tisdag 28 april 2009

EU och Telekom

Jag fick ett svar från en (1) av alla de europaparlamentariker jag mailat. John Purvis.

Han försöker vifta bort mina farhågor. Här är ett citat: "These quality obligations would ensure that operators are not able to degrade, throttle and block applications, content or services in ways which are anticompetitive."

Jag skickade ett svar.


Hello again.

I failed to purvey the extent of my reservations in the last mail.

What do you mean with anticompetitive? It's a qeustion that deserves a
reply. Will Wikipedia be deemed uncompetitive, after all it is a free
encyclopedia. Hard to compete with that. Will www.jamendo.com be deemed
anticompetitive? Free music, all legal, put up by artists that just want
exposure. Will Open office be deemed anticompetitive? It's a free office
suite comparable with Microsoft office. What about Linux Ubuntu? What
about my own handbook project, How to use the Internet as a democratic
tool. All available on the net and free for reading. Will that be deemed
anticompetitive?

Will all Open source software be deemed anticompetitive? Will Creative
commons be deemed anticompetitive? Will do it yourself websites be
deemed anticompetitive?

Thank you.

/David Jansson

David J skrev:
> Thank you for your reply.
>
> I must admit I don't feel at all reassured. The strength of the net is
> it's freedom. It's what has allowed the deepening of the democratic
> process. To put it bluntly, I don't want to see any content
> subscriptions from any Internet Service Provider. Content subscription
> is handled through the individual sites. I am very concerned with what
> will happen with open and free services, such as wordpress or blogger.
> Will I be forced to pay a fee to access Open source material? Will I
> need to subscribe to an art package to access Deviant Art, where I have
> a gallery myself?
>
> But the biggest issue is the possbility to hamper the way people can
> express themselves and reach out on the net these days. How can you
> asure me that blogging services with blogs that write political
> discontent suddenly won't be subject to high fees?
>
> Being unfettered by economic interests is the beauty and the power of
> the Internet. It's making our representative democracy more close to
> democracy in the real sense of the word. Please do not take that away
> from us. It would be a crime to take that away from us.
>
> /David Jansson

torsdag 23 april 2009

Jag fick ett Spam-mail

Guuh. Om det inte var nog ledtråd att det stod "undisclosed recipients" i thunderbird, varför skulle någon gå på det när man är tvungen att svara för att hon ska kunna skicka en bild till dig?

HELLO
My name is florince .i saw your profile today and became intrested in you,i will also like to know you the more,and i want you to send an email to my email address so i can give you my picture for you to know whom i am.Here is my email address (florincegarba@rocketmail.com) believe we can move from here!I am waiting for your mail to my email address above.(Remeber the distance, colour or language does not matter but love matters alot in life.(florincegarba@rocketmail.com)
florince


Hon har ju uppenbarligen min mailaddress. Men det är klart, hon vet ju inte vilka som går på hennes massmail om de inte svarar...

Fast jag blir lite nyfiken på vad som händer när man svarar, kommer man helt enkelt hamna i spamdatabas med nyckelordet "enkelt byte" eller kommer någon försöka dra in en i en i scamprocess som är lika manipulativ som Nigeriabreven? Jag såg en dokumentär med en reporter som utforskade vad som hände när man svarade på ett Nigeriabrev. Han mötte människor som var så manipulativa och duktiga att spela på känslor att han höll på att gå på det. Det var ingen ointelligent människa.

Jag vet att det finns folk därute som sysslar med så kallad scambaiting. Jag beundrar dem. För när jag funderade på att göra något sådant själv så drog jag mig till minnes den där dokumentären. Att gå på ett Nigeriabrev må vara puckat, men när man väl tagit steget att kontakta dom så pratar man direkt med individer som är extremt skickliga manipulatörer, för att inte tala om att det finns en risk att de kan vara kopplade till maffiaverksamhet. Man bör därmed absolut inte, definitivt inte, aldrig ta för givet att scambaiting är ett ofarligt nöje. Och om det innefattar att man ska ringa ett telefonnummer kan det vara så enkelt att numret är ett betalnummer som kostar 350 kronor per minut...

måndag 20 april 2009

Nu börjar det äntligen ta hus i helvete

Via svensk myndighetskontroll hittade jag det här.

Inlägget innehåller ett mail från en mailinglista. För de som inte orkar klicka på länkar så citerar jag det här.

