Behind closed doors - more on ACTA

 Michaels Geist's update on the latest discussions on ACTA brought forward this pithy comment.

"Our silly cops here are concerned with trivial things like gang murders, armed holdups, stabbings, crystal meth, tracking rapists etc. I'm sure they would really appreciate being diverted to hunt down unlicensed Mickey Mouse dolls, and infringing mp3s of the latest Metallica album."

The topic under discussion was criminal penalties for copyright offences... 

When governments get together behind closed doors to protect the interests of big business against the winds of change - and aginst the interests of their voters - you start to wonder where democracy went...

Can't we please just cut the terms for copyright back to something sensible (thereby simulating more new work, instead of letting companes live off back catalogs) and decriminilise non-commercial file sharing. 

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party -  Working for copyright reform.

Democracy & the Internet

Democracy and liberty are things we take for granted... take a moment to watch this clip from PPUK and think about what's at stake as governments seek to control who does what on the net. Protecting net neutrality protects our democracy.

Privacy first: The Pirate Party and Piratpartiet working to protect your rights on the net.

Divine injustice in the ballot box

HAX... Henrik Alexandersson.. a favourite stopping off point of mine for Swedish political gossip has a recent blog piece on electoral fraud in Sweden - speculating on whether the irregularities reported in the recent EU elections could have changed the outcome. An interesting topic for debate. Democracy hinges on the honesty and integrity of the voting process.

Interesting.. but not in the same league as this statement from Iran's Guardian Council reported by The Guardian on complaints of election rigging in Iran:

"Statistics provided by the candidates, who claim more than 100% of those eligible have cast their ballot in 80-170 cities are not accurate - the incident has happened in only 50 cities."

Read that again... in fifty cities the number of votes cast exceeds the number of eligible voters. (...by up to 40% I gather) That in my book is vote rigging of epidemic proportions ...and yet this seems to be considered a cause for reassurance....

Islam, in my understanding, has close ties between religion and politics - the state of the Islamic community reflects on the spiritual well-being of it's members. Quoting from the preface to Karen Armstrong's "Islam, A Short History"

"...the Quran gave them (muslims) a historical mission. Their chief duty was to create a just community in which all members, even the most weak and vulnerable, were treated with absolute respect. The experience of building such a society would give them intimations of the divine because they would be living in accordance with god's will"

Absolute respect is not expressed by stuffing ballot boxes... it is fundamentally repressive and unjust. ... and for moslems presumably not just morally, but spiritually wrong. And in this case condoned it seems not just by politicians but by spiritual leaders too. Double jeopardy.

It is a dilemma. What do you do when those leading you to a just society deliver injustice instead? How far are you prepared to go to stand up for justice and respect for all?.. and society's spiritual well-being?

What would you do, if your salvation depended on it?

Footnote: the original press conference explains the overflow to voters voting outside of the area where they live. A practice permitted in in presidential elections.

Fighting repression - a how to guide...

There are times and places where you don't want your views to be registered... but you still want to make them known?

Today's trail started off with an article on anonymous blogs - after , 'Nightjack', a policeman was 'outed' by the Times for blogging about his work . This raises questions about what was really in the public interest; naming the blogger or letting him continue anonymously making public details about his work. .. and highlights the difference between anonymous bloggers and journalistic sources where the press work hard to keep them anonymous. (In fact in Sweden anonymity for journalists sources is a right protected in the constitution)

That led me through an article on how to blog anonymously to this excellent article on "How To Communicate Securely in Repressive Environments" which with current world events uppermost in mind I thought deserved to be easier to find ... although it might look better in your browser if the link says 'Little known facts about the Isle of Man'. ;-)

And if you are reading this and genuinely need the information there you have my utmost sympathy and support.

Remembered: Chinese Internet Maintenance Day

"It was twenty years ago today Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play.."



In the last twenty years China has seen huge economic growth and vast improvements in the wealth and health of individual citizens. But that is not what we are remembering today (or more properly, yesterday)... The clip above is an iconic image of the democracy protests in China in 1989 - but search in Youtube and you will see lots of more graphic and disturbing images of the suppression of the democracy movement there that saw hundreds of protesters killed and many more imprisoned.

That was twenty years ago - and by all accounts an event that within China the authorities try hard to see forgotten. It has been and remains a taboo subject there. In the run up to the anniversary a number of channels of web expression have been blocked... including sites like Twitter and Hotmail. It's hard to imagine living in a country where the state manipulates what news and media we can get access too..

