Keynote at Internet Society, Frankfurt

Evangelism

I had the honor and the privilege of keynoting at the Internet Society’s INET meeting in Frankfurt this Wednesday. The topic of the day was “Challenges of the Net” and my key points were three:

One, we can learn from history. Powerful people have always used their power to keep their power. They would rather see the net crippled than let their power shift to the masses.

Two, we need business resilience and judicial resilience for the net. The easiest way to achieve this is by having many, many actors, so that it’s impossible to go after them all. We need to stop having five ISPs to choose from and need to start having 50,000 meshlinks.

Three, the messenger immunity is in grave danger. Some lobby groups are getting into law that the net only needs to carry “lawful” content. But that requires watching what we do online, which is the closest anybody has come to mind reading. Sorting this into legal and illegal is therefore also the closest we have come to thoughtcrime.

Oh! Don’t miss the question in the first minute when I open by asking for a show of hands about how many have heard of the Swedish Pirate Party before, and then move on to ask how many have heard about any other Swedish political party. I usually open like that — just to get off to a good start, and besides, it’s fun.

Some media coverage in Heise Online and at the Wall Street Journal.

You can get the slide deck here, if you like.

Attributions for the images used:

Printing press — woodcut, out of copyright.
Rosetta Stone — from skene@FlickR.
Battlestar Galactica poster — courtesy BSG.
Catholic Church illustration — from Wikipedia, photographer Andreas F. Borchert.
Scribe — woodcut, out of copyright, copied from TorrentFreak.
Printing press again — woodcut, out of copyright.
Gallows — from elstruthio@FlickR.
Mubarak joke — unknown, saw first from @Kyrah.
Seagull joke — unknown, floating around the net for long time.
Polaroid camera — from ziopaopao@FlickR
Anonymous — from Wikipedia, photographer Vincent Diamante.
Newspapers — stock image
Train — from Wikipedia, photographer Mike Crowe

You've read the whole article. Why not subscribe to the RSS flow using your favorite reader, or even have articles delivered by mail?

About The Author: Rick Falkvinge

Rick is the founder of the first Pirate Party and is a political evangelist, traveling around Europe and the world to talk and write about ideas of a sensible information policy. He has a tech entrepreneur background and loves whisky.

Book Falkvinge as speaker?

Liked This?

By participating in the discussion and posting here, you are placing your contribution in the public domain (CC0). If you are quoting somebody else, credit them.

Contributors take own responsibility for their comments.

Razor (@razorfeeds) (@razorfeeds)

February 25, 2011 - 06:37

Falkvinge: Keynote at Internet Society, Frankfurt http://bit.ly/fp2vYJ

RESPOND TO THIS

Falkvinge (@Falkvinge) (@Falkvinge) (@Falkvinge)

on #infopolicy: Keynote at Internet Society, Frankfurt http://goo.gl/fb/E2dPW

Falkvinge

February 25, 2011 - 05:40

Keynote from Internet Society’s INET conference posted: http://falkvinge.net/2011/02/25/keynote-… #inetfra #infopolicy Don’t miss the first question, at 1:30.

3.1

SamirAllioui

February 25, 2011 - 05:48

@Falkvinge Will you be in Friedrichshafen next month? #PPI conference ? Goodmorning by the way ! o7

RESPOND TO THIS

Piratpartiet Live! (@piratbloggar) (@piratbloggar)

February 25, 2011 - 06:47

Falkvinge on Infopolicy: Keynote at Internet Society, Frankfurt:
I had the honor and the privilege of key… http://tinyurl.com/4kqux2z

Tweets that mention Keynote at Internet Society, Frankfurt - Falkvinge on Infopolicy -- Topsy.com

February 25, 2011 - 07:04

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Falkvinge, Falkvinge, Falkvinge, lillebrorsan, Samir Allioui and others. Samir Allioui said: RT @Falkvinge: Keynote from Internet Society's INET conference posted: http://is.gd/paVMdA #inetfra #infopolicy Don't miss the first que … [...]

Martin

February 25, 2011 - 14:45

Bra!

Urban Sundstrom (@urbansundstrom) (@urbansundstrom) (@urbansundstrom)

February 26, 2011 - 07:59

RT @falkvinge Keynote at Internet Society, Frankfurt http://is.gd/HG5cwx #inet #inetfra #infopolicy #isoc

Jack

February 26, 2011 - 20:20

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant Rick; I love your idea to increase the diversity of net connectivity to a wide-ranging global flood preventing judicial control over the present limited forms of “carrier”.

7.1

Rick Falkvinge

March 1, 2011 - 09:38

Thanks, Jack! To some degree, this is already happening (TOR etc), but I believe it needs to accelerate.

RESPOND TO THIS

March 1, 2011 - 08:03

The intro music repeats at 10:30, making it hard to hear the talk.

8.1

Rick Falkvinge

March 1, 2011 - 09:37

Thank you. This appears to have been a rendering error. (Actually, it was the end credits, not the intro.) I’ll see if I still have the raw data to perhaps proper the video.

RESPOND TO THIS