Reflections - 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

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Category archives for: Reflections

26

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After Cyprus, New Tolls For The Euro

After the attempted tolls on bank savings in Cyprus for saving the Euro, a new kind of tolls can be heard in the distance for the currency. The fundamental trust in the currency as a store of value has been broken, according to multiple signs…

11

Buskers - CC image by blueroy on Flickr

Artists: We’re Not Salespeople, We’re Street Performers

My fellow artists, we need to talk. We’re all starving, our fans are starving, and life just sucks for all of us. The only way we’re going to make a living as entertainers is to sit back, cool our jets, and take a reality check.…

9

Beggar - CC photo by Flickr user jmennens

I’m Sorry I Could Only Afford To Pirate Your Album

Hey there, indie artist. I just read your blog post about how you wish people wouldn’t pirate your music. Then I listened to the included free track which, evoking shades of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” mused about a future world where there were no more mean,…

28

Classic image of criminal/robber

Why Do Copyright Monopolists Think They Can Just Steal Somebody Else’s Work?

Copyright monopolists insist on the idea of controlling the fruits of other people’s labor, such as when other people copy a particular file. This attitude is offensive, insulting, and antithetical to a free market. The famous philosopher John Locke once published the idea that a…

11

Taboo game cards - CC photo by Flickr user Geekyteacher

Let’s Play Taboo When Discussing Politics

Let’s play a game: get a friend to guess the word “baseball” without saying “game,” “sport,” “pitcher,” “catcher,” or “batter.” That means you have to think pretty creatively about baseball, right? This is how the party game Taboo works. What if we played Taboo when…

16

Gento Penguins on Falklands/Malvinas Islands. Photo by chrispearson72 at FlickR

When Pirate Comradeship Beats Old Grudges

On December 18th, 2012, the UK’s Pirate Party proxy to The Pirate Bay was shut down. In resonance with the Internet’s spirit, two more, belonging to Pirate Parties, sprang up: one from Luxembourg and one from Argentina. With that last one, I saw thirty years…

20

Vague concept of code

Of Course Kids Can Code. I Did.

There’s a highly-rated comment on Reddit right now describing how third-graders can’t write real program code. That’s horrendously wrong, not to say condescending. I know for a fact that third-graders can code: by third grade, I was writing self-modifying 6502 Assembler code. I’m tired of…

18

Euro coins

Saving The Euro In Four Easy, Unaccountable Steps

With four simple actions, the Euro can be temporarily saved. There’s not even a political decision involved; all of these four actions can be taken by the executive European branch and its agencies without involving accountable politicians. At the introduction of the Euro, The United…

41

Colorful and diverse peppers on a farmers' market

A Better Definition Of “Non-Commercial”

There is an ongoing discussion about the next generation of Creative Commons licenses, and the “Non-commercial” licenses may be dropped – the licenses that allow you to publish something for free distribution provided you don’t make money distributing it. This is a bit of an…

24

Beakers full of sciencey-looking science liquid, probably being used by scientists to do science. SCIENCE!!

Hypothesis/Theory/Law: The Importance of Explaining Things Clearly

“First it’s a hypothesis, then it’s a theory, then it’s a law.” At first I wasn’t sure how such drivel ended up finding its way into grade school science classes, until I discovered actual scientists — with real Ph.D.s — seemingly corroborating it. That’s because…

74

Hard disc with deliberately damaged connector

To Be Esteemed, Be Useful

“To Be Esteemed, Be Useful”. A premise so simple and sound, it was one of the earliest mottos of the United States, appearing on their coinage of 1792. Sadly, it seems that this principle is ignored in the intellectual-property reform circuit. I see a lot…

4

Stenciled spraypaint on wall saying "The Writing On The Wall". Photo by duncan at Flickr, CC-BY-NC.

Tomorrow, When The Revolution Didn’t Come

Most people who hear the words The Pirate Party tend to react to the first part, Pirate. Positive, negative, or with that kind of mellow but friendly curiosity that invites further conversation; being a pirate makes other people react. Fewer people react to the latter part, party. This…

153

Gun lying on surface, with slide retracted, beside a used shooting target with ten holes near bullseye center

Do We Really Have To Prepare For The Fourth Box?