But it seems that China's netizens are nevertheless making their own protest known - with a flush of sites declared off the air for 'Chinese Internet Maintenance Day'.

Freedom of expression, freedom (of unmonitered) communications and a freedom of (uncensored) information. These are not things to take for granted....

Swedish readers might also want to check out Rick Falkvinges blog: Himmelska Fridens Torg, Sverige, 2029


Defending democracy: Vote Piratpartiet for the EU parliament!

Voting shennanigans

Britain, as half the world knows has an antiquated electoral system (at least for parliament). You divide the country up into small constituencies, and each one votes one candidate to parliament on a first 'past the post' basis. It's a system that guarantees that the political representation in parliament bears no resemblance to the spread of political opinion in the country.

Voting though is simple.. you get a piece of paper with all the candidates listed and you cross against the one you are voting for.... ALL the candidates.

I mention this for one reason - to explain how farcical it is to me to see the recent debate on alleged election fraud here in Sweden. Each party has a whole list of candidates, so there is a separate ballot paper for each party... You just pick the one you fancy and stick it in the box.

And the state takes care of all the printing and distribution so that's OK. Unless you're a small party and then you have to print and distribute your own...

And then when the voter gets there they check over the assembled ballots and choose. Of course it's bad luck if the electoral officials chose to leave your party's blank ballots on a little table off to the side - or thought they would just ditch yours at the end the day (advance balloting is taking place now). If no one sees your ballot papers you're not likely to get many votes..

Sloppy practice, or a bit of subtle electoral bias? Both Piratpartiet and Feministiska Initiativ have cried foul - hopefully loud enough for abnormalities to be fewer in the last days of the campaign. Piratpartiet have in any case taken a practical and mature response to this risk and drawn up a clear summary of what the law says, and how to escalate.

And purely by coincidence, Sweden is to get independant external election observers for the first time ever.....

Unfurl the Jolly Roger

"Every breath you take, And every move you make, Every bond you break,

Every step you take. I'll be watching you..." The Police

Every mail you send, every telephone call you make, each SMS, who you talk to, where you are... logged

Where you surf to... logged

Where you drive.. logged

Mails, phonecalls and texts ....monitored.

State spyware on your PC recording every keystroke...

I don't want to live in a society where people live under constant surveillance... but sadly right now that's the way it is going. But me saying 'no' isn't going to stop things.. it needs a bigger awareness of what is being done in our name. It needs people to wake up and say STOP...

And if I want that to happen I need to be part of making it happen.

...and that is why today I became a Pirate.

By supporting Piratpartiet I support an organisation that puts the rights of the individual first, and will not comprimise those rights to fight terrorism, or organised crime, or to benefit specific commercial interésts. You don't defend democracy by putting it in fetters....

"Be the change you want to see in the world."

Mahatma Gandhi

Liberté? Egalité? Fraternité?

France consumated it's marriage to the media industry this week with approval of the Hadopi law allowing internet users to be cut off from the Internet without going through the courts.. based purely on accusations from the media industry. To add insult to injury people having their internet service withdrawn are still required to pay their subscription... (if that bit made it to the final legislation?)

Details seem hard to find - but apparently the only way to prove your innocence is to accept the installation of government spyware. And failing to accept installation of the software will be taken as evidence of guilt.

Innocent until proven guilty? The right to remain silent? The right to a fair trial even....

It's scary how basic rights and principles arebeing trampled over in the rush to clamp down on copyright infringement. And curious that when half the Internet users in France are breaking current copyright law that the politicians haven't wondered whether they shouldn't be looking at whether the law (and the principles behind it) are due for some serious reform...

The ray of light in this particular dark tunnel is that this legislation conflicts with recent EU decisions to forbid exclusion from the internet without judicial review.. French MEP Guy Bono has said he will ask the European Commission to instigate a lawsuit against France if the law is not first thrown out by a French constitutional court.

My commiserations also to Jérôme Bourreau-Guggenheim who was sacked from his job working with internet innovation within French broadcaster TF1 after an email written to his MP opposing the bill ended up with his employer (after having been forwarded to the culture ministry). Let's add free speech to the endangered species list.......

This is not the party you are looking for..

