April 2014 - P2P-Foundation - lists.ourproject.org

Fw: Fw: Info
by Natalie Golovin 10 Mar '26

10 Mar '26

Mark: You and your compatriots on P2P view the world from revisionism. Go ahead and keep looking through your microscope-provided by your "teachers." Or take the time and read some very old documented evidence available at a library near you= but you may need to stay there awhile on microfiche. -----Original Message----- From: Mark Janssen Sent: Sunday, October 23, 2011 4:39 PM To: P2P Foundation mailing list Subject: Re: [P2P-F] Fw: Info On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 10:32 AM, Natalie Golovin <10natalie(a)cox.net> wrote: > The European Tribes treated the Natives no worse than they treated each > other. Whoa. You should really stop talking. You have NO idea what you're talking about. How about forced acculturation, not allowing them to speak their own language (which hold the record of their own history), confined them under threat of violent force into reservations, among other things. But, really, that's probably not even the worst of it -- the worst of it is that for reasons they couldn't ever understand is why you were doing all of these cruel things when they were willing to share it it all with you. Why, when they handed out their hand to be friends, you chopped it off. Remember, they're the ones who gave us Thanksgiving which is still "celebrated" in this nation today. Read the reports made of making first contact with the Native peoples here. You really should read up before propagating the attitudes of conquest. Sorry.... marcos _______________________________________________ P2P Foundation - Mailing list http://www.p2pfoundation.net https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation

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crazy idea
by Fabio Barone 10 Jun '14

10 Jun '14

I just watched the following video about smartphones and their human cost. Warning, it's shocking. http://sharepowered.com/see-the-human-cost-of-your-iphone-and-it-will-shock… I wondered, how feasible is it to: - create a global professionally managed p2p brand (here: for smartphones, e.g. urphone.net) - fabricate "clean" (whatever is possible here) smart phones in regional fablabs or even hackerspaces under that brand - profits shared all over the brand I apologize for my impulsive post, it may be pure nonsense, but I wonder

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Fwd: [Networkedlabour] Fwd: <nettime> Shoshana Zuboff: Dark Google
by Michel Bauwens 30 Apr '14

30 Apr '14

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Orsan Senalp <orsan1234(a)gmail.com> Date: Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 11:13 AM Subject: [Networkedlabour] Fwd: <nettime> Shoshana Zuboff: Dark Google To: networkedlabour(a)lists.contrast.org Might be interesting for the list.. Begin forwarded message: *Resent-From:* nettime(a)kein.org *From:* Florian Cramer <fcramer(a)pleintekst.nl> *Date:* 30 april 2014 14:23:37 CEST *Resent-To:* Nettime <nettime-l(a)kein.org> *To:* Nettime <nettime-l(a)kein.org> *Subject:* *<nettime> Shoshana Zuboff: Dark Google* Published today in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: "We witness the rise of a new absolute power. Google transfers its radical politics from cyberspace to reality. It will earn its money by knowing, manipulating, controlling the reality and cutting it into the tiniest pieces." http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/the-digital-debate/shoshanna… Quotes from the article: "During the second half of the twentieth century, more education and complex social experience produced a new kind of individual. No longer content to conform to the mass, more people sought their own unique paths to self-determination. [...] The arrival of the Internet provided a new way forward. [...] This was a new 'networked public sphere,' as legal scholar Yochai Benkler called it. [...] The whole topography of cyberspace then began to morph as Google and Facebook shifted away from the ethos of the public web, while carefully retaining its rhetoric. They began to develop a new logic of operations in what had until then been a blank area. The new zone didn???t resemble the bricks and mortar world of commerce, but neither did it follow the norms of the open web. This confused and distracted users. In fact, the firms were developing a wholly new business logic that incorporated elements of the conventional logic of corporate capitalism ??? especially its adversarialism toward end consumers ??? along with elements from the new Internet world ??? especially its intimacy. The outcome was the elaboration of a new commercial logic based on hidden surveillance. Most people did not understand that they and their friends were being tracked, parsed, and mined without their knowledge or consent." So far, these are no new insights for Nettimers. But Zuboff adds two interesting ideas: (1) According to her, it's a mistake to think of Internet capitalism having destroyed privacy, but privacy has just been transferred. It shifted from individuals to Google and the NSA who "assert a right to privacy with respect to their surveillance tactics and then exercise their choice to keep those tactics secret". Zuboff characterizes, from what seems to be a liberal viewpoint, as a new form of absolutism. Alternatively, it could be described as a 21st century form of cognitive capitalism that follows the post-democratic/post-1990 success formula of oligarchical capitalism. (2) Zuboff quotes Karl Polanyi's model of three "fictional commodities" on which industrial capitalism is based: the reinvention of human life as labor, the reinvention of nature as real estate and the reinvention of purchasing power as money. For Zuboff, Google adds a "fourth fictional commodity" that is "emerging as a dominant characteristic of market dynamics in the 21st century": "'Reality' is about to undergo the same kind of fictional transformation and be reborn as 'behavior.' This includes the behavior of creatures, their bodies, and their things. It includes actual behavior and data about behavior." -F # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime(a)kein.org _______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list NetworkedLabour(a)lists.contrast.org http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour -- *Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..* P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

