eva-Britt Svensson - a left wing MEP - to support their position on cutting people off from the internet without trial. Apparently, according to the Brits it's all a question of child pornography.  Eva-Britt, feminist, and chairman of the equality working party, doesn't agree....

"..it's instead the possibility for powerful capitalist interests within principally the entertainment industry to drive enforcement work, and through Internet suppliers stop those that are copying music and games on the web through e.g The Pirate Bay and similar search engines.  It's all about putting a stop to consumption of culture by those that can't or don't believe they can afford the prices that the industry decides."

If I can steal a quote...  
"When you want to drown a dog you say it has rabies."
                                                          Jean-Pierre Brard (Parti Communiste Français) 
...from the French parliamentary debate on 'HADOPI 2' when the French justice minister started to talk about child pornography.

Update:  the vote on FRA is in fact next week, weds Oct 14th.

Human Rights - Churchills legacy

"Conservative parliamentary candidate Jesse Norman and political columnist Peter Oborne today launch ‘Churchill’s Legacy: The Conservative case for the Human Rights Act’. The short book, published by Liberty in support of the Common Values campaign, recommends that the Conservatives reclaim their historic position as a party of British liberty and the rule of law by dropping their opposition to the Human Rights Act."

Liberty  issued a press release yesterday announcing this new book -which also includes a synopsys of the arguments contained in the book.  Interesting to see the Conservatives moving towards a more humanitarian position.  The site also has a link to the book in .pdf .  I could link to it but then you'd never go look at what else you can find at Liberty now would you..?

Redefining piracy

Christian Engström, Piratpartiet's MEP reports on proceedings at JURI, the EU committee on legal affairs, who have been debating counterfeiting and piracy - specifically this document:
Enhancing the enforcement of intellectual property rights in the internal market 
- which contains plans to set up an 'observatory' on counterfeiting and piracy.

It's an initiative that PP blogger Mikael Nilsson describes as "a comprehensive campaign to, together with the copyright industry, find the best methods to chase and brainwash  the population"

Christian, who sits on JURI as part of his work at the EU parliament, took the chance at the meeting to point out that counterfeiting and piracy are not at all the same thing - and that piracy is is not a judicial term and they in fact mean copyright infringement. 

He's only partly right since (maritime) piracy is defined in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) of 1982 as "any criminal acts of violence, detention, or depredation committed for private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship or aircraft that is directed on the high seas against another ship, aircraft, or against persons or property on board a ship or aircraft."  (It must be true... Wikipedia says so...).  ..which begs the question what does that have to do with intellectual property and copyright?

Christian's point though is that lumping non-commercial file sharing, which Piratpartiet wants to legalise, with counterfeiting, which we don't, muddies the waters -  and really only to the benefit of the copyright industry. 

In the comments to the article 'Daniel' points out that use of the term piracy is most probably because it's stigmatising meaning has taken root.  ..and of course he's right.  Talking about 'Piracy' is intended to imply that something bad is happening and the term can't be considered neutral or impartial. 

Which set me thinking... we need a campaign to take back what is ours.  Conservatives have conservatism.  Liberals have liberalism, and Pirates have piracy.  In a political context Pirates now means the pirate movement, and piracy by analogy properly ought to mean "following pirate ideology" - sharing culture, opposing intellectual monopolies and above all respect for civil and human rights (like privacy).

In which case... an observatory on 'piracy' would be a good thing...  (We need more people looking out for our rights and principles)

Anyone care to sign up?

Immigrant abuse: Uncle Sam, shame on you

If you were living in a police state you might expect at anytime that knock on the door in the dead of night.. and to be dragged off without warning and without charge.. But you live in a democracy right? ...and we have the forces of the law to defend and protect our basic rights.

Not it seems if you live in the US.

Steve Lendman has a long and disturbing entry on how US Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( ICE ) - part of the Department of  Homeland Security - are routinely using police state tactics to detain immigrants in violation of their rights.  (It's that fourth amendment again)
Quoting from a report on how the raids are conducted...

"..a team of heavily armed ICE agents approaching a private residence in the pre-dawn hours, purportedly seeking an individual believed to have committed some civil immigration violation. Agents, armed only with administrative warrants, which do not grant them legal authority to enter private dwellings, then push their way in when residents answer the door, enter through unlocked doors or windows or, in some cases, physically break into homes.
All occupants are then seized and interrogated with no legal authority, and often "no target is apprehended..."
York City Cardozo School of Law Immigration Justice Clinic (IJC)
 
Around 320 000 are put into detention each year highlighting the scale that this abuse can encompass - and yes, they may be illegal immigrants, but as this video explains - they have rights too....



Monday 5 October 2009

Hot air on Global Warming

Cabalamat's Britblog roundup tipped me off to one of those storm in a tea-cup debates on Global Warming...  Steve McIntyre, a long term climate sceptic, has made analysis of tree ring data used as a basis for claiming significant temperature rise in modern times.. and concludes that by substituting other tree ring data the apparent rise disappears. 