Aftonbladet have a nifty link to a 30 question test that will map your political views and compare them to EU political parties - either those where you live - or in Europe as a whole. There's just one small thing they forgot to mention. In the Aftonbladet version of the test they have cut three Swedish parties off the list- which to say, they have actively edited out three of the parties standing in next month's election -ostensibly because they don't currently hold seats in the EU parliament.

If you want to try the uncensored version of the test you can find it over at EU Profiler. Jolly good fun it is too.... apparently I ought to be voting for the Luxembourg Communist Party!

(Oh yes.. the three missing parties: Sverige Demokraterna, Feministisk Initiativ & Piratpartiet)

In defence of privacy...

If you've been following things you'll know that Bahnhof - a Swedish broadband operator - have declared that they will be deleting information on customers IP addresses. Yesterday Tele2 followed suit citing customer demand as their reason - although they have a legal obligation to not store personal information longer than is necessary (which other operators don't seem to have noticed).

Peter Danowski - a representative for the media lobby organisation IFPI - sees it as being motivated by filesharing traffic being a large income source for operators (He's obviously never heard of fixed rate tariffs). However in a further comment which has raised some eyebrows here he is reported as saying that if the operators don't toe the line then parliament will have to introduce tougher laws.. which kind of begs the question of who is running parliament these days?

Sadly with EU laws in the pipeline to register all telecom traffic there isn't actually an if in his statement - which makes the Tele2 position only a temporary victory in the fight to retain privacy for the individual. More's the pity.

Internet news: don't tell the British...

Following up on France's continuing democratic farce I went to the BBC news site to see what they had to say on Hadopi...  ..and was a little surprised to find not a single hit on their search engine. (Though the link below is to an article in the guardian.. someone is awake!)

But I'm still trying to understand exactly what the democratic process is over there in France - Hadopi -  legislation targeting copyright misuse on the Internet - passed by 12 votes to 4 - but now, as far as I can tell, the same legislation has been rejected by 21 votes to 15 in a vote just before Easter.  Again, most of the 577 deputies in the National Assembly had gone home.  

A little ironic that :-D
It seems that what is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander...

Speak up for liberty

"Vi kommer att bli rädda och det är djävligt obehagligt att vara rädd. Men det finns bara ett medel. Hur rädda vi än blir får vi inte tystna.

Tystnar vi blir världen totalitär.  Då går demokratin under"

Anders Widén, forfattare, writes on the threat to democracy -  of laws that hand over our privacy to the state - or worse, to private interests in search of profit.

"We are going to be scared and it's bloody unncomfortable to be scared.  But there is only one way. However scared we are we can't be silent.
If we are silent the world will be totalitarian. Then democracy goes under."

Anders belongs in this quote...

"The foundations of our liberty reside in highly energized and focused minds that insist upon their independence. There are no shortcuts, no structures or doctrines that can be erected, no hallowed documents to be revered, to save us the effort of continually challenging those who would presume to exercise authority over our lives."
— Butler Shaffer

Or as George Orwell put it..

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."

Well said that man!

Levellers Day 2009

"On 17 May 1649, three soldiers were executed on Oliver Cromwell’s orders in Burford churchyard, Oxfordshire. They belonged to a movement popularly known as the Levellers, with beliefs in civil rights and religious tolerance."

The 35th annual Leveller's day will be held in Burford, Oxfordshire on May 16th. This year's theme is "The Energy Poverty Crisis"

Leveller's day is an assembly and procession in Burford to debate, listened to music and remembered the Levellers and the importance of holding on to ideals of justice and democracy.

A bit of a shame it's such a long way to go....

Democracy is dead - a French farce

"France is to press ahead with its campaign to bar surfers who download files illegally from accessing their broadband accounts. Under new laws which were introduced by Culture Minister Christine Albanel, a new state agency to be called the High Authority for Copyright Protection and Dissemination of Works on the Internet, or Hadopi, will be set up to track pirates.

The anti-piracy agency was introduced as part of a new raft of legislation designed to encourage responsible use of the internet."

The French National assembly passed the so called Hadopi legislation by 12 votes to 4. Breaking with conventional procedure the vote was taken without prior notification at the end of the debate on thursday - at 22:45 at night..... when most of the 577 delegates to the assembly had already gone home. That's democracy?!?

Maybe they should be looking into responsible use of the legislature instead???