January 2011 - Solar-general - lists.ourproject.org

Libertades esenciales en Medios de Comunicacion
by Pablo Manuel Rizzo 14 Jan '11

14 Jan '11

Y cuales serían los límites esenciales? Ya que hacemos analogías con el SL, donde también hay límites (ej: un programa libre gpl3 no se puede cerrar, ni distribuir con DRM, etc. ) podemos también pensar la diferencias. > 0) La libertad de usar los medios de comunicación con cualquier propósito (uso) Salvo que el propósito sea impedir la comunicación de los demás (ej: saturando el ancho de banda) > 1) La libertad de auditar los medios de comunicación y adaptarlos a tus necesidades. El acceso a los paneles de administración es una condición previa para esto. (estudio) Pero actualmente la mayoría de los medios darían a acceso a la información personal de los demás usuarios. No se si todos los usuarios de la lista deberían tener acceso a la lista de emails de todos los usuarios registrados. Además, si varios usuarios quieren distintas configuraciones, hay un conflicto. Según Engels solo se podría solucionar mediante un grupo de admins con más autoridad que los demás. Según algunos anarquistas, todos los usuarios formarían una asamblea que debería llegar a un acuerdo, mediante la lista posiblemente, que es el propio medio en discusión, podría haber un bloqueo entre tanto se alcanza un acuerdo. Quizá se necesite acordar un protocolo previo a la liberación de la administración de la lista. > 2) La libertad de crear otros usuarios y medios de comunicación, con lo que puedes ayudar a tu prójimo. (copia) > 3) La libertad de modificar en los medios de comunicación y hacer públicas las mejoras a los demás, de modo que toda la comunidad se beneficie. El acceso al panel de administración es un requisito previo para esto. (mejora) La diferencia en este sentido entre un software y un medio de comunicación es que uno es una herramienta, mientras que el otro es una instancia de aplicación de la herramienta. La lista de correos es un medio de comunicación basado en varias herramientas, la lista en sí misma es una herramienta, pero solo se convierte en un medio de comunicación cuando es utilizado efectivamente, una instancia. Como decía Cortazar, "un puente no es verdaderamente un puente si los hombres no lo cruzan". Entonces estas son libertades de uso exclusivamente colectivo, no hay libertad individual de modificar, forkear, etc, un medio de comunicación, como se puede hacer con el software. Qué más se puede diferenciar? -- Pablo Manuel Rizzo ------------------------------- http://pablorizzo.com -------------------------------

2 1

Google censura canal de videos de Cubadebate en Youtube
by Pablo Manuel Rizzo 14 Jan '11

14 Jan '11

Google censura canal de videos de Cubadebate en Youtube ** Este miércoles, Cubadebate <http://www.cubadebate.cu/> recibió una notificación del centro técnico de Youtube <http://www.youtube.com/> -propiedad de Google <http://www.google.com/>- en el que se nos comunicaba que se cerraba la cuenta de nuestra página en esa red social debido a una denuncia por infracción del copyright. Se refería, específicamente, a un fragmento del video de la presentación en Miami del Fondo Legal para el terrorista Luis Posada Carriles<http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2011/01/06/luis-posada-carriles-en-miami-…>, que publicamos recientemente, editado de un material mucho más amplio que circuló en la red y había sido reproducido en varios sitios, sin autoría. Ante una reclamación de la persona que filmó el acto donde el ex agente de la CIA Luis Posada Carriles<http://www.cubadebate.cu/etiqueta/luis-posada-carriles/>anunciaba que este año estaría en Cuba y exigía pago por sus servicios -entre estos últimos la voladura de un avión civil cubano que costó la vida a 73 personas-, diligentemente Google desactivó el sitio de Cubadebate en Youtube<http://www.youtube.com/cubadebate/>. En ese momento, nuestro canal tenía más de 400 vídeos y 1,6 millones de descargas, desde su apertura hace casi tres años. *Denunciamos enérgicamente ese atentado a la libertad de expresión de un sitio alternativo en un país bloqueado, *cuyo acceso a Internet es satelital y no dispone de recursos para servidores multimediales propios. Un sitio que no puede comprar en exclusiva materiales producidos en Estados Unidos, particularmente aquellos que revelan la impunidad de los terroristas en Miami y que, por esa razón, son relevantes para nuestra producción informativa. Quien haya seguido nuestros videos, sabe que la inmensa mayoría son filmaciones originales y que cuando utilizamos otras fuentes, solemos citarlas, siempre que estén correspondientemente identificadas. Lo extraordinario es que Youtube está infestado de vídeos que presentan informaciones manipuladas y tendenciosas sobre Cuba, con imágenes robadas del sitio de Cubadebate en Youtube <http://www.youtube.com/cubadebate/>, sin que Google los haya retirado de su red social, aunque hemos hecho declaraciones al respecto. Próximamente publicaremos en esta misma web los sitios que utilizan sin consentimiento nuestros materiales, la mayoría exclusivos, para utilizarlos en campañas de satanización de la Revolución cubana. El equipo editorial de Cubadebate <http://www.cubadebate.cu/> exige que se restablezca nuestro canal e invitamos a todos nuestros amigos en el mundo a que se unan al reclamo de: *¡NO MÁS CENSURA EN YOUTUBE! ¡RESTABLEZCAN A CUBADEBATE!* <http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=20> ------------------------------ URL del artículo : * http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2011/01/12/google-censura-canal-de-videos… * -- Pablo Manuel Rizzo ------------------------------- http://pablorizzo.com -------------------------------

7 13

The advantages of seeing free software as property
by Diego Saravia 14 Jan '11

14 Jan '11

> Parece interesante, pero no termino de entender el punto del tipo este. (esto > se puede convertir en un hilo al pedo :P) > > > Title: The advantages of seeing free software as property > Author: Michel Bauwens es gente que se opone al concepto de software libre quieren software producido por pares, pero no libre ellos no ven diferencia esencial en el caracter virtual del software con relacion a los bienes materiales -- Diego Saravia Diego.Saravia(a)gmail.com NO FUNCIONA->dsa(a)unsa.edu.ar

2 1

Fwd: [Socios-HispaLinux] Documentos publicados en Wikileaks demuestran que existen planes para frenar el software libre en la Unión Europea
by Diego Saravia 14 Jan '11

14 Jan '11

las teorias conspirativas se prueban ciertas ---------- Mensaje reenviado ---------- De: Paul Brown <director(a)linux-magazine.es> Fecha: 14 de enero de 2011 06:14 Asunto: Re: [Socios-HispaLinux] Documentos publicados en Wikileaks demuestran que existen planes para frenar el software libre en la Unión Europea Para: socios(a)listas.hispalinux.es Cc: José María Mateos <chema(a)rinzewind.org> El Domingo 10 Octubre 2010, José María Mateos escribió: > 2010/10/9 Paul Brown <director(a)linux-magazine.es>: > > El documento demuestra como organizaciones como ACT > > (http://actonline.org/) un conocido lobby delegado de Microsoft, y > > Comptia (http://www.comptia.org/) han infiltrado todos y cada uno de los > > grupos de tr...abajo sobre software libre de la unión europea y se > > dedican a modificar, censurar y manipular todos los documentos para que > > digan justo lo contrario de lo que sus autores originales pretendían. > > > > Los documentos de Wikileaks muestran los cambios con texto en diferentes > > colores para mejor apreciar la manipulación. > > ¿Tienes enlaces a los documentos publicados en Wikileaks? http://blog.javier-carrete.com/2010/10/wikileaks-publishes-documents-on- plan.html -- Linux Magazine - Edición en Castellano http://www.linux-magazine.es Linux New Media Spain S.L. C/Graham Bell nº 6 Edfco. Hevimar 2, Planta 2, Ofic. 16 Parque Tecnológico de Andalucía 29590 - Málaga SPAIN Tlf.: (+34) 952020242 Fax: (+34) 951235905 _______________________________________________ Lista Socios Para DESUSCRIBIRTE escribe a socios-owner(a)listas.hispalinux.es o visita: https://listas.hispalinux.es/mailman/listinfo/socios IMPORTANTE: Los mensajes y opiniones que aparecen en esta lista son de la exclusiva responsabilidad de sus autores. No son atribuibles a Hispalinux ni a los gestores de la lista. -- Diego Saravia Diego.Saravia(a)gmail.com NO FUNCIONA->dsa(a)unsa.edu.ar

