Dear Sepp,<br><br>would it be possible to find out about bitcoin legal harassment, to publish something on our blog about it?<br><br>many thanks for considering this,<br><br>Michel<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 8:09 PM, Natalie Golovin <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:10natalie@cox.net">10natalie@cox.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
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<div><b>From:</b> <a title="rick@piratpartiet.se" href="mailto:rick@piratpartiet.se" target="_blank">Falkvinge on Infopolicy</a> </div>
<div><b>Sent:</b> Tuesday, October 25, 2011 3:09 AM</div>
<div><b>To:</b> <a title="10natalie@cox.net" href="mailto:10natalie@cox.net" target="_blank">10natalie@cox.net</a> </div>
<div><b>Subject:</b> Falkvinge on Infopolicy</div></div></div>
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<h1 style="padding-bottom: 6px; margin: 0px;"><a style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(136, 136, 136); font-size: 22px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;" title="(http://falkvinge.net)" href="http://falkvinge.net" target="_blank">Falkvinge on
Infopolicy</a> <br><a href="http://fusion.google.com/add?source=atgs&feedurl=http://feeds.feedburner.com/Falkvinge-on-Infopolicy" target="_blank"><img src="" style="padding-top: 6px;" alt="" border="0"> </a></h1>
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<p style="margin: 1em 0px 3px;"><a style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 18px;" href="http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/Falkvinge-on-Infopolicy/%7E3/OlxO_exqEh8/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email" name="1333b4dbf3e50e53_1" target="_blank">Damn. This Is What It Looks Like, Isn’t It?</a> </p>
<p style="line-height: 140%; margin: 9px 0px 3px; font-family: georgia,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; color: rgb(85, 85, 85); font-size: 13px;"><span>Posted:</span>
25 Oct 2011 12:00 AM PDT</p>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 15px; float: right; min-height: 133px; margin-left: 20px;"><img src="" title="Business Handshake. Money changing hands in background." alt="Business Handshake. Money changing hands in background." height="133" width="237"></div>
<p style="font-size: 120%; font-weight: 700;"><span style="text-transform: uppercase; font-weight: 800;">Corruption:</span> <b>One
of the key insights of the Pirate community is that power is expected to
corrupt people. It is not just that it is <i>possible</i>, rather, it is
near <i>inevitable</i>. Therefore, you can’t trust people to not be
people; instead, you must design the system to survive human
nature.</b></p>
<p>I had one such epiphany last week as I got a routine mail from one of
many seeking contact with me. Since <a title="After 5 years, I’m stepping down as Party Leader" href="http://falkvinge.net/2011/01/01/after-five-years-im-stepping-down-as-party-leader/" target="_blank">stepping
down</a> from party leadership, my role has primarily been to connect
people, observe and give feedback, and think aloud — acting as a classic
senior Greycloak without any formal decision power.</p>
<p>Now, our movement is clearly in an underdog position against an
establishment who are defending its positions of entitlement. We do not
want to fix their structures; to them, we are <i>the problem</i>, not
the fix. Therefore, being regarded as a disease in the system, you come to
expect that your rights are ignored and the privileges of the nobility
upheld; a two-tier justice system is enforced with violence. You cannot
meet this on the playfield of enforcement violence where you are
outnumbered and outgunned; whether we like it or not, we are rightsless.
Court proceedings are rigged in every way imaginable; legislative
processes scheduled to make it impossible for citizens to be heard.