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Fwd: [Commoning] MOOC -> INTERNATIONAL ONLINE COURSE ON THE COMMONS pls spread wideliy especially among students interested in the commons
by Michel Bauwens 30 Apr '14

30 Apr '14

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Silke Helfrich <silke.helfrich(a)gmx.de> Date: Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 4:35 PM Subject: [Commoning] MOOC -> INTERNATIONAL ONLINE COURSE ON THE COMMONS pls spread wideliy especially among students interested in the commons To: commoning <commoning(a)lists.wissensallmende.de>, commons(a)lists.riseup.net, "Gemeingueter(a)lists.wissensallmende.de" < Gemeingueter(a)lists.wissensallmende.de> INTERNATIONAL CALL FOR PARTICIPATION New Online Course Offered by Leuphana University Lueneburg In cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Leuphana University's Digital School offers a new Mentored Open Online Course: Psychology of Negotiations - Reaching Sustainable Agreements in Negotiations on "Commons". In this course, participants will work together in teams while learning more about the psychological processes of negotiations in the scope of Commons. Sign up now (http://digital.leuphana.com/courses/psychology-of-negotiations/) for this exciting collaborative learning experience and be one of 1000 participants! Registration will be open until May 18. Visit Leuphana Digital School's website (http://digital.leuphana.com) to find out more about the course. (MORE LINKS BELOW) Leuphana Universität Lüneburg bietet neuen Online-Kurs an In Kooperation mit der Heinrich Böll Stiftung bietet die Digital School der Leuphana Universität Lüneburg einen neuen Online-Kurs an: Psychology of Negotiations - Reaching Sustainable Agreements in Negotiations on "Commons". In diesem englischsprachigen Kurs arbeiten Teilnehmer_Innen in interkulturellen Teams zusammen und lernen mehr über die psychologischen Prozesse in Verhandlungen im Kontext von Gemeingütern. Melden Sie sich jetzt für den Kurs an (http://digital.leuphana.com/courses/psychology-of-negotiations/) und seien Sie Teil dieses einmaligen Lernangebots. Die Registrierung ist noch bis zum 18. Mai möglich. Weitere Informationen sind auf der Webseite der Leuphana Digital School ( http://digital.leuphana.com) zu finden. MORE LINKS: http://digital.leuphana.com/courses/psychology-of- negotiations/psychology-of-negotiations-faculty/ Trailer: http://digital.leuphana.com/courses/psychology-of-negotiations How to participate? How does the online-course work? http://digital.leuphana.com/courses/psychology-of- negotiations/psychology-of-negotiations-course-information/ Mentors/ Contributors: http://digital.leuphana.com/courses/psychology-of- negotiations/psychology-of-negotiations-partners/ _______________________________________________ Commoning mailing list Commoning(a)lists.wissensallmende.de http://lists.wissensallmende.de/mailman/listinfo/commoning -- *Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..* P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

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Fwd: trying to reach Michael Bauwens
by Michel Bauwens 29 Apr '14

29 Apr '14

quite happy with this !! ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Erik Olin Wright <wright(a)ssc.wisc.edu> Date: Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 4:37 PM Subject: trying to reach Michael Bauwens To: michelsub2004(a)gmail.com, contact(a)p2pfoundation.net Hello, I am trying to reach Michel Bauwens. I just read very carefully the FLOK society Research Plan (in the version at: http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan) and found it to be a fantastically interesting and thoughtful document. It also overlaps in very suggestive ways with the line of argument I have been working on in my Real Utopias Project and my book *Envisioning Real Utopias*. So, I would like to be in contact and know more about the work Michel and his colleagues are doing. Thank you very much, Erik Olin Wright -- Erik Olin Wright Vilas Distinguished Professor Past-President, American Sociological Association Department of Sociology University of Wisconsin - Madison1180 Observatory Drive Madison, WI 53706 Phones: 608-262-0068 (office) 608-255-6454 (home) email: wright(a)ssc.wisc.edu website: http:://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright -- *Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..* P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

