Activism - Falkvinge on Infopolicy

“Pirates are the only hope that culture has left.”

ANNA TROBERG

“Patents are doing massive harm to the tech industry.”

MIKE MASNICK

“File sharing is not a problem that needs to be solved.”

CHRISTIAN ENGSTRÖM

FALKVINGE &CO. ON

INFOPOLICY

Falkvinge on Infopolicy - Home

»

Category archives for: Activism

7

tsa

How To Bypass TSA / Airport Security

Security theatre is dangerous, not only to our civil liberties but also to our individual safety. I am going to outline some of the methods I know which could be used to bypass all TSA (and probably other national equivalents) security restrictions, that way you…

24

email security

EU President, IT Staff Don’t Understand Democracy, Maths, Truth

Last month there were revelations about the EU Parliament IT system, and the arbitrary way in which email blocks on legitimate topics can be implemented with lighting speed. Yesterday, Christian Engstrom MEP, has received a response to his complaint from EU President Martin Schulz. It…

23

Photo of hydra by Mykl Roventine

The Hydra Bay: The Pirate Bay Moves To Norwegian, Catalan Pirate Parties

Late Monday night, two new Pirate Parties – those in Catalunya and Norway - started delivering bandwidth to The Pirate Bay. This follows the extortionate threats placed last week against the Swedish Pirate Party by the Rightousness Alliance (formerly the “Anti-Pirate Bureau”) and multiple actions in…

5

Rack servers

TPB AFK: How The Pirate Bay Is Legally Shielded By The Pirate Party

A new teaser trailer for the upcoming movie TPB AFK – The Pirate Bay, Away From Keyboard – was just released. In the teaser, Peter “Brokep” Sunde describes the cat-and-mouse game between the legal side and technical side, and the rationale for using the Pirate…

7

Accountability

Abandon Integrity, All Ye that Gain Power?

If we had any doubt of the reason we need to be extra vigilant in our work, this month has provided them in spades. But there is one thing that ties everything together, and that is the matter of integrity, and accountability. Through all the…

31

Person being fired, or something

Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal

Early Tuesday morning, the petition to the U.S. Administration to fire Carmen Ortiz reached the prerequisite 25,000 signatures. Carmen Ortiz was the prosecutor that drove the prosecution against Aaron Swartz, which many mean contributed or led to his tragic suicide. The U.S. Administration, by its…

9

LHC's ATLAS detector, with Alpha Geek | Copyright Maximilien Brice, CERN

Alpha Geeks (and Pirates) Explained

For some time, there has been a misunderstanding of how to deal with Pirates, or even just getting their viewpoint. They’re seen as arrogant, hard-headed, brash, and full of wacky ideas. More interestingly, they find it hard to work together smoothly, to find a common…

15

3D printer making some kind of…turtle? I guess?

Good News: US Congressman Is Against DRMing 3D Printers To Stop Them From Making Guns

Last week, US Congressman Steve Israel made some unsettling comments about 3D printers, and how they can be used to make guns. Fearing another luddite legislator, I decided to do something crazy: actually talk to him. Turns out, we don’t have that much to be…

22

Judicial power grab

The Unitary Patent And Why We Should Be Worried

The Unitary Patent hasn’t been getting the attention it deserves. This is because we’re fighting off surveillance, attempts to take over the internet, and three treaties. Oh, and ACTA keeps threatening to come back from the dead in some way, shape or form. Meanwhile, time…

8

Dem_V_Rep

Obama’s Second Term: The Battle For Digital Rights Continues

As Democrats and moderate conservatives like myself rejoice that Mitt Romney didn’t get a chance to wreck America again as Bush Administration II, let’s take some time to look at what might have been, what’s yet to come, and what we’re going to do about…

16

The Corporate Boot Comes Down

The Next Big Battles

Since ACTA was decisively beaten on 4th July 2012, the first time a free trade agreement had been scuppered by the people of EU member nations, the big business lobbyists have taken heed and resolved to change in order to be more successful. Hence the…

13

chart drawing, ending on an upward note

Swedish Pirate Party Surges After File-Sharing Host Facility Raided

Following a police raid on the hosting facility PRQ that coincided with technical problems at the iconic The Pirate Bay, the Swedish Pirate Party is surging in member and activist count. The day before yesterday, the colocation facility PRQ was raided, as reported by TorrentFreak…

30

Christian Engström with flowers for rejecting ACTA

European Parliament Showered With Flowers Over ACTA Rejection

The European Parliament’s mail room looks like a florist’s shop, with bundles of flowers on every flat surface. Hundreds and hundreds. There are flowers being carried by somebody in practically every elevator ride. Those are the inside reports from the European Parliament in the wake…

102

Flowers. Photo by Kanko* (kankan) at Flickr.