Själv är jag en konservativ medelålders man som aldrig någonsin har "fildelat". (Och jag tycker illa om piratkopiering.) Ändå har jag nu för avsikt att gå med i piratpartiet, rösta på dem i EU-valet och ge dem ett penningbidrag till deras valkampanj.

Orsaken till detta är förstås att alla andra partier helt uppenbart är beredda att införa sinnessjukt oproportionerligt repressiva lagar och kontroller för att en ganska oväsentlig näring (nöjesindustrin) under några år till skall kunna klamra sig fast vid en fullständigt obsolet och förlegad affärsmodell.

Det vore ju en sak om det handlade om krig och terrorism, om akut brist på mat eller på rent vatten. Då kunde man ju förstå om situationen vore så fruktansvärt allvarlig att vissa inskränkningar i den personliga integriteten vore nödvändiga. Men nu handlar det inte om något som är ens det minsta lilla oundgängligt för någons överlevnad eller hälsa, utan om att en i
sig ganska oväsentlig industri skall kunna hålla fast vid ett förlegat sätt att tjäna alldeles för mycket pengar, att dagens trubadurer, skådespelare och andra gycklare och deras
finansiärer inte skall behöva anpassa sin affärsmodell till utvecklingen.

En total, en helt osannolik, en fullständigt patologisk brist på sinne för alla proportioner. Ungefär som att jämna ett helt samhälle med marken bara för att kejsaren under några veckor skall kunna ta morgonpromenader ostört på just den platsen.

Till sist en fråga: Är det någon på listan (utom riksdagsmän och andra i uppenbar lojalitetskonflikt) som _inte_ har för avsikt att rösta på piratpartiet i EU-valet? Och i så fall: Varför i helvete inte?


Folk börjar fatta att det är så väldigt mycket mer som står på spel än bara fildelning och piratkopiering.

fredag 17 april 2009

Science fiction kommer till liv

Ecogeek rapporterar om en ny telefon som håller på att utvecklas. Telefonens bildskärm är en såkallad OLED. Men det häftigaste är nog att den laddar sig själv genom att utnyttja kinetisk energi.

OLED förtjänar att nämnas närmare, det är en teknik som bra drar en båkdel av den energi som Plasma och LCD-tv gör, samtidigt som den ger mycket bättre bilduppdatering, kontrast och ljusstyrka, bättre bild helt enkelt. Tekniken har funnits ett bra tag och är enligt utsago väldigt billig att tillverka. Att vi inte sett den applicerad i de tvapparater och datorskärmar som finns på marknaden idag är man tyvärr tvungen att tillskriva tvproducenternas girighet. De vill naturligtvis att så många ska hinna byta ut sina katodstrålerörstv mot LCD och Plasma innan de släpper ut OLED på marknaden.

söndag 12 april 2009

Brevkampanjen till EU 2 - Uppdaterad!

Skrivit lite mer. Det är inte klart, Thomas Tvivlaren hade förslag som jag tror jag bör implementera, men det har jag alltså inte gjort än. Men, kritik uppskattas.

RTF-format: klick

Stenskott påpekade att det var bråttom. Så jag har mailat brevet till så många ledamöter jag orkade klistra in emailadresser till. Jag kommer dock att försöka skicka till ett tiotal med snigelpost utöver detta. Om någon annan vill engagera sig men inte orkar skriva ett eget meddelande får de gärna skicka det här med även sitt eget namn underskrivet.


Esteemed member of the European parliament.

I am writing to you with concerns for the free information flow. There are laws discussed that scares me, laws that could impair the strengthening of democracy that we have seen with the blooming of the Internet and threaten to, indirectly, greatly reduce the freedom of expression and thought.

In the debate concerning these issues in Sweden the most common point both sides puts forth is that the other side just doesn't understand. So I want to try and show you what we do understand. I want to try to explain to you how the information culture works, thinks and how it has deepened the democratic process on levels never before seen.

I belong to a generation that has grown up alongside the flow of information, in what must be rightly called the age of information. I have seen how the net has developed our thoughts and communication become easier by the day. I have seen how the discourse among individuals on the net have opened up and expanded their ability for constructive thought.

Open source and Creative commons

We have seen the Open source software is becoming increasingly more popular. On the Internet, it has run up a sharing culture that by its nature is not part of the traditional economic system.