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Prophet or Profit? Nikola Tesla’s Vision vs J.P. Morgan’s Greed
by joseph orlando 25 Apr '14

25 Apr '14

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/04/22/prophet-or-profit-nikola-teslas-vis…

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Fwd: [fcforum] Hacking the European Parliament
by Michel Bauwens 24 Apr '14

24 Apr '14

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Simona Levi <info(a)conservas.tk> Date: Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 4:41 AM Subject: [fcforum] Hacking the European Parliament To: fcforum_discussion(a)list.fcforum.net, fcforum_info(a)list.fcforum.net, fcforum(a)list.fcforum.net In the struggle for transparency and free information, we are supporting Hervé Falciani and the X Party. - http://partidox.org/falciani-vs-juncker/#en - Falciani vs. Juncker: http://partidox.org/falciani-vs-juncker/ - Español: http://partidox.org/falciani-vs-juncker/#es - Français: http://partidox.org/falciani-vs-juncker/#fr - German: http://partidox.org/falciani-vs-juncker/#de - Portugués: http://partidox.org/falciani-vs-juncker/#pt - Italiano: http://partidox.org/falciani-vs-juncker/#it The information can be followed minute by minute today since 11AM in the Hashtag *#FalcianiVsJuncker* and the channel #EP2014 Good morning, This week it is presented an informative international campaign about the figure of Hervé Falciani and the importance of its candidature to European Parliament. For the European elite, the presence of Hervé Falciani in the European Parliament poses a clear threat to their status quo. In front of the candidate Jean-Claude Juncker, proposed by the European PP for the European Commission, that governed Luxemburg for 18 years like a tax haven and had to resign for spying on the Luxemburg parliament, *we consider that this candidature is a hack that provides a unique opportunity* to Spanish and European citizens and the international civil society *to expose, denounce, fight back and control the collusion between political class and the financial elites*. The participation of Falciani in the European Parliament and the work and projects already initiated by Citizens' Network Partido X, will contribute to put an end to the impunity of big tax evaders. Tax fraud unveiled by Falciani represents 2.5% of the Gross Domestic Product of the European area: 300,000 million Euros. Falciani´s work has allowed to recover many thousands of millions for the American and French Hacienda, and several hundreds to the Spanish Hacienda and to proceed with corruption causes such as the Gürtel case in Spain. But this is only the beginning. Falciani has proved us that, besided a moral, social and political problem; corruption is a technical problem that can be solved. The corruption of those that govern us needs a constant flow of money that leaves a trace. Once in the European parliament, we will develop our work there and implement our projects to pursue fiscal evasion of the great fortunes using information as a tool. Citizens' Network Partido X and Herve Falciani have already launched this method at the service of all struggles and towards a global change. -- *Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..* P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

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Re: [P2P-F] Four Quadrants chart in Spanish
by Michel Bauwens 23 Apr '14

23 Apr '14

can't remember that there is one ? On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 1:31 PM, Stacco Troncoso <staccotroncoso(a)gmail.com>wrote: > Hi everyone. I'm nearly done with the translation of David Bollier's > article and Michel's videos but I'd like to ask if you have a Spanish > version of Michel "4 quadrants" graph (copied below). If you don't,, don't > worry, I can make one myself. > > I'll send you a copy when it's published. > > Un abrazo, > > Stacco > > > -- > - Stacco Troncoso <http://about.me/staccotroncoso> > > -- *Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..* P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

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Fwd: Colombian Unions Face Violence and Mass Arrests
by Michel Bauwens 23 Apr '14

