Efforts to “shut down WikiLeaks” are largely ineffective, as explained by Dave Winer in his article WikiLeaks on the run at scripting.com. WikiLeaks on the run After explaining how Amazon closed their cloud computers to WikiLeaks, how their DNS host refused to route traffic and how France indicated that the site is welcome on French… Continue reading
Date archives "December 2010"
Amazon’s decision to censor Wikileaks endangers press freedom for all cloud computing users
Technologies advance more quickly than do laws, and eventually cloud companies may come to operate, vis a vis their journalistic clients, the way printers have operated in the past. But one of the lessons from the Wikileaks case is that, today, there are no such guarantees. The cloud is a fickle medium, with restrictive and… Continue reading
Wikileaks support
(from wikileaks) Share a Wikileaks release with a friend. Spread our wallpapers. Donate to support vital infrastructure. If you believe democracy and transparency go hand in hand, now is the time to stand and say: “The world needs Wikileaks.” Donate WikiLeaks brings truth to the world by publishing fact-based stories without fear or favor. You… Continue reading
Overview of ‘humanitarian open source’
The December issue of OSBR is available here. Summary of its contents: “Humanitarian Open Source is the theme of the December issue of the Open Source Business Resource, which is now available at osbr.ca. The Guest Editor is Leslie Hawthorn, Open Source Outreach Manager for Oregon State University’s Open Source Lab. In this issue, authors… Continue reading
P2P Foundation mailing list getting the Wikileaks treatment from belgian firm Alfahosting
*UPDATE* Service has been restored. Readers of this blog may know that we also have a very active mailing list, called P2P Research, which is used both for broadcasting p2p news items and for discussing internal and external p2p issues. It has really been at the core of our online community building efforts and where… Continue reading
Mass-mirroring Wikileaks
(from wikileaks) Wikileaks is currently under heavy attack. In order to make it impossible to ever fully remove Wikileaks from the Internet, we need your help. if you have a unix-based server which is hosting a website on the Internet and you want to give wikileaks some of your hosting resources, you can help! For… Continue reading
An anthropological introduction to peer to peer
In Milan on October 22 -23, I participated in a conference, The Effects of New Communication Technologies upon Information. This is the transcript of my lecture, which focuses more than usual on the anthropological underpinnings of p2p relationships. The spoken word nature of the intervention, may make it extra readable and more lively than the… Continue reading
The best arguments pro and con Wikileaks so far
Via Democracy Now: Steven Aftergood, a transparency advocate who has become a leading critic of WikiLeaks, debates Glenn Greenwald, a constitutional law attorney and legal blogger for Salon.com, who defends their record of exposing corruption:
The logic of the market is competition, not profit maximisation: cooperatives as a counterweight to corporatism
Interesting interview with Stefano Zamagni, the economist of civil society and cooperativism and advisor to the pope: The video introduces how reciprocity differs from exchange, the importance of relational goods, and of contributive justice. I consider Zamagni an expression of market advocates that are natural allies of a p2p approach. Description of the video by… Continue reading
An open source car that actually undoes ecological damage?
The claim of the title may seem presposterous and an example of either wishful thinking or greenwashing, but John Thackara is impressed by the integrated design philosophy of the Riversimple project, which is not merely in the design phase, but has contract with city authorities and is backed by investments of Porsche. John Thackara: “This… Continue reading
The Community Gardens of Taipei
1.12.2010 Taipei Organic Acupuncture Marco Casagrande / Ruin Academy Acupuncture is the procedure of inserting and manipulating needles into various points on the body to relieve pain or for therapeutic purposes. Urban planning integrates land use planning and transportation planning to improve the built, economic and social environments of communities. Urban design concerns the arrangement,… Continue reading
What would happen if banks fail? Lessons from an earlier Irish banking crisis
The parable of the disappearing bankers gives the tiniest glimpse of a better way: a path to a smarter kind of growth, built on a different set of institutions — those that operate at micro-scale, instead of mega-scale, built on human relationships, instead of anonymous transactions, self-organizing, instead of “administered,” and that have the humanistic… Continue reading
The shift to, and the size of, the sharing economy
Via Shareable: 1. In the first video,” Lisa Gansky, entrepreneur and author of The Mesh, gave the below talk last week at the Web 2.0 Summit. It expresses the shift to a sharing economy in a very elegant way.” 2. In the second video, Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers give many figures estimating the size… Continue reading
Wikileaks (3): Transparency favours ‘good’ business
Julian Assange: WikiLeaks is designed to make capitalism more free and ethical. In an extensive interview ofJulian Assange by Andy Greenberg at Forbes, the Wikileaks founder answers questions about the relationship between business leaks and good corporate governance; he also reveals his own ideology of market libertarianism: 1. What Transparancy Means for Business: What do… Continue reading
Event: Global Open Data Hacking Day
Tomorrow is the first ever global data hacking day. It’s just a great idea and you can take part if you get in touch with people organizing an event in your city. Alternatively you can speed boot-strap a get together. As you can read from the main site, it’s about building community around working with… Continue reading
Are civil society movements ‘oppressive’? Jai Sen on Engaging Critically with the Reality and Concept of Civil Society
The emerging global alliance and cooperation between civil, social, and political actors – that is collectively referred to as ‘global civil society’ – is first and foremost a crucial vehicle for transnational civil solidarity, which translates into the consolidation of the hold of civil societies transnationally.In a very limited sense, it is true that this… Continue reading