Send Flowers To The European Parliament For Rejecting ACTA!

For months, we have pestered the Members of European Parliament with calls, mails, street protests, visits, and even faxes. On July 4, they killed ACTA decisively in a 478-against-39 vote. Now comes the next step: showing our love for doing the right thing. That part…

64

Athlete push-up effort

Our Final Push: ACTA Vote In Ten Days, Mail The European Parliament

Ten days from today, on July 4, the European Parliament will vote on ACTA. This is the end-of-level boss; this is where ACTA lives or dies. We have won in five out of five committees – it is time for one huge final push. Every…

37

Abstract digital image of a letter

ACTA Battle: Send Mail To INTA Delegates!

The final vote on ACTA is approaching. Next week, the responsible committee in the European Parliament – International Trade (INTA) – votes on whether to recommend the destructive treaty for adoption or rejection as a whole. We’re approaching the end-of-level boss fight here, and this…

20

Map of rallies on June 9, 2012

Saturday, We Demand Our Freedom Of Speech And Rejection Of ACTA. We Can Win This.

This Saturday, on June 9, Europeans take to the streets again to drive a clear message home – telling the European Parliament to reject ACTA once and for all. The Internet has not forgotten, despite what lobbyists and corporate shills are hoping for. The Internet…

39

Key Europarl Committees Vote On ACTA May 31 – Contact MEPs Now!

May 31, three key committees in the European Parliament will vote on ACTA. As of this writing, that is tomorrow – by the time you read this, it is less than 24 hours away. The committees voting on ACTA tomorrow are ITRE (the committee for…

14

Image of runner in race: winning, but more pressure needed for final stretch

Europarliament Majority Now Against ACTA; More Pressure Needed

Recently at a press conference, another party group in the European Parliament came out in rejection of ACTA. This time, it marked a significant milestone, as a majority of the party groups in parliament has now said they will reject it. It was the liberal…

37

Red siren light, flashing annoyingly

ACTA: Showdown Imminent, Battle Stations, Battle Stations!

After a heated debate in Brussels today, the responsible committee in the European Parliament has decided to not send ACTA to the European Court of Justice, but to press on and make a final decision right away. This means that the final battle of ACTA…

9

mapofthenet

The Revolution Starts Now

….or at least soonish…. Today in one and a half hours I will be walking into a bank and asking for $15,000 in loans to give the startup funding to my organization Patriots of the Digital Revolution. We will then use that money to invest…

31

encrypt

Stop Being Lazy: Encrypt/Sign Your Email

Most people think about their own protections when they sign/encrypt their email, what people don’t consider is the privacy and protection of their friends and family. If your mail is intercepted or someone spoofs your address to send an email to your friends, your lack…

23

This lady is a hacker

Reclaim The Internet In Under A Minute

After you read this post and follow its instructions, you will be able to show how all the money and energy being spent on censoring the Internet was pointless. Plus, give yourself a more free web browsing experience. As Rick pointed out in a recent…

16

Your Face is a Saxophone characters. Their faces are a cigarette, a lightbulb, a bottle opener, and a camera. Your face, however, is still a saxophone.

Why You Should Support Your Face is a Saxophone

The copyright industry is not going quietly. The legitimacy of its monopolist and consumerist practices are still upheld by policymakers and panicking creators who haven’t seen any real alternative in action. I humbly submit my silly cartoon about people with inanimate objects for heads as…

49

Map of planned freedom-of-speech rallies, against ACTA, in Europe

Today, Sweden Rallies Against ACTA And For Freedom Of Speech. We Can Win This.