As I watch the legislative abominations named SOPA, PIPA, and NDAA follow the lead of the DMCA and the Patriot Act in the United States, I realize that the worst possible scenario for civil liberties appears to actually be materializing. The internal talk within the…

11

Pirates learning place

The Teachers’ Guild – A Short Story From a Parallel Universe

Imagine a world, in which when you teach something to someone the knowledge is considered your “intellectual property”. Your students are not permitted to teach the things they have learned from you to anyone else, neither for money, nor even for free. To become a…

3

Prometheus-16x9

Lessons On The Copyright Monopoly From Greek Mythology

As Prometheus brought man the gift of fire in Greek mythology, carrying it down Mount Olympus on a large fennel stalk against Zeus’ will, he was horribly punished — a giant eagle would eat his liver each day, to have it regrow at night. This…

15

Oh my god it's Steve fgsfdin Jobs!!!

Let’s Talk About Steve Jobs, Because Everyone Else Is

Zacqary Adam Green. Steve Jobs’ resignation from Apple has caused the Internet’s collective head to explode into several trillion pieces. The resulting gory splatter is a treasure trove of tributes and travesties, incessant babbling about the legacy — good or bad — of the man…

44

Big group of happy diverse people

Is “Empowerment” The Core Word Of The Pirate Ideology?

Since stepping down from the leadership of the Swedish Pirate Party, I have tried to grasp the big picture. Trying to summarize the new lines of conflict in one marketable word isn’t easy, but having talked to brilliant people all over the world certainly helps.…

9

Young woman with a happy tear.

Every Day, Something I Find Online Brings Me To Tears

One of the best descriptions I have found of the Internet, is that it is an amplification of every aspect of human nature. There is joy, laughter, deceit, love, sharing, friendship, jealousy, and competition online — everything a human can feel, can be found on…

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…

30

Google Plus - screenshot from introduction video, courtesy Google

Google Just Myspaced Facebook

So after much hubbub, Google launched its fourth attempt at social networking, after the fails of Buzz, Wave, and Orkut. As invites to the semi-closed trial were being screamed for all over the net yesterday, I started to play with it, and have three lasting…

22

Content!

This is Not Content; This is a Blog Post

This is not content; this is a blog post. You are not consuming this blog post. It is not being depleted by you so that it will never be available to anyone ever again. Instead, perhaps you are reading it on a large computer screen.…

22

Pirate Party protest, by kenny_lex@Flickr

Is the Pirate Party Serious?

In 2006, when the Swedish Piratpartiet was founded, a dismissive reaction would have been only natural. The Pirate Party was setting off for uncharted waters, proposing an approach to national and international politics that was unique and unusual. But how well do the most basic…

16

Babel

Google Translate Should Get Peace Prize

Our leaders frequently demonize other humankins. We are told that they are fundamentalist crazy, that they are born with soldier boots on and have the rhythm of marching in their blood. That they want to destroy us, our way of life, and we must go…

31

Tunnel with a light source at the far end

Streaming is the Copyright Industry’s Approaching Train at the End of the Tunnel

The copyright industry is under the belief that “streaming” will solve all of their problems with “downloading”. Rather, I predict that it will be the copyright industry’s undoing, for three distinct reasons. Streaming is more a legal concept than a technical one, it changes who…

9

Very old picture from the Library at Alexandria

The Library of Alexandria 2.0

In ancient times, there was a library in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. Over the centuries, it had built a collection of all of humanity’s knowledge and culture at the time. While only accessible to the people willing and capable to travel to Alexandria, it…

6

ValueCollapse

Future Market Value of Voice, Storage: Exactly €0

The ongoing debate on net neutrality among mobile phone carriers is amazing, and shows just how nonfunctioning that market is. I’m referring to whether they will “allow” telephony over IP and mobile internet, bypassing the SS7 standard telephony stack. The future market value of voice…

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…

33

LawOrder

Not Rocket Science: Same Laws Online, Offline

What the Pirate Party demands isn’t rocket science. We are demanding an end to the Wild West treatment of the Internet. We are demanding that the same laws that have applied offline for centuries also apply online. What’s boggling the mind is how that can…