I don't have the statistics or knowledge of dendrochronology to know whether his analysis is accurate or pertinent. Whether it is evidence of a 'global warming hoax' I very much doubt (by which I mean whether the results have been skewed deliberately to mislead)- but if this genuinely shows problems in the previous data or analysis it is a valuable contribution to the debate. 

Reading Keith Briffa's response to the post you could almost wonder though if it isn't McIntyre that's guilty of selecting the data to exclude to substantiate his scepticism.  Briffa promises a more detailed review of McIntyre's analysis.  In the meantime RealClimate's response puts the argument into perspective by showing a range of other indicators of long term climate all with the same trend - none of them reliant on the Yamal peninsular tree-ring data.

Getting down to hard facts is important and not easy to do.  Nobody wins and nobody loses by establishing the truth... which is why it's a little sad to see the climosceptic crowing that accompanies this type of report. If someone categorically proves that there is no global warming we will all be able to celebrate...  but don't you think it's time we all started thinking about plan B?

Sampling, Mash-ups.. and copyright

Making music ain't what it used to be.... 

"The ones who are mad to live" have a closer look at how sampling and re-mixing has changed how music is created -  and challenges the relevance of tradional copyright. It includes some interesting embedded video and this succint quote by Johnathan Zittrain, professor of internet law at Harvard Law School.
"..copyright law was written with a particular form of industry in mind. The flourishing of information technology gives amateurs and homerecording artists powerful tools to build and share interesting, transformative, and socially valuable art drawn from pieces of popular cultures. There’s no place to plug such an important cultural sea change into the current legal regime."


Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party -  Working for copyright reform

Sunday 4 October 2009

John Lilburne: Beauty and free thinking


I was delighted today to discover John Lilburne's blog....   He's been dead for 350 years... but what the heck...   great photos and a near endless supply of great quotes. 


Photo:  Freebornjohn #359

Unwarranted Intrusion: On the Fourth Amendment.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

I'm not a great scholar of history, or an expert in American constitutional law - but this last week I discovered the Fourth Amendment - and more sadly, how it is being bent and broken in American today (although I guess I kind of knew that already).

My starting point was Cory Doctorow's piece on Senator Al Franken, reading out the Fourth Amendment and questioning a Department of Justice official whether the Patriot Act provisions for roving wiretaps on unnamed individuals meet the terms of that amendment.  (You can watch the actual exchange on video at the MN Progressive Project).

The moot point here is do you need to name someone to be allowed to tap them - or more to the point to tap the broad spectrum of their friends, relatives and contacts?  This snippet of political theatre highlights how much weight is put on the exact wording of constitutional texts that were written well before the concept of wiretaps was ever thought of.- but texts that in any case establish essential principles.

To get at the spirit of the amendment though we can remember that it was - in part at least - a response to British use of writs of assistance in the 1760s - blanket warrants that gave power to search without needing cause and without even identifying who or where you wanted to search.  Which makes it unsurprising that, alongside the Patriot Act, the FISA Amendment Act - with it's support for warrentless wiretaps - is seen to clearly be in violation of citizens constitutional rights. Attempts to challenge it's constitutional legality have though been blocked (at least for now) because the plaintiffs have no evidence that they are actually being watched...  but as it's a secret government surveillance programme how would you ever know you were under surveillance?!
But that's in America....   we do things differently in Europe right???


EFF on roving wiretaps
Inspector General's report on thousands of abuses of the Patriot act by the FBI
American Civil Liberties Union on FISA Amendment Act
Liberty - death by a thousand cuts

Saturday 3 October 2009

Digital Natives vote Pirate: Andrew Robinson talks to Russia Today



Links: Pirate International, The Pirate Party, Piratpartiet

Marek Edelman: Remembering courage in the face of tyranny

Marek Edelman, has died at the age of 90.

The Beeb report the death of the last surviving leader  from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis in 1943.

"For nearly a month in the spring of 1943 a group of young Jews, armed with pistols and home-made bombs, held off the German army before the ghetto was razed to the ground.

Jewish residents fought for nearly a month before the uprising was crushed. By that time the Nazis had sent 300,000 Jewish residents of the ghetto to the gas chambers at the Treblinka death camp."

Three hundred thousand..... 
 
To take arms in the face of tyranny has my utmost respect..

Thursday 1 October 2009

Standing on the shoulders of giants

"Imagine a world where anyone can instantly access all of the world's scholarly knowledge.... "
The idea that culture and idea's build on those that come before us is not a new one - going far back in time before Isaac Newton's famous use of the 'giants' quote.  What perhaps is new is the ambition to set free the great wealth of knowledge that is generated by our contemporaries and give us access collectively to it's rich resource. 

A small link on Michael Geist's blog takes me to the wonderful  Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics from whence the the quote above comes.  It's a veritable treasure trove on Open Access - with a hoard of useful links and facts.... Like:
  •  that over 30 million scientific publications are now available through Scientific Commons - and..
  • 20% of the world's medical literature is freely available 2 years after publication at PubMedCentral.
Our common legacy is the ideas we leave to those that come after us.  We are the giants that will let our children see further.  But even now the more we share, the more we can achieve.

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party:  Against Intellectual Monopoly