Just look at this map. I’ve never seen anything like it in terms of people all across Europe demanding their freedom of speech and being angry against backroom corporativist deals that steals their most basic civil liberties. Today, Sweden rallies for freedom of speech, a…

12

ettu

How Filesonic Just Stabbed Us In The Back

The US media industries along with their cronies in the United States Federal Government are no longer fighting with the weight of law against the process of sharing culture… they are using fear based tactics that have no legal grounds and are designed entirely to…

29

Silhouette of a temple with statues on roof overlooking yard

Legal Ramifications Of File-Sharing Now Being Religious Worship

With yesterday’s story of the Missionary Church of Kopimism being an approved religion in Sweden, one wonders what the practical effects are. It’s not like religion gives immunity from the law. Oh, wait, it is like that. But anyway. Before I go into the legal…

54

Man reading from a seemingly important book

File Sharing Approved As An Official Religion In Sweden

After a year of bureaucratic struggles, the Missionary Church of Kopimism is now an official religion in Sweden, enjoying the constitutional protection of Freedom of Religion. Information is holy to the church, and copying its sacrament. The Missionary Church of Kopimism is a religious institution…

12

Occupy Wall Street. Photo by _PaulS_ at FlickR. CC-BY-SA.

Impressions From Occupy Wall Street

While in New York City, I reserved some time in my schedule to head down to Zuccotti Park and speak to people at Occupy Wall Street, sort of just to sync views of the world and see if we would connect on some level. That…

2

wien_nb_prunksaal_12

The Internet’s Library

When you suffer writers block, I find the best solution is to rip off someone else’ work (and take someone’s work who is promoting a product that you own), this is an article written by aeliusblythe (a commenter here) about The Ultimate Ebook Library (TUEBL).…

26

People reading the Rules

If You Play By The Rules, You Will Always Lose

People sometimes ask me if I have a motto to live by. I have several, but one stands out. I have posted it to the inside of my front door, so that I see it every time I leave my house. It reads, “If you…

18

Soviet T-34 turret. Photo by TwentyFourZero at FlickR.

My Two Heroes: Arkhipov and Petrov

I’m sometimes asked if I have any heroes or other people I look up to. I do; I have two. Most people have never heard of them, and yet they have both shaped the world more than any American president, Chinese chairman, European commissioner or…

4

Photo of people wearing Anonymous masks in a way that doesn't actually cover their faces. I'm definitely not in this photograph. Not at all. I swear.

Anonymous: From /b/ In-Joke to Sociopolitical Philosophy?

Anonymous has always been growing, changing, and redefining itself. Some suggest it may now be expanding beyond hacktivism and identity-hiding, and into an ideology. Perhaps, one can be Anonymous without being literally anonymous. For a while, I’d been noticing a trend in the way people…

6

Photo of a man putting up the peace sign in front of the Occupy Wall Street crowd.

This is What Democracy Looks Like

On the day the occupation of Wall Street began, one chant from the crowd stood out for me: “This is what democracy looks like!” In six simple words, it summed up what this revolutionary action was all about. I’ve been to protests and rallies before.…

11

hoistthecolours

The MPAA and Japanese Whalers

Travis McCrea As an environmental activist and a patriot of our Digital Revolution, I have a unique ability to compare what is happening within the environmental movement to what is happening in the Digital Revolution. What I have noticed recently is how similar the issues…

22

A Swarm in Nature: shoals of fish

Swarmwise: What Is A Swarm?

A Swarm is a new kind of organization, made possible by available and affordable mass communication. Where it used to take hundreds of full-time employees to organize 100,000 people, today that can be done — and is done — by somebody in their spare time…

3

People standing on large puzzle pieces coming together

Swarmwise: Presenting Your Idea To The World

Ok, so you have an idea. How do you gather a swarm around it? A traditional method would be to go about an advertising campaign to generate interest. Swarmwise, two words are in order: Forget. It. If your idea doesn’t generate enthusiasm on its own,…

5

Join The Resistance: Part 2

Travis McCrea. No matter if you are in the camp which believes the best resistance is non-violence and waiting to be attacked first, or if you feel the only way to make people’s opinion come to the middle is by having extremists make the “radicals”…

43

LawfulGood-LawfulEvil

Lawfully Good vs Lawfully Evil

There’s a big difference in how activists and bureaucrats view the world. In the view of bureaucrats, anything lawful is right by definition. In contrast, activists don’t care whether something is lawful, they care whether it’s good and just. Bureaucrats generally do not understand the…

9

page_protestor

Girl With Guts

Travis McCrea Trying to fix corruption is hard enough, but when your leader can do whatever he wants for five years and only was elected by a small fraction of a nations citizens… it makes people want to lash out. That’s where our story begins.…

74

Anonymous. Photo by Vincent Diamante, CC-BY-SA.

