The US Department of Homeland Security has stepped up efforts to contain what is considered illegal activity of sharing files across the net by seizing dozens of sites listing information related to file sharing. Image found on geeky-gadgets.com The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology question whether the domain-name seizures are… Continue reading
Date archives "December 2010"
The renaissance of the global student movement and the end of the post-ideological generation
A must see speech by a 15-year old UKstudent leader:
Netarchical ideologies and the corporatization and marketisation of free collaboration
What could be more subversive to consumer capitalism than a mass movement of people working without pay to create free stuff for other people? But capitalists shouldn’t worry, says Johnson; they should rejoice. The innovations of the unpaid web-enabled masses may be “conceived in nonmarket environments,” but they ultimately create “new platforms” that “support commercial… Continue reading
Wikileaks (2): on its aim to defeat ‘authoritarian conspiracies’
The following is an interesting analysis (by ‘zunguzungu’) of a text by Wikileaks leader Julian Assange, probably written around 2006. See the paper: State and Terrorist Conspiracies For additional analysis, see here. Analysis: (nearly quoted in full) “Most of the news media seems to be losing their minds over Wikileaks without actually reading these essays,… Continue reading
John Curl on the history of cooperativism
