The MP3 isn’t dead

It’s just not profitable anymore.

Three Policies for Pirates

Three policies I'd like to see a Pirate Party (or any forward looking political party) adopt with respect to providers of online services, social networks, communication feeds etc.

1) There should be an option to turn the filter-bubble off. 

If you use an algorithmic filter to prioritise what is of interest to the user within a feed, you MUST also provide a version of the feed without that filter. And an easy way to switch it on or off.

2 Everyone owns their own "data-exhaust". 

If you provide a service that gets its value from observing user behaviour you cannot claim exclusive ownership of that data. The user should have an inalienable right to share or license it with anyone else. (You aren't obliged to make it available to others (which might be genuinely arduous) but you can't complain if the user or another company (with the user's consent) figures out how to do it themselves.

3) Service providers must openly explain what data they are mining / inferring from their users. 

Just as packaged foods must explain what ingredients go in to them. Online data-services must explain what they are inferring from your behaviour so that you know what you are revealing to them.

Booo!

Pirate Drones

Freedom (of speech) drones are getting closer.

What Is SOPA?

Wikipedia, Craiglist, Boing Boing and several other sites are going black today to protest SOPA. I wholeheartedly agree with them. But here's something I haven't heard mentioned yet.

SOPA is not about stopping piracy. Everyone (even the RIAA and friends) know that it won't stop piracy. Instead SOPA is an attack on the visibility of piracy.

I once called home-taping "civil disobedience against industrial mass-commercialization of music". And I believe it was. Copying is overwhelmingly supported (in practice) by the citizens of every country where the technology to do it is available. It is mass civil disobedience against a law which most people think is an ass.

SOPA is an attack on the public affirmation of that position. An attack on the "normality" of piracy. It stops me visibly and proudly displaying my disobedience and forces me into doing it (shamefully) in private.

And this is its main aim : to try to roll-back the perceived legitimacy of copying that has arisen because on-line "everyone is doing it". It's not about stopping pirates, it's about cutting off their "supply lines" of public support by criminalising everyone who "gives succour" to them.

Original Pirate Material

 Pirate Utopias

These merchant ships were the engines of the emerging global capitalism, yet the sailors themselves were utterly excluded from the wealth they worked to generate. The decision to ‘turn pirate’ was thus a decision to wrestle back some autonomy, and when they did, life on a ship changed dramatically. Officers were democratically elected. Food was shared equally among men of all rank. When booty was collected the Captain only took two shares where the lowest took one – income differentials that would make modern CEOs faint. Loss of a limb aboard would be met with a payment of around £20,000 in today’s money – an amazing form of early healthcare.
So, far from being simple thieves, pirates were perhaps the original anti-capitalist protesters. The reason they were hunted down and suffered such savage public executions was because the powers of the day were petrified of the consequences of the pirates’ ethos.

Pirates And #Occupants

Phil Hunt asks if #Occupy should be forming an alliance with the Pirate Party.

I'd suggest that spontaneous, ad hoc co-operation is probably better for all concerned.

I joined the Pirate Party because I saw Pirates tweeting from and about #occupylsx; plus a couple of posts on the consultation that were sufficient to convince me that Pirates were, generally, well disposed towards #occupy.

The PP should take that as an example of success. It doesn't really need to be more than that. Internet culture is all about loose coupling and simple protocols.

Pirate Party

So, I just joined the UK Pirate Party.

I did it for two reasons. First, this month they are having an open consultation, calling for policy suggestions in areas outside the core intellectual property / internet freedom agenda that originally motivated them. Secondly, I saw one of them tweeting from OccupyLSX.

Of course, it's great fun for me to make a bunch of proposals. Here they are if you want to vote / argue for or against them.

Get the money out of politics

Full disclosure of government deals with corporations

Teach entrepreneurial skills in schools

Remove commercial restrictions on suburbia

Mandatory carbon footprint labelling for "big ticket" items

Create a framework for "Traditional Cities" (Yeah, I know, this is a personal obsession, but you know I believe in urbanism as a fundamental quality of life issue.)

A "Personal Investment Allowance"

Mandatory energy / effect labelling for common household appliances

Put the Treasury's models online

More soon when I think of them ... :-)

Political allsorts #2

I did go and look at the nascent UK Pirate Party which is still in the process of starting itself up. Here's my suggestion to them. (Note you can only see this comment and their reply if you create an account on their blog.)

As a long-time supporter of the Free Software Foundation and opponent of patents and copyright abuse I'm interested in the Pirate Party; but I think it would be good to see a couple of things from you :

First, a bit more about who's involved. If you're out there, wanting to play the politics game and get our support, you've got to reveal more about yourselves and your background motivations etc.

Second, I think the real promise of a Piracy Party is not just its "issues" of patents, copyrights etc. But the possibility of a political actor that really understands the internet and the changes that society is going through. I like the freedom and privacy aspects of your manifesto (and the opposition to UK ID cards etc.) But I'd like to get a sense that the party is ready to talk about the big opportunities the web brings to transforming government, the economy, society and organizations. (Eg. http://vimeo.com/4489849 )

I was surprised by how traditional your constitution looks, with its Officers and Conferences and NEC etc. Is this a constraint that the electoral commission place on you? If not, why not have a much looser structure? Perhaps one based around wikis, meetups, allocating money through online votes, an "architecture of participation" for other organizations (or even parties) willing to partner on particular projects etc?

A Pirate Party could be a leader in making an internet-age political organization if it succeeds in innovating in its own internal governance.

By the way, here's that link again. Recommended.

If sailor tales to sailor tunes,

Storm and adventure, heat and cold,

If schooners, islands, and maroons,

And buccaneers, and buried gold,

And all the old romance, retold

Exactly in the ancient way,

Can please, as me they pleased of old,

The wiser youngsters of today:




--So be it, and fall on! If not,

If studious youth no longer crave,

His ancient appetites forgot,

Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,

Or Cooper of the wood and wave:

So be it, also! And may I

And all my pirates share the grave

Where these and their creations lie!

Robert Louis Stevenson

Happy TLAP day.