This could be an erroneous interpretation based on my too limited historical memory, but if two news items make a trend, then we can conclude that the global p2p movement is starting to move into a different phase, that from countercultural transgression, into active political mobilization.

The first item concerns the demonstration by Pirate Party sympathizers against the Pirate Bay verdict, bringing 1,000 people on the street in Stockholm.

The second mobilization is even more significant, because of the broad coalition it represents, i.e. the recent German demonstration against pig breeding patents.

In summary:

“Bringing a herd of pigs to the European Patent Office (EPO) between one and two thousand protesters asked for an end of patents on animals, plants and breeding and for changes in European patent law. Representatives of the “No Patents on Seeds” alliance during the event delivered 5,000 complaints to the EPO against a patent on pig breeding granted by the EPO to US company Monsanto last year.”

Here are more details about the issue:

“In a study commissioned by Greenpeace, Then and his co-author Ruth Tippe listed 40 patents on breeding methods for pigs, cows or plants, most of them already granted by the EPO. Then ridiculed the inventive step of these patents by comparing them to the selection of elephants for breeding depending on average nose length measured with a yard stick.

After the pig breeding patent had been granted, farmers “started to pay attention to the issue and are asking what this office is up to,” Tippe told the protesters. She collected the 5,000 individual complaints against the pig breeding patent. These complaints now have to be checked by the EPO and sent to Newsham for comments.

Tippe underlined the concern of German farmer associations that the breeding patents would lead to a complete dependence on large multinational companies and an end to free farming despite assurances by the EPO that the patents did not include the animals themselves.”

Obviously (most probably) most of the demonstrators would be unaware of the inter-relation between open/free, participatory, and commons oriented practices and value systems, which together make the P2P ethos, nevertheless I think it is a significant mobilization, since it is a conscious defense against the intellectual property enclosures through patents, and a struggle for autonomy in farming.