I Love Anonymous!

More and more, I am seeing Anonymous and The Pirate Party mentioned in the same sentence. In historical perspective, this is for good reasons. Make no mistake about it: I love Anonymous and deeply respect and admire their courage, commitment, and ability to deliver time…

15

PoliceFeet

German Pirate Party’s Servers Confiscated In Police Raid — Two Days Before Election

Around lunch today, the German Pirate Party (Piratenpartei) sent out an alarming tweet that spread like wildfire. “Our servers are offline due to police intervention. Do not panic, this is our turn. More information to follow.” The German police had taken the Piratenpartei out — two…

3

mistkae

Copyright Industry Picks on Wrong Target: Parents of Pirate Candidate

In what can only be described as an epic PR fail for the copyright industry, they have threatened the parents of the most successful candidate of the French Pirate Party, Maxime Rouquet. All of a sudden, they have chosen an adversary who is both knowledgeable,…

18

ChristianFundamentalist

Copyright as a Fundamentalist Religion

An advantage of doing a lot of original research on copyright, and the history of copyright in particular, is that you start seeing very strong parallels to previous power struggles in society. I frequently say in my keynotes that there is nothing new under the…

27

USB stick resting on a laptop keyboard

How to Penetrate ANY Company or Agency

Penetrating an organization’s shell security and accessing its internal data, quite possibly permanently and with the capability to taint or poison it, is ridiculously easy. If managers knew how easy it was, they would take immediate actions, the first of which would probably be to…

22

Berlin Wall, photo by siyublog@flickr

Tear Down This Firewall!

The copyright industry has discovered it. Now Arab League dictatorships are discovering it. Tunisia has fallen. Egypt is burning. Yemen, Albania, Sudan, Algeria, and Syria are on the brink of catching fire, a crimson glow in the night. When people have access to networking, they…

5

Livestock farm, herd of sheep

An Inspiring Tale Of Unruly Sheep

Longtime reader, activist, and sheep farmer Anders Paulsson sent me this inspiring story that I just had to share: On our farm in Sweden, we host herds of 150–300 Norwegian forest sheep. Their grazing area is about 25 hectares, split by a fenced-in grass landing…

5

Low-Orbit-Ion-Cannon

Social Dynamics of the Low Orbit Ion Cannon

Yesterday’s post about group behavior when faced with changing conditions elicited some response. Despite my not having mentioned the ongoing attacks anywhere in the entire text, my comment field filled with people defending Anonymous. No, not so much defending Anonymous, actually, as… maybe feeling uneasy…

16

Imorgon börjar akt 2 i Pirate Bay-rättegången

Godkväll, pirater. Nu är det åtta dagar sedan valet, och vi börjar så smått komma igång igen med allt som ska göras. Vi visste att de andra riksdagspartierna verkligen hade ansträngt sig för att hålla allt som rörde våra frågor borta från tiden mellan EU-valet…

5

Framtiden avgörs varje dag, året om

Det här är nittonde och sista dagen i min gästbloggsturné som jag under september månad kört på olika piratpartisters bloggar. Jag har försökt komma med goda råd till aktiva inom piratpartiet om saker som kan underlätta valkampanjandet. Förhoppningsvis har det hjälpt en del. Exakt hur…

On Facebook

This publication is protected under the Constitution of the Kingdom of Sweden. Any problem you have with this publication remains exclusively yours. Accountable publisher: Rick Falkvinge.

All text on this site is Public Domain / CC0 unless specifically noted and credited otherwise. Copy, remix, and inspire. (Troll policy.)
Log in | Original theme design by Gabfire themes (heavily modified)