23 Apr '14

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Alliance for Global Justice <afgj(a)afgj.org> Date: Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 10:11 AM Subject: Colombian Unions Face Violence and Mass Arrests To: michelsub2004(a)gmail.com [image: Alliance for Global Justice]<http://org2.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=Aa9UCkLwIlcZkFeCtPDCyGucErW%2…> Colombian Unionists Endure Mass Arrests, Bombings in April*--Take Action <http://org2.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ltQnJsnF3ZqAhle7086FQGucErW%2…>* *Click here to read letter by United Steelworkers in solidarity with workers from SINTRAEMCALI and ASTRACAN unions*<http://org2.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=Vm2RgFes8gW0FDL%2Fs9XruWucErW…> The Alliance for Global Justice is very concerned about the April 17, 2014 detention of 17 agricultural workers and union members from the municipality of Leiva in the Colombian department of Nariño. This is one of a series of high profile arrests and mass detentions of union and peasant leaders that have occurred over the past two years. These arrests are part of an ongoing campaign of retaliation against farmers who participated in the recent National Agrarian and Popular Strike (Paro Nacional Agrario y Popular) and preceding farmers strikes in the Catatumbo and coffee growing regions. Likewise they continue the targeted persecution against peasant organizations allied with the Patriotic March (Marcha Patriótica) popular movement for a just peace. Similar detentions have also occurred in the departments of Putumayo and Tolima. These detentions place families in jeopardy and have contributed to a more than 80% rise in forced displacement since the implementation of the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. The 17 peasant workers detained in Leiva are all members of the Association of Peasant Workers of Nariño (ASTRACAN), the regional affiliate of FENSUAGRO, the largest union of agricultural workers in Colombia. The repression of unionists in Colombia is not limited to the agricultural sector. Just one day before the arrests of the Leiva 17, incendiary bombs were thrown at the headquarters of SINTRAEMCALI, the public sector union in Cali, Valle de Cauca. The attack occurred only five days following a major court decision ordering the Colombian president and vice president to ask forgiveness for crimes committed by the administration of former President Álvaro Uribe against SINTRAEMCALI as well as the SINTRAUNICOL and SINTRATELEFONOS unions. The order has still not been complied with. Over the past decade, 15 SINTRAEMCALI members have been killed and over 100 have received threats. “Operation Dragon” was a government supported assassination plot against the union’s leaders as well as other regional human rights defenders. [image: astracan alert 3] TAKE A STAND AGAINST THESE RECENT ASSAULTS ON COLOMBIAN UNIONISTS AND FARMERS! <http://org2.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=EpZGt6HpoQzAO4Kh4V3ZKWucErW%2…> On Monday, April 17, 2013, the United Steelworkers sent a letter signed by USW President Leo Gerard to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos <http://org2.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=J6X78ZGDFEMH%2F%2FjGTsn%2Bj2u…>calling on his administration to take action to investigate these latest incidents and to take action to protect SINTRAEMCALI leaders. *Will you also take a stand for Colombian unionists? Please click here to send an email to the offices of Pres. Santos, Vice President Angelino Garzon, the Colombian Embassy and the US State Department*<http://org2.