18

Controller

The Ongoing Erosion of Ownership

Entertainment is being used as justification to erode ownership, or even cancel it outright. There is a very disturbing trend where you don’t own the things that you buy — the companies that sold them to you keeps claiming ownership even after the money has…

12

Newspapers

There Are Three Parties To Copyright

When discussing copyright, things are not as simple as strengthening or weakening copyright, unless you also specify for whom. There are three parties involved in copyright. It is quite possible to share 98% of the problem description, like the Pirate Party does with the Association…

3

Wallpeek

Happy new 1984

Last year, I wrote about New Year’s Eve of 1983. Since then, things have gone horribly fast in the wrong direction: Authorities have been seizing domain names on mere accusations. Powerful interests are demanding censorship of inconvenient information. Blanket and secret censorship is being introduced…

20

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Telekom- och kabel-TV-industrin ska inte subventioneras för bredbandsutbyggnad

Jag sitter på en konferens i Barcelona just nu som handlar om hur man får bredband till alla, och vilka prioriteringar man ska ha. Det som slår mig är att det framför allt är telekom och kabel-TV som är här, plus en handfull myndighetsbyråkrater. I…

13

Därför ska man rösta pirat – ur ett folkhemsperspektiv

Piratpartiet är idag det enda parti som står upp för den s.k. “lilla människan” mot aggressiva storföretag. Därför kan man, som klassisk vänsterpragmatiker, inte rösta på något annat. Det här är fjärde delen i min serie om “därför ska man rösta pirat”. Här fokuserar jag…

34

Därför ska man rösta pirat – ur ett liberalt perspektiv

Piratpartiet är idag det enda partiet med chans på riksdagen som kan kalla sig liberalt. Det här är tredje delen i min serie om “därför ska man rösta pirat”. Här fokuserar jag på det principiella högerperspektivet. Fler delar: Ett kapitalistiskt perspektiv (28 juni) Ett solidariskt…

14

Därför ska man rösta pirat – ur ett solidariskt perspektiv

Internet är det största solidaritetsprogrammet som någonsin uppfunnits. Vi vill tillämpa det på hela samhället och använda det som katalysator för att sudda ut gränserna mellan Nord och Syd. Det här är andra delen i min serie om “därför ska man rösta pirat”. Här fokuserar…

41

Därför ska man rösta pirat – ur ett kapitalistiskt perspektiv

Steelneck skrev en gång en väldigt insiktsfull sak i en kommentar om varför östblocket föll och kapitalismen segrade över socialismen (i 80-talets ord). Det hade inte att göra med att en marknadsekonomi var lättrörligare än en centralt planerad ekonomi, även om det nog också är…

51

Vad fan är det som händer?

Justitieministern föreslår att misstänkta ska hängas ut offentligt. Regeringen har redan infört allmän avlyssning av allas kommunikation. Kartläggning av allas nätverk. Regeringen föreslår att barn(!) ska kunna släpas iväg med våld och tvingas att kissa inför främmande människor om de beter sig osocialt. En EU-kommissionär…

38

Polisen borde ge fan i datorer

Efter de senaste dagarnas händelser är det uppenbart att polisen tar alldeles för lätt på att beslagta datorer — permanent — vid husrannsakan. Oscar har rätt i att det är något för Piratpartiet. Björn Felten har skrivit en motion som konkretiserar det hela, som föreslår…

88

Bokförlagens förestående undergång (1 av 2)

Bilden föreställer en Amazon Kindle bredvid ett tidigt försök på bokläsare. Bilden är tagen med skärmarna påslagna i fullt dagsljus. Jag tror inte att någon i bokförlagsbranschen idag tror att pappersböcker kommer att bli omoderna på ett par år. Därför tänkte jag påpeka att, jo,…

8

Två gammelmusiker som förstår det nya landskapet

De senaste dagarna har det kommit två intressanta inlagor från två helt olika artistgrupper om hur det nya medielandskapet ser ut. Inlagorna kunde inte skilja sig mer — men intressant nog så träffar de båda ändå mitt i prick. Den första är Ranis Edenberg i…

9

Open letter to the music industry

Dear music industry, Thank you for inviting me to be the opening speaker at your conference In The City in Manchester, UK. I am inspired by your courage to bring what must be seen as a threat into the midst of your ranks. I must…

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