Open source is a way of working together in the Online community. You release code for free under a Creative Commons licence that lets other develop and use the code however they wish. The result is free tools like Open office, the very powerfull word processor that I am using to wite this letter, free operating systems like Ubuntu, that today with the help of the solidarity and cooperation of the Open source community is as well designed and easy to use as microsoft Windows.

What if the concept of Open source would spread further, beyond software. If scientists and inventors were to release innovations, formulas, and blueprints on the web under a Creative Commons license, which gives anyone the opportunity to produce and earn money, or develop further? There is no indication that it is not about to happen, indeed there are already projects like Science Commons and the Open Access Movement that try to make this a reality. And I think you have seen this and are terrified of the economic system will become so neglected that economic growth becomes impossible.

But why does it have to be such a catastrophe. If you look at companies who has embraced the open source concept in their marketing you see thriving business. The creators of the popular computer games Unreal Tournament allways include modification tools and documentation, one of the biggest reasons for the popularity of Unreal Tournament is the richness of user created content that is available for free once you have purchased the game.

Today artists create a market for themselves by releasing a portion of their music on the net. Never has the music scene been so diverse. (And here I belive we touch the real reason for laws such as IPRED and ACTA being lobbied through, it has become too easy for small players, and even individuals, to compete with the big players.)

Innovation will not stop, the best innovators have never had economic wellfare as their spur. I think that quality and durability of products will be the key for market success in the future. That is the trend that the Open source community is in the process of resurrecting, and hopefully it will spread beyond the digital world.

My point is, the free Internet isn't a danger to the economic system, it just makes sure that that economic power can be more evenly distributed.

Consider this quote:

The [economic] crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.
Simon Johnson - http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice


That article is well worth a read. Basing all decisions on economic growth is a system that is bound to reach critical mass. You see it in nature, and in growth disorders in humans like Marfan syndrome, bigger means bigger need for nutrient. If growth isn't contained, sooner or later there won't be enough nutrient and the whole system will collapse. With this in mind I would be willing to bet on that the obsession and carelessness with economic growth is the cause of the current financial crisis. If you disregard this theory you also have to claim that the resources of the Earth and the Human psyche (and the ability to exploit them) are endless, and that would be very naive indeed.

Internet and the media

The Internet has given rise to many tools that can develop media reporting drastically. You can put links in the text that leads to references, explanations and more in-depth information, which is exactly how a wiki is often constructed. When a newspaper put their news online, they are no longer limited in terms of amount of text. Computer memory and hard drives are already at a level that the space all the text in the Stockholm city library would take up is very negligible and the bandwidth is not far behind and is already well enough. I was long frustrated that newspaper websites doesn't adopt linking standards that can be seen in, for example, Wikipedia. (www.wikipedia.org) Most of the documents referred to in newspapers and blogs, are often available online. In Sweden for example, parliament committee reports, laws, regulations and responses from political advisory bodies can be found online. Mostly, you can easily find these yourself, but it is considered to be good netiquette to attach a link.

Even today newspapers shy away from this convenient way to build up their articles. This is, however, fully embraced by the bloggers who want to have a say in the public debate. A blog post today is not only a personal opinion, it is full of cross references, with links readily found in its context.

Blogs have an undeserved bad reputation. Sure, there are a plethora of pointless blogs out there, but the criticism I've seen directed against blogs is still, in my point of view, very strange. To say that all blogs are pointles drivel is a bit like saying that all books are pulp fiction, it is as if you would say that there are no educational literature just because tabloids exist.

Other than deepening the democratic process the Internet has become an integral part of our daily lives. The communication we use it for ranges from the trivial and personal relationships to business correspondens and speaking with our doctors and psychologists.


And with all these things in mind

With these things in mind it should be obvious that a free Internet has become a democratic right. And that the laws in motion that seek to put a sift on the free flow of information needs to be stopped. Directives for data storing, ACTA that if you are to believe the reports will make it illegal to own any devices or programs that lets you create and distribute original content yourself, IPRED and FRA in Sweden are the examples I know of.

Please consider these things, I hope you will realize that we need to put a stop to these laws that undermine the freedom that the net has given us, and undermine democracy as a whole.

Thank you.

/David Jansson
Cell phone number
http://www.detdemokratiskaverktyget.se