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=67ZZVmBfaPZ97wnGlsLFVmucErW%2…> *Following is the text of the sample letter:* IN SPANISH: Escribo para protestar por la arbitraria detención masiva de 17 miembros de la Asociación de Trabajadores Campesinos de Nariño (ASTRACAN), afiliado a FENSUAGRO, la mayor Federación de trabajadores agrícolas de Colombia. También deseo expresar mi consternación sobre el reciente bombardeo de la Unión de Trabajadores del Sector Público en Cali (SINTRAEMCALI). Especialmente teniendo en cuenta este ataque violento, Pres Santos y Vice Pres Garzon deben tomar el paso correcto y cumplir con la decisión reciente del Tribunal exigiendo una disculpa por los crímenes cometidos contra SINTRAEMCALI, así como SINTRAUNICO y SINTRATELEFONOS, durante el gobierno de Álvaro Uribe. Hago un llamamiento a la administración de Santos para seguir los siguientes pasos: 1. Poner en libertad a los 17 miembros de ASTRACATAN detenido el 17 de abril de 2013 y retirar todos los cargos en su contra; 2. Ordenar a la Unidad de Protección Nacional para investigar los atentados contra la oficina de SINTRAEMCALI y garantizar la seguridad de los líderes de la Unión; 3. Cumplir con la decisión del Tribunal exigiendo el Presidente Santos y Vice Presidente Garzón para pedir perdón por los crímenes cometidos contra los sindicatos SINTRAEMCALI, SINTRAUNICOL y SINTRATELEFONOS durante la administración del ex presidente Álvaro Uribe. Llamo al gobierno de los Estados Unidos a poner fin a su financiación de la guerra y la represión en Colombia y rescindir el libre comercio entre Estados Unidos y Colombia sobre la base del incumplimiento del Plan de Acción Laboral. Colombia sigue siendo el país más peligroso del mundo para ser sindicalista! IN ENGLISH: I am writing to protest the arbitrary mass detention of 17 members of the Association of Peasant Workers of Nariño (ASTRACAN), an affiliate of FENSUAGRO, Colombia’s largest federation of agricultural workers. I also wish to express my dismay regarding the recent bombing of the public workers union in Cali, SINTRAEMCALI. Especially in light of this violent attack, Pres. Santos and Vice Pres. Garzon must take the right step and comply with the recent court decision demanding an apology for crimes committed against SINTRAEMCALI as well as SINTRAUNICO and SINTRATELEFONOS during the government of Álvaro Uribe. I call on the Santos administration to take the following steps: 1. Grant freedom to the 17 members of ASTRACATAN arrested on April 17, 2013 and dismiss all charges against them; 2. Order the National Protection Unit (Unidad de Protección Nacional) to investigate the bombings of the office SINTRAEMCALI and provide security for the union’s leaders; 3. Comply with the court decision demanding President Santos and Vice President Garzón to ask forgiveness for crimes committed against the SINTRAEMCALI, SINTRAUNICOL and SINTRATELEFONOS unions during the administration of former president Álvaro Uribe. I call on the US government to end its funding of war and repression in Colombia and to rescind the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement based on the failure of the Labor Action Plan. Colombia is still the most dangerous country in the world to be a unionist! Like the work AFGJ is doing? *Please support us today.*<http://org2.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=RtExKqzJKTh%2BuGH4am%2BbY2ucE…> Quick Links - <http://org2.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=JZr8RkAf4rUqcLNycWSaJ8fPE3rmy…>*TAKE ACTION on behalf of COLOMBIAN FARMERS AND UNIONISTS <http://org2.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=s1f%2FYVuw%2F0ad8Y6x6Tmt4mucE…>* <#1458f24e899c475e_> - You are subscribed to Alliance for Global Justice's email list. Click here to unsubscribe<http://org2.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=XtETfI1jjJME6eufEsql0mucErW%2…> [image: empowered by Salsa] <http://www.salsalabs.com/?email> -- *Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..* P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

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Fwd: [Networkedlabour] Fwd: <nettime> Interview with Robert McChesney: How can Internet be De-monopolized?
by Michel Bauwens 23 Apr '14

23 Apr '14

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Orsan Senalp <orsan1234(a)gmail.com> Date: Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 4:53 AM Subject: [Networkedlabour] Fwd: <nettime> Interview with Robert McChesney: How can Internet be De-monopolized? To: networkedlabour(a)lists.contrast.org An insightful interview via Gurnstein and Stalder. Orsan Begin forwarded message: *Resent-From:* nettime(a)kein.org *From:* Felix Stalder <felix(a)openflows.com> *Date:* 23 april 2014 10:12:13 CEST *Resent-To:* Nettime <nettime-l(a)kein.org> *To:* "nettime-l(a)kein.org" <nettime-l(a)kein.org> *Subject:* *<nettime> Interview with Robert McChesney: How can Internet be De-monopolized?* This interview is from the Just Net Coalition publication that Michael Gurnstein referred to in his most recent email. Felix Interview with Robert McChesney: How can Internet be De-monopolized? Sally Burch 2014-04-16 http://alainet.org/active/73020 “Left on their current course and driven by the needs of capital, digital technologies can be deployed in ways that are extraordinarily inimical to freedom, democracy, and anything remotely connected to the good life. Therefore battles over the Internet are of central importance for all those seeking to build a better society”, writes researcher Robert McChesney in the conclusion of his book Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy[1]. Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, McChesney studies the history and political economy of communication. He is also co-founder of Free Press, a national media reform organization in the USA. In the following interview with ALAI, he summarizes the arguments of his book, with emphasis on the tendency of the Internet economy to promote monopolies. - How would you characterize the evolution of the Internet over the past two decades? - To summarize I would say that the Internet began as a function of the public sector. It was started by government subsidies and was non-commercial, even anti-commercial, in its earliest days. The vision that developed of it was always of an egalitarian, nonprofit sector where people would come together and share. But the process starting in the early 1990s, especially after the development of the World Wide Web, has been towards its intense commercialization on one hand, and on the other hand, of an aggressive interest in the importance of the Internet by military, national security, intelligence and police agencies. Those two forces have really made the Internet their own in the last 20 years in a way that I think very few people, as recently as 1993 or 1995, thought possible. - At the global level, what do you see as the main implications of this evolution? - One of the great claims about the Internet was that it was going to spur economic efficiency, growth, competition. It was going to open up the economy for new players, especially for small businesses and new entrepreneurs to get in the game and be able to compete with larger entrenched corporations and businesses, because the Internet would allow them to make an end-run around the barriers to entry that kept them away from consumers and markets. It also was regarded as the place where consumers would be suddenly empowered because they’d have more choice, and they’d have more leverage using the Internet to get lower prices and better service from companies. Unfortunately almost none of this has come true in any meaningful sense, and one of the great ironies of the Internet is that is has become the greatest generator of economic monopoly ever known, in any economic system, certainly under capitalism. Instead of producing competitive markets and lots of successful entrepreneurs, Internet has done just the opposite, because of network economics, where basically it’s winner-takes-all economics. Once someone gets in first place, there’s tremendous incentive for everyone to use that service, such as search, for example, or E-Bay or You-Tube. You use the same search because you want to be on the network that everyone else is on, and you get what’s called a “natural monopoly” through the network effects. When we look at the Internet, it is filled with these monopolies, there’s no “middle-class” of 20 or 30 competing companies in an area. It’s usually one company that dominates it with maybe one or two others that have a little bit of the action. And it has really accentuated and aggravated the problem of monopoly in modern capitalism, which is one of the great problems, of course, of the world economy. Now this is especially true outside of the US because – perhaps not coincidentally – the dominant monopolies of the global Internet –and it is a global phenomenon– are American based. Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, EBay, Facebook, are US-based firms. So these are companies that have inordinate power outside of the US, and I think for people living in countries outside the US, their dominance is of particular concern. - And what are the repercussions of these dynamics in terms of democracy? - Democracy has a lot of components, and one of the great claims of the Internet was that it was going to make it possible for average people, those without property, to participate in politics in a way that never was thinkable prior to the Internet. That you could have access to all the information that only elites used to get. You could communicate with like-minded people inexpensively and establish networks that would be very powerful, that would shake that power and force it to either leave power or to respond to the democratic aspirations of the people. And it has had an element of that, let’s be clear; there have been many positive aspects of the Internet for enhancing the power of those at the bottom against the top. But when those claims were made, it was forgotten that those at the top also owned computers. In fact, they own computer companies, they own the networks, and they too know what they’re doing, and they’re doing it to win, they’re not playing by the rules. And what they’re doing is to neutralize the threat of the Internet as a democratic force that can arrest or challenge elite power. Now one of the crucial areas this takes place – one that I study and write a great deal about – is the great crisis of journalism worldwide and in the US. As you go increasingly into the digital world, there’s no way for journalism to be supported anywhere near a satisfactory manner, to have sufficient reporters covering people in social life, keeping tabs on people in power and what they’re up to. In a nutshell, the reason for this is that advertising in the digital era operates very differently than it did before the Internet. Before we had the Internet, the advertiser would buy an ad and the newspaper would use a significant amount of money from that ad to pay for the content; that’s how they paid journalists. Advertising provided most of the revenues to most commercial news media in the world. In the digital era advertisers no longer need to pay for the content. They have found a more efficient way to reach final consumers. They can simply go to one of the big ad networks like the ones run by AOL, Google, Microsoft or Yahoo, and they say: we want to reach 30 million women aged 18 to 25, who might be in the market to buy new shoes in the next three months. They’ll find those 30 million women right away, wherever they are on the Internet, because those companies know everywhere you go, there’s no such thing as privacy on the Internet. So the advertisers don’t need to pay a website for anything more than the cost of the one person they’re trying to hit there. The website gets much less money and that’s why online journalism is basically not solvent commercially. The advertising money has gone, and that accounted for well over half the revenues that paid for journalism over the years. This is causing an enormous crisis worldwide. By this, I’m not saying that journalism was great before. Much of my work has been on the severe limitations of commercial journalism, which is true in Latin America as in North America, if not more so. But the starting point of journalism is that you’ve got to have someone who can do it, and eat. Someone who has time and the expertise to cover sometimes complicated stories about national security, or the environment, or economics. Ideally, you want competing news firms, so if someone misses a story someone else will get it. All that is all disappearing now. Commercial interests are jumping ship; they say we can’t make money doing journalism. And that leaves us very far short of a democratic society. It should be Mission A, Job No. 1 for people committed to democracy, to set up institutions and resources to provide media and journalism, and ultimately culture, to communities that the market is no longer interested in. I think these all have to be non-profit and non-commercial entities to be effective. The market simply has given up on journalism and it should go its way now. That means, if we’re going to have credible, independent, competitive news media – and it will be digital – the resources are going to have to come from the public. The great challenge we face in democratic societies is how do we do that? All countries need to be looking at that very seriously. - Coming back to the issue of monopolies… in a globalized economy, global political agreements and institutions are needed to establish the necessary rules, controls and checks on its functioning, in the public interest (as most nation states have to limit monopolies at the national level). But these international spaces are increasingly captured by the same global corporations that they should be controlling. With respect to the Internet, what do you see as the key issues to take on in terms of global governance? - I think your question is so good that it has part of the answer, because global trade, economic and governance arrangements are crucial, especially for the Internet. Unfortunately, because there is so much money now in the Internet, these governance arrangements are dominated by huge monopolistic companies that are so wealthy and so powerful that they can call on the US government to be their private police force. The global function now of the US government is to protect the interests of these private monopolies. It never does anything against their interest. That means that the ability of nation states in Europe, Latin America, Africa or Asia to countermand these pressures, to set up their own autonomous digital realm, is much more difficult without effectively taking on the entire economic structure of the world. - You have been involved in some of the big battles taking place in the US around freedom, rights, democracy and the Internet. What do you see as the main issues at present? - In my view the big issues in the US, and I think to varying degrees worldwide, are threefold. First, on the issue of getting serious funding for independent, non-profit, non-commercial, uncensored and competitive news media institutions, at the local and national level, we are working with colleagues on the idea of having a US$200 voucher of federal money that anyone can give to a news medium of their choice. So you’d have a huge public subsidy of non-profit news media, but the government wouldn’t control who gets the money, the people would. The second great issue in this country – and probably everywhere – is that control over access to Internet and to cellphones is limited to just three companies: Comcast, Verizon and AT&T. There are a few other companies in the game, like Sprint and T-Mobile, but the big three set the terms and everybody else follows. They have divided up the market like a cartel, they don’t compete with each other, their prices are high so Americans pay an incredible amount of money for cell phones and Internet access for a very mediocre service. It’s really outrageous. We need a campaign in the US – or internationally – to take Internet service provision out of the hands of private monopolies, and make it like the post-office. Internet access should be a human right; the government should run it and then the costs would come tumbling down. It will be a difficult fight, because these companies are world-class lobbyists, they own all the politicians, but their existence is really illegitimate. They do nothing of value, except gouge us for super-monopoly profits to give us lousy service. The third area –and this brings us back to the question of natural monopolies – is that there comes a point where you have three choices in a democratic society about how you deal with monopolies. Now, the way economists use the term monopoly basically means a company that has so much market share that it can set prices on the whole industry and it can determine how much competition it has. If it wanted to rub everyone out of 100% of the market, it could probably do it, but that would hurt its profits, so it settles for a lower percentage of the market and less people stay on the margins, but it gets the maximum profit it can in the industry. That’s the sort of monopoly world we’re looking at. John D. Rockefeller, at the peak of his Standard Oil monopoly, did not have 100% of the oil market in the US, I believe his peak percentage was in the low 80s, but he was in a situation where if he wanted to, he had the power to lower the price to drive people out of business. It just wasn’t in his interest to do so. Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, eBay and Paypal all have Standard Oil type of monopolies, and as a rule the only competition they face in their core monopoly markets comes from the other companies. So Google has a successful search, then of course Microsoft will have a competitor one. There are no independent companies competing with them, as they all get bought up along the way. So what are we going to do about these monopolies that are completely antithetical to democratic theory? This isn’t even a progressive notion. Milton Friedman – the right-wing conservative economist, whose legacy in Latin America, thanks to the Pinochet era, is quite dark – was the first one to argue that the defense of capitalism in a democratic society was that the people who ran the economy didn’t run the government. Power was diffused and that allowed freedom to prosper, unlike feudalism, unlike existing communism then, where the people who ran the government also ran the economy. The key to Friedman’s argument was that the economic market had to be competitive. If it was dominated by a few giant firms, those giant firms would invariably and inevitably take over the government, and then that whole premise of democracy collapses like a house of cards. That’s why, in democratic theory, from both the right and the left, monopoly economic power has always been a crisis. In that context, there are three choices of what society can do. One, you can keep the private monopoly power and then try to regulate it in the public interest. In the US we did it for a long time with the telephone company AT&T and we still try to do it a little with our phone and cable companies. But the evidence is that it doesn’t work. These companies are too big, they capture the regulators, they own the government and the regulation is largely ineffectual; so you still have monopoly gouging you and the monopolists run the government. That’s really not a good solution. The second solution is to try to break up the monopoly into smaller units that would actually compete. So instead of having one oil company, such as Standard Oil, you would break it up into 5, 10 or 15 that would compete with each other and give you the benefits of market competition without having the detriments of monopoly control of the government. Unfortunately, in the case of the Internet that’s really not possible. Because of network effects, they become monopolies very quickly because that’s the logic of the technology. There’s no way to have competing search engines because people would gravitate to the best one and all the others would go out of business. So with natural monopolies, you have only one course left, and it was Milton Friedman’s mentor who actually said this. He said, even if you have free market capitalism, you need to socialize and nationalize the monopoly companies, because otherwise they will steal profits from smaller businesses and charge them and consumers higher prices, and they will corrupt market economics from working efficiently, just to their benefit. So even those who truly respect and desire market economics should want to socialize those larger monopolies that are impossible to be competitive. - Might that mean nationalizing or socializing Google or Microsoft…? - Well, that’s the conversation we’ve got to have, ultimately. We can start now, or we can wait for 20 years and talk about it then, but eventually we’ll have to do something along those lines. If you look at the 30 most valuable companies in the US today, in terms of their market value, 12 of them are Internet monopolies; the ones I’ve just named and a few others. They completely dominate the American political economy (if not the world political economy); they are the vibrant force, such as it is, of capitalism today. This sort of economic power translates into complete control over the government. In America, we always talk about the too-big-to-fail banks that got the huge bailout. As senator Dick Durbin from Illinois said, they frankly own the government. They own Congress, they get their way with whatever they want. Well there are only two or three of those banks among the 30 largest firms in America, but there are 12 Internet monopolies. So if we’re serious about addressing monopoly power as a threat to both the economy and to political democracy, if we’re serious about reinvigorating democracy, even if one’s a free-market person, then sooner or later we’re going to have to address this issue of monopolies and I would say the sooner we start having that conversation the better. - In the case of global monopolies, would that mean looking at the possibility of having global public companies? - These are really interesting questions, and I think that in America we haven’t had that debate anyway near enough, because our markets are so enormous and the companies are based here. We think in terms of national solutions being sufficient, since we have the companies here that we need to deal with. I think, though, as soon as one crosses the border to any other country in the world, the debate has to change, because then, clearly, purely national solutions have real limits to them, even in theory, and international or regional solutions become much more important. But at this point of the discussion I become a student, not a teacher. - So, coming back to our starting point, the evolution of the Internet: between digital utopia or Big Brother nightmare, what’s the present balance? - It’s moving to Big Brother nightmare. Those are loaded words, its pejorative and you might dismiss what I’m saying with ‘this guy’s a whacko’. (Those weren’t the terms I picked – I want to make that clear – but at the same time I’m not going to run from them). One of the things that I came upon when I was doing the research for Digital Disconnect, that I didn’t fully appreciate just two or three years ago, was the extent to which everything we do online is known to commercial and government interests. You must start from the assumption that everything you do is recorded, it’s tapped, it’s monitored and it’s available to some people, somewhere, in some manner. I was shocked by that when I did the research; but as soon as the book came out, then the Snowden revelations came out about the NSA and there was a lot more general awareness of this whole process. But I just had a new shock. The former head of NSA’s surveillance program has recently left, and he’s done some interviews in which he said that the NSA has access to everything and can track everyone everywhere globally. They really have that power and they’re using it. So what do they do now if they want to arrest someone? It’s very easy, they can put together a case on someone (and they can always find a law you’ve broken somewhere, it seems) and take their illegally gathered information to the police and say to them, piece together whatever information you said get, come up with legal documentation. Then they can arrest that person if they want; they have that capacity. As this former NSA head said, that’s the definition of a police state. Now that might not always be exercised, but it’s that very threat, the very notion that that’s looming in the background, that creates exactly the Orwellian world that I don’t think anyone wants to live in. * This article is part of edition No. 494 of ALAI’s (Spanish language) magazine “América Latina en Movimiento”, special English language digital edition http://www.alainet.org/publica/494-en.phtml, titled: “Internet, power and democracy”. [1] The New Press, New York, 2013. -- ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| http://felix.openflows.com |OPEN PGP: 056C E7D3 9B25 CAE1 336D 6D2F 0BBB 5B95 0C9F F2AC # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime(a)kein.org _______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list NetworkedLabour(a)lists.contrast.org http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour -- *Please note an intrusion wiped out my inbox on February 8; I have no record of previous communication, proposals, etc ..* P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

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