1 0

Fwd: [Socios-HispaLinux] CRISIS SOLVENTADA
by Diego Saravia 14 Jan '11

14 Jan '11

---------- Mensaje reenviado ---------- De: Jose Lancho <presidente(a)hispalinux.es> Fecha: 12 de enero de 2011 20:17 Asunto: [Socios-HispaLinux] CRISIS SOLVENTADA Para: junta(a)hispalinux.es Cc: Socios Hispalinux <socios(a)hispalinux.es> Estimados amigos, advertida o no, creo que hemos pasado una de las crisis más delicadas para el futuro del software libre en nuestro país. Por una circunstancia -nos dicen- puramente azarosa, un importante operativo de la Guardia Civil contra un elemento informático de la banda terrorista ETA acabó llamándose Operación Linux. A nadie se le escapa el golpe que un malentendido en derredor a esa denominación podría suponer para el prestigio y solvencia de nuestra comunidad y de la alternativa tecnológica que defendemos basada en la libertad y democracia de su acceso, desarrollo y difusión. Desde el primer momento que se filtró la noticia la Junta de Hispalinux buscó apoyos externos (que llegaron tarde o todavía no han llegado) y urgentemente decidió emprender una acción legal a primera hora de este miércoles. El Ministerio del Interior y la Secretaría de Estado de Seguridad procedieron a una reunión de urgencia con la representación jurídica de nuestra Asociación y de Linux Español que es sublicenciataria de la marca Linux para España. La reunión pronto descartó cualquier necesidad de recurrir a los Tribunales y de forma conjunta se consensuó una Nota de Prensa que "aclarase" no "rectificase" la denominación del operativo policial, pues la tecnología Linux es una herramienta notoria y corriente de las Fuerzas y Cuerpos de Seguridad del Estado y a veces fundamental -como lo fue para la captura de los delincuentes esos- http://www.mir.es/DGRIS/Notas_Prensa/Ministerio_Interior/2011/np011204.html Me congratulo de la enorme labor de la Junta Directiva y del apoyo jurídico y personal de nuestra asociación hermana Linux Español en este asunto. Asimismo y dado que no se me permite citar nombre alguno de la Secretaría de Estado de Seguridad agradecer la inteligencia, rapidez y oportunidad de esta aclaración así como la razonabilidad y cortesía con que se me trató. Los que lo lean lo entenderán perfectamente y su discreción y voluntario anonimato merecen todo nuestro reconocimiento. Nosotros tampoco hemos hecho nota de prensa, la opinión diluida de la Comunidad ha devuelto a su debido sentido cualquier confusión en la denominación Linux empleada por las FFyCCSE. No es necesario mas. Finalmente felicito públicamente a la Guardia Civil por su éxito policial y por sacar el mejor partido a una tecnología que sirve para la democracia así como sirve para el progreso tecnológico y económico de nuestro país y la seguridad (en estos casos la vida) de sus ciudadanos. Recibid un cordial saludo. José María Lancho -- Analizado antispam/virus. _______________________________________________ Lista Socios Para DESUSCRIBIRTE escribe a socios-owner(a)listas.hispalinux.es o visita: https://listas.hispalinux.es/mailman/listinfo/socios IMPORTANTE: Los mensajes y opiniones que aparecen en esta lista son de la exclusiva responsabilidad de sus autores. No son atribuibles a Hispalinux ni a los gestores de la lista. -- Diego Saravia Diego.Saravia(a)gmail.com NO FUNCIONA->dsa(a)unsa.edu.ar

1 0

How Wikileaks mainstreams hacktivist youth culture: how Wrong Hands revealed Linden Lab spy operation in Second Life
by Nicolás Reynolds 14 Jan '11

14 Jan '11

Title: How Wikileaks mainstreams hacktivist youth culture: how Wrong Hands revealed Linden Lab spy operation in Second Life Author: Michel Bauwens Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2011 23:05:48 -0300 Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/P2pFoundation/~3/afB_q_gzj1Q/13 No one is saying that the operations exposed by the Wrong Hands were equivalent to the Afghan War documents or the State Department cables exposed by Wikileaks; the real moral is not the importance of the exposed information, but rather the fact that the Wikileaks operation could provide a model for a new generation of hacktivists. Wikileaks is teaching young people by example. Assange may eventually be incarcerated or worse, but the genie is definitely out of the bottle at this point. There is no question but that hacktivist culture is now a worldwide phenomenon. The interesting question is not whether hacktivist culture will change our world. The interesting question now is what our world will look like after it is reshaped by hacktivist culture. Interesting article by “Urizenus Sklar”, who also reveals[1] in the example below that Linden Lab is sponsoring a vigilante surveillance network in Second Life: “A not so subtle cultural shift is taking root worldwide: Hacktivist culture is rapidly morphing from a small underground subculture into mainstream culture for a younger generation, not just in the United States, but worldwide. Julian Assange and WikiLeaks did not start this cultural movement, but they have served as a catalyst for its robust growth and worldwide propagation. And while the new generation of hacktivists has Wikileaks as its model, they also grew up in the era of George W. Bush’s neo-imperialism and its attendant war against transparency. WikiLeaks is the answer to the age of W, and it has given rise to what I call Generation W. Perhaps the surest sign of the mainstreaming of hacktivism was when 4chan underwent a metamorphosis from a group of kids trading anime and lolcat images and occasionally trolling for lulz into a potent political hacktivist movement, quite willing and able to take Mastercard and the Bank of America offline for refusing to process payments to WikiLeaks. Of course, 4chan’s “Operation Payback” was originally motivated by the draconian actions of lawyers trying to advance bogus copyright claims, but their basic underlying principle was the same hacktivist ethic motivating their defense of WikiLeaks: information wants to be free; it should not be hoarded by powerful nation states, nor should it be under the control of powerful commercial interests. The 4chan actions that have received attention in the media have involved the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against Mastercard and Bank of America, but there have been smaller and much more telling episodes in which young people with 4chan backgrounds have created their own hacktivist operations and deployed them with impressive effect.” The example: The Wrong Hands campaign against Linden Lab spying “In one recent case, reported in my essay “Watching the Watchers: Power and Politics in Second Life” a group of Woodbury University students affiliated with 4Chan created a group called “The Wrong Hands” (as in “if this information should find its way into the wrong hands…”). They subsequently infiltrated an online vigilante group that was operating inside of the virtual world Second Life. The vigilante group (known as the JLU) was exposed as having an extensive surveillance operation in Second Life — one that tracked individuals in the virtual world and kept files on those individuals. Indeed, their database contained 1,700 pages of information and misinformation on users, ranging from chat logs, to presumed real life information about Second Life users. Once the Wrong Hands infiltrated the JLU, they leaked the contents of the JLU database, posting it in many locations online. Shockingly, the leaked evidence suggested that the JLU surveillance activities were being backed by employees of Linden Lab (the company that owns Second Life), and further that Linden Lab employees were providing the JLU with special technical capabilities that could facilitated their surveillance operation. “ [image 3][2][image 5][4][image 7][6][image 8] Links: [1]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/urizenus-sklar/generation-h-wikileaks-ig_b_80… (link) [2]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/P2pFoundation?a=afB_q_gzj1Q:CMe9pP5MxLs:7Q7… (link) [3]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/P2pFoundation?d=7Q72WNTAKBA (image) [4]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/P2pFoundation?a=afB_q_gzj1Q:CMe9pP5MxLs:D7D… (link) [5]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/P2pFoundation?i=afB_q_gzj1Q:CMe9pP5MxLs:D7D… (image) [6]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/P2pFoundation?a=afB_q_gzj1Q:CMe9pP5MxLs:2mJ… (link) [7]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/P2pFoundation?d=2mJPEYqXBVI (image) [8]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/P2pFoundation/~4/afB_q_gzj1Q (image)

1 0

The advantages of seeing free software as property
by Nicolás Reynolds 14 Jan '11

14 Jan '11

Parece interesante, pero no termino de entender el punto del tipo este. (esto se puede convertir en un hilo al pedo :P) Title: The advantages of seeing free software as property Author: Michel Bauwens Date: mié, 12 ene 2011 12:16:56 -0300 Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/P2pFoundation/~3/NOoGBVWHIOY/12 Excerpted from section 1.3.2 of the thesis of Martin Pedersen, “Property, Commoning and the Politics of Free Software“. * Property and the tangible/intangible divide: a policy of what? at http://commoning.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/is-copyright-policy-or-property-a… The text below helps understand the ‘tactical’ opposition of the Free Software Foundation and Richard Stallman against seeing free software as property and especially against the concept of “Intellectual Property”. It also argues that there are many advantages when we start seeing it as property. For further info, see also our own section of Peer Property[2]” J. Martin Pedersen: In this section I examine the reasoning behind the particular framing of the intangible realm that characterise information exceptionalism. Siva Vaidhyanathan, prominent cultural environmentalist and professor of Media Studies and Law at the University of Virginia, writes that “[i]t is essential to understand that copyright in the American tradition was not meant to be a “property right” as the public generally understands property” (2001: 11) and “[c]opyright should be about policy, not property” (ibid: 15) and “[c]opyright is not property as commonly understood. It is a specific state-granted monopoly issued for particular policy reasons” (ibid: 253). Moreover “[c]opyright was a matter of policy, of a bargain among the state, its authors, and its citizens” (ibid: 23) and “Jefferson even explicitly dismissed a property model for copyright” (ibid.). That copyright is a matter of policy, not property might sound strange to a lawyer or a philosopher trained to understand copyright as a particular instance of property relations with a temporal limit and who understands property as a matter of policy. Some things do not quite add up. Nevertheless, that copyright is a matter of policy, not property, is a point that the founder of the Free Software Foundation, Richard Stallman, together with other advocates of “Free Culture”, wants us to accept1. Essentially, the Free Software and Free Culture movements reject the concept of property and instead choose to frame issues pertaining to ideas, information and knowledge – or the intangible realm – in terms of freedom, liberty, human rights, policy, intervention, and regulation. Anything but property, but preferably “policy”. Two mediate questions arise from this position: (i) What is policy? (ii) Why should we choose to adopt one term instead of another? I will answer them in turn. What is policy? Is there something in the word that clearly delimits it from property? What does policy actually mean and where does the term come from? It is term that is etymologically compounded by two roots. The Greek “polis” – ????? – which means “city” or “state” and also “citizenship” or a “body of citizens”. In other words, a rather general term suggestive of “political society” and those “who make up that society”, either individually or collectively, or their status within that political society. The second root of policy is the Latin “politus”, which means “polished” in the sense of “refined”. In late Middle English the compounded “policy” ambiguously referred to “political sagacity” and “political cunning”, the former presumably the meaning it had for those in power, while the latter likely reflects the views of common people. Despite the ambiguity, or perhaps exactly because of this ambiguity, policy referred to “what those in power are doing, how they rule society”. The modern term policy, then, enters the English language conveying the meaning of “a constitution”, which is now rare or obscure, but in 18th century political science referred to “government, administration”; or was equated with “polity”, which in turn meant “civil order”, “administration of a state”, “civil government” or “a particular form of political organization” (OED 1955: 1536-1537)2. In other words, policy is a broad term that we may say refers to a variety of activities that a state performs as part of the governance of its people. In the context of capitalist democracy, therefore, the conventions that institute its particular form of private property is a central part of the state’s policy. It is a policy that gives rise to certain laws, such as “theft” codified into a statutory offence in the Theft Act 1968 in the UK, where Section 1 reads “A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it; and “thief” and “steal” shall be construed accordingly” (Theft Act 1968). Private property is part of the state’s policy and the Theft Act is an enactment of that policy, which is necessary to secure the stability of possessions as declared in the policy. If we return to the claim that “copyright is policy, not property” it becomes obvious that there is a conflation at play, which is deployed for tactical purposes. The choice of policy over property is presented as a matter of tactic, rather than analysis: tactically it is decided to focus on “policy”, despite an analytical awareness that property can take on many different forms. This tactic is chosen on the assumption that the public cannot understand the term “property” in the way that lawyers and philosophers are able to. However, property is a form of policy – or it is a manifestation of policy. We may say, for instance, that “private property is a central ingredient in foreign aid policy in order to further entrepreneurship” or that “private property was central to Thatcher’s reasoning for the policy to turn council housing tenants into house owners”. Or, expressed differently: “If it is true—as it must be—that copyright is policy, then it is equally true that all property rights are policy” (Mossoff: 2005: 33). The claim that copyright is a matter of policy, not property can also be unpacked differently. Instead of arguing whether property means this or property means that – in the context of what are essentially artifices of justice at any rate – we can ask what debates around each of these respective issues entail. What kind of questions are asked in discussions about property relations and what kind of concepts are at play in discussions about copyright. Here it “is easy to see that every tangible property entitlement has arisen from a crucible of moral, political, and economic analyses, and thus implicates the same questions about utility, personal dignity, and freedom that now dominate the debates over digital copyright. The preeminent property cases that every law student studies in the first year of law school are exemplars of this basic truth” (ibid.). Nevertheless, investigating the claims of the “information exceptionalists” further will be instructive3. As part of the tactic to substitute policy for property in the context of understanding copyright, Free Culture advocates claim that copyright understood as property is a modern invention carried out by scheming corporations using the rhetoric of (natural) property to distort the public perception of the underlying and original policy of copyright (Stallman 2004)4. However, the “…story supposes that a multilateral treaty would be written and an international agency established with a wholly new name that no one was familiar with. In fact, WIPO’s predecessor international agency was called the “United International Bureaus for the Protection of Intellectual Property.” It was commonly known by its French acronym, BIRPI. BIRPI was formed in 1893, as a combination of two small agencies that had been established to administer, respectively, the Berne and Paris Conventions. Thus, “intellectual property” was a conscious, nineteenth-century category created to subsume both “literary property” (Berne) and “industrial property” (Paris).” (Hughes 2006: 1005-1006) Further good evidence for the tradition of understanding copyright and patents as property has been provided recently as a response to these seemingly misleading claims: “There can be little question today that intellectual property assets are forms of “property.” The Patent Act expressly declares that “patents shall have the attributes of personal property” and the Supreme Court acknowledges them as such. The Copyright Act states that “ownership of a copyright may be transferred in whole or in part by any means of conveyance or by operation of law, and may be bequeathed by will or pass as personal property by the applicable laws of intestate succession.” (Menell 2007: 37) Consider also a publication that pre-dates cultural environmentalism and Free Culture: “English law has considered copyright a form of property. An 1842 decree asserts that “Copyright … shall endure for the Natural Life of Such Author and shall be the Property of Such Author”. In other decrees the terms “the owner of the copyright,” “ownership of copyright” and “proprietary rights” are mentioned“ (Matuck 1993: 406; see also Mossof 2005, 2007). There is no evidence to suggest that intellectual property is a new term, on the contrary. To understand why Free Culture and Free Software advocates are rejecting the term, we need to understand their perception of the public imagination and the public’s capacity to understand issues concerning property and social organisation. Lessig explains: “If you’re a lawyer, it’s OK to think of intellectual property as property, because we’re trained to use the word property in a careful way. We don’t think of it as an absolute, perpetual right that can’t be trumped by anybody. We understand property rights are constantly limited by public-use exceptions and needs, and in that context we understand intellectual property to be a very particular, peculiar kind of property — the only property constitutionally required to be for limited terms. It’s clearly established for a public purpose and is not a natural right … The real problem is when people use it in the ordinary sense of the term property, which is “a thing that I have that nobody can take, forever, unless I give it to you.” By thinking of it as property, we have no resistance to the idea of certain great companies controlling “their” intellectual property forever. But if we instead use terms like monopoly to describe the control that companies like Disney have over art objects like Mickey Mouse, it’s harder to run naturally to the idea that you ought to have your monopoly right forever” (interview in Walker 2002). Copyright, then, is property, for a lawyer and a philosopher, and property for a lawyer and a philosopher is not simply private property based on a natural right that requires no justification. For the “public” and in “ordinary” usages, on the other hand, property is a natural right according to Lessig; Stallman agrees: “I, along with most people, consider property rights as natural rights, something people are simply entitled to. They don’t need any specific justification; rather, exceptions need justification” (Stallman 2007: email)5. Do most people really think that, I wonder? However, it is not a question that is really relevant here. Two principles prevent us from entering into such questioning. Firstly, this is an academic and scholarly exercise, to the best of my abilities, and secondly, we are certainly not in the business of misleading “the public” on the basis of the assumption that “the public” is unable to understand property properly. If anything, a very careful explanation to “the public” of what property means for lawyers and philosophers would be called for, rather than a misleading, non-factual deviation. Such a careful explanation will be provided in Chapter 2. Let us here disentangle the confusion, which will reveal a different effect of the “framing effect”. Stallman uses the term “framing” to strengthen the Free Culture claim and justify the tactic to treat the public as too unwitting: “Bringing the word “property” into contact with this issue in _any_ fashion frames the issue in favor of whoever is the “owner” of the “property”. Everyone can sympathize with “Keep off my property! I can use my property any way I like.” And that is the basis that non-philosophers will use to respond to your statement … In the “network neutrality” debate, that framing favors AT&T. In copyright issues, that framing favors the author or publisher. The issue here isn’t the history of Western modern ideas of property rights. (Property rights existed before 1700.) It’s about what people (other than philosophers) think today. I agree with you that, at the fundamental level, property rights are conventions set up by society, and that these conventions could be set up in various ways, and that we can present arguments in favor or against various proposals. None of these conventions is beyond the domain of questioning, and although I accept the idea of property rights as the default for physical objects, I can consider the question. I think you will find that a large part of the public won’t go that far. Merely to call patents a “property right” will make it difficult for many people even to entertain opposition to them. You’re probably aware of the effect that the way of framing an issue has on people’s thoughts. Perhaps philosophers have trained their minds to the point where they can overcome this effect — but not most people. If we frame copyright issues in terms of “property”, that is in practice a terrible handicap” (Stallman 2008: email)6. There is good reasoning and cogent argumentation behind the tactical choice to not frame the politics of Free Culture and Free Software in terms of property. However, I am wary of discussing legal and philosophical concepts in a way defined and determined in scope by popular opinion, especially in the context of the free flow of information, ideas and knowledge – and a Free Culture in general. I lean toward sharing knowledge and skills with “the public”, rather than simply assuming their ignorance. Indeed, I argue that framing Free Software in terms of property has great potential. Imagine what would happen if Free Software was understood as property and the public came to learn that copyright, as a form of property, could take very different and shared and collective forms and be temporally limited. The concept of property would be relativised, so to speak, and no longer take the particular form that appears to be tattooed onto everyone’s mind, namely the kind of private property that characterises capitalist democracy. For Ayn Rand, subverting the understanding of one intellectual property right means nothing other than the dissolution of “all other rights”: “Patents are the heart and core of property rights, and once they are destroyed, the destruction of all other rights will follow automatically, as a brief postscript” (Rand 1966: 128). Currently, property is understood in what Stallman and Lessig so cogently noted was an incorrect manner: a natural, absolute, perpetual right to do whatever you please. Free Software, however, is very differently configured and if understood as property would force upon that concept substantial reorientation. If indeed framed in terms of property, Free Software might constitute a threat to capitalist property, because it reveals that capitalist property is only one of many possible ways of configuring property. Viewed upside down, then, the tactical framing (i.e. not in terms of property) that is central to Free Software politics, serves to protect Free Software from public misunderstanding, just as much as it serves to protect private property from public understanding. Understanding Free Software as property potentially provides a fresh view on property that is not alien to lawyers and philosophers and which would be enlightening to “the public” (whoever that may be). It opens a door to the politics of property, which, according to the Free Software and Free Culture movements, is suffused with misunderstandings. A lack of information, I claim, is a signal to open up the black box of property and let insights circulate freely; and not a signal to keep the black box of property closed. Yet, Stallman disagrees: “Our goal is to establish relations about software which are not property relations. There are rules, yes; but these rules are not like property rights (unless you stretch that term so far it will snap)” (Stallman 2007: email)7. Snapping property is precisely what I am aiming at. The institution of property is a core element in political thought. Revisiting it, revising it, and understanding property in new contexts in the same way that you re-read a novel to grasp dimensions that you had previously failed to notice, is a recurrent political task. In times of change, when the technological, cultural and social circumstances change around us, we need to address the core rules and laws that typify society to ensure that they fit and are sensible in the new context. One such core rule or law is property and it is necessary to continuously redefine its boundaries. That is my claim, but that is also where my view diverges from Stallman’s: “I think the “institution of property” is an overbroad idea, not useful for thinking about political issues … If [redefining the boundaries of property] is your goal, it seems that we are fundamentally opposed” (Stallman 2008: email)8. Because of this divergence, the “policy approach” that defines Free Software and Free Culture is irreconcilable with an anti-capitalist position. That incommensurability is clearly reflected as Lessig states his position with regard to private property: “I [do not] condemn “proprietary culture.” Proprietary culture has been with us from the start and for most of our history has served creativity and culture well. What I do condemn is extremism—the shift from the standard view to an extreme version of “proprietary culture” that could easily become embedded in the digital economy” (Lessig 2005: 63). Given that Lessig primarily sees property as referring to the tangible realm only, the statement that proprietary culture serves us well must include reference to exclusive ownership of land, the means of production and distribution. In short, Lessig refers to the very heart of the capitalist economy, which social movements all over world have resisted for hundreds of years. Lessig thus defends the industrial machinery that has landed humanity in an unprecedented ecological crisis and a relatively profound and prolonged economical crisis. Private property rights are embraced uncritically – except for in cyberspace – in submission to the invisible hand with the violent fist. The uncritical view on existing property regimes is here confirmed by Benkler: “This is not to say that property is in some sense inherently bad. Property, together with contract, is the core institutional component of markets, and a core institutional element of liberal societies. It is what enables sellers to extract prices from buyers, and buyers to know that when they pay, they will be secure in their ability to use what they bought. It underlies our capacity to plan actions that require use of resources that, without exclusivity, would be unavailable for us to use” (Benkler 2006: 23-24). The market is a useful and integral element of a liberal society of the kind that Benkler is advocating, because it facilitates contractual relations between rational agents that enable them to plan actions and produce things. The market is good for humanity, as long as it behaves nicely in cyberspace. The point of Free Culture “is not to rethink real property but to explain the ways in which the economic theory of real property falls short when applied to the rather different world of intellectual property” (Lemley 2005: 1097). When it comes to the economic theory of “real property” as they call it, there is nothing to question, because we can “say with some confidence that a right of physical exclusion works as a legal matter because its benefits exceed its costs” (Lemley 2005: 1099): “Real property rights do in fact serve two valuable goals. First, they prevent rivalrous uses by multiple claimants to a particular piece of property and therefore avoid the tragedy of the commons. Second, they allow their owners to invest in improving or developing the property” (ibid: 1098). For the Free Software and Free Culture movements, we have seen, (mis)understanding property is a matter of tactic, not analysis. The overall strategy, it has been revealed, does not include a critical perspective on ownership in the tangible realm. The analysis of this chapter, on the other hand, will show that this tactical approach at the expense of a thoroughgoing, critical engagement leaves Free Software and Free Culture eternally vulnerable to enclosure. That is because exclusive ownership of the technostructural underpinning of cyberspace – the materiality of cyberspace, as it were – permits those owners to seek rent in and prioritise traffic on their network: exclusive, private ownership in the tangible realm permits an extraction of wealth from activities that unfold in the intangible realm. There is no such thing as a purely immaterial mode of production or circulation, not even dreaming or telepathy come close. Nothing in cyberspace exists without a material foundation, as we shall see in the next section. For that reason, Free Culture must appeal to the state to ensure that capitalists play ball in cyberspace and do not extract wealth in the manner to which they are accustomed. By implication, then, Free Culture requires a strengthening of the state – and an always strong state – while the problems of private property rights in the tangible realm remain unquestioned. Consequently, the novelty of the social relations for which protection is sought are instead conceptualised in terms that rather permit for market forces to profit from them, than provide protection in a substantial sense. From an anti-capitalist perspective the celebrated co-productive relations are hence lost in the sense that they are not applied to that province of our knowledge and legal systems called property. It is, however, a desolate province in urgent need of cultivation. Understanding Free Software as property and commons-based peer production as a new mode of production that instantiates a non-capitalist space in society on the basis of novel property configurations, I argue, will cultivate an understanding of property that is very instructive.” [image 4][3][image 6][5][image 8][7][image 9] Links: [1]: http://commoning.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/is-copyright-policy-or-property-a… (link) [2]: http://p2pfoundation.net/Category%3APeerproperty (link) [3]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/P2pFoundation?a=NOoGBVWHIOY:cki2YZa4MqE:7Q7… (link) [4]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/P2pFoundation?d=7Q72WNTAKBA (image) [5]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/P2pFoundation?a=NOoGBVWHIOY:cki2YZa4MqE:D7D… (link) [6]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/P2pFoundation?i=NOoGBVWHIOY:cki2YZa4MqE:D7D… (image) [7]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/P2pFoundation?a=NOoGBVWHIOY:cki2YZa4MqE:2mJ… (link) [8]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/P2pFoundation?d=2mJPEYqXBVI (image) [9]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/P2pFoundation/~4/NOoGBVWHIOY (image)

1 0

Los mapas ideológicos del mundo p2p. David de Ugarte
by Matías Croce 13 Jan '11

13 Jan '11

http://edusol.info/es/bitacora/los-mapas-ideologicos-del-mundo-p2p-david-ug… -- Matías Croce microblog: http://identi.ca/matux jabber/XMPP: mati(a)nelumboweb.com.ar

1 0

Jaque Fresco, tecnología como solución
by Luis Palombo 13 Jan '11

13 Jan '11

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WcmwG29mGI&feature=player_embedded#!

4 4

Consulta: Evernote, Springpad, etc. Alternativas?
by Fernando 13 Jan '11

13 Jan '11

Buenas, estoy necesitando una herramienta para tomar notas varias (que incluyen texto plano, tal vez alguna imagen, link o capturas de un sitio) y que pueda acceder online. Lo mas "pro" es Evernote o Springpad, ambos bastante cerrados y prefiero no caer en eso si puedo evitarlo. Por el momento estoy con Read it Later, Delicious y Tomboy, por lo que busco algo que integre todo. Snowy queda fuera porque esta demasiado verde (ademas Dreamhost y Django no son la mejor combinacion, segun dicen), encima la unica aplicacion de Tomboy para moviles no permite escribir, es de solo lectura. No pretendo algo con clientes para movil, pero si alguien sabe de algun servicio mas "bonachon" (onda identi.ca con status.net) o algun programa en php/ruby que se pueda instalar en un server propio, agradeceria cualquier informacion. Ya se que es mucho pedir que tenga cliente para moviles, addon para Firefox, sea libre y tome notas de todo tipo, la idea es buscar el que cumpla la mayor cantidad de cosas. Gracias.

4 5