Instead, you must meet this with sunlight and public opinion, which is our
home arena where we are unbeatable. Corruption thrives in the dark.</p>
<p>In this, we share a lot with the contemporary Occupy movement.</p>
<p>So I was not surprised when I got yet another mail last week that
called my attention to this two-tier justice system. It was from a large
bitcoin player in Asia who asked me to put sunlight on the fact that
German police are harassing bitcoin enthusiasts, seizing their money and
putting them through no ends of trouble just for using a disruptive
technology that could upend the privileges of the <i>ancien
regime</i>.</p>
<p><b>Well, this is the kind of things I do.</b> And in this
case, it makes sense for everybody. I connect these people with the German
Pirate Party, who can call public opinion to this fact and strengthen
their role as progressive against entitlements of the old nobility. The
bitcoin player gets to strengthen the bitcoin community, the enthusiasts
in Germany get to pursue their hobby without clueless police beating them
for the fun of it, and the German <i>Piratenpartei</i> gets another
feather in the hat with the German public ahead of the next elections.</p>
<p><b>Then it hits me.</b> It hits me like a truckload of bricks
being dumped on top of me without warning; I just stare
<b>dumbfounded</b> for several minutes as I try to wrap my head
around the concepts.</p>
<p><i>Damn</i>, I hear myself say. <i>This is what it looks like, isn’t
it?</i></p>
<p>Let me rewrite what happened. A bank of our generation, a net-gen bank
in a large economy in Asia, had trouble with law enforcement harassing
their customers. “The law enforcement agents are misguided and misinformed
in their efforts”, they might have written, “and we would like to help
them understand the issues”. Rather than connecting with German law
enforcement, where I have no connections, I see an opportunity for
personal friends of mine who run a major political party in one of
Europe’s key economies to gain from this, embarrassing law enforcement
through a public media campaign to stop harassing the bank’s customers,
all while gaining votes for the next election. All of my friends win and
the Police look stupid.</p>
<p>This <b>is indeed</b> what it looks like, isn’t it? The very
behavior we are trying to fight?</p>
<p>Now, I’m not utilitarian to the fingertips. The behavior we are
fighting is unjust because it combines the power of lawmaking and law
enforcement with that of personal and business interests; we
<b>don’t</b> do that and <b>can’t</b> do that. But
just because we are underdogs now — everybody in this story from the bank
to the bitcoin enthusiasts to the German <i>Piratenpartei</i> — and
trying to upend the privileges of the old, that doesn’t give us the right
to take their place to defend a contemporary we live in against the next
generation after us <b>if we could</b>. We, too, will grow old.
Right now, we are saying that sunlight and transparency will prevail. At
the same time, those of us who founded and started these movements are
getting hyperconnected among ourselves and with all the major players
building the structures of the next generation.</p>
<p>(As a measure of the ridiculous extent of connectedness, I’m not only
connected to that bank in Asia — I am also a good customer there, and I
personally know the people who designed that bank’s security systems. I
used to work for them and we have even received the same awards. I don’t
think the bank is aware of that fact, though.)</p>
<p>What is to say that we won’t just become the old, behave like the old,
in 30-40 years when we have grown into much more senior positions in
society where our movements have grown into power, and we all know one
another and help one another stand above the law when, like above, there
is a “misunderstanding with law enforcement”?</p>
<p>Events like the one last week are <b>tests.</b> Tests of
whether we stand true to our ideals. Being aware of our human nature is a
first step of standing true to them in the long run.</p>
<p>Most importantly, I am aware that our movements will start to flood
with career-hungry people once there are good careers to be made in
organizations like the Pirate Parties, and us idealists will gradually
grow marginalized. That’s just the way things work. This is why, in my <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCbRX1YEqrs" target="_blank">closing keynote</a> to
the <i>Pirate Parties International</i> earlier this year, I chose to
focus on this fact. “Every 40 years”, I said, “democracy is reconquered by
new idealists. Their movements are eventually taken over by career
politicians. So will ours.”</p>
<p>Therefore, I ended by asking for a favor. “<b>Forty years from
now</b>, those of us who are still around, I’d like to ask you for
<b>a favor</b>“, I said. “Odds are that when our parties are
flooded with career politicians forty years from now, and we are living
comfortably in our retirements, a bunch of spoiled young brats will
organize out of nowhere and appear to demand everything for free in ways
that are both reprehensible and incomprehensible.”</p>
<p><b>“Help them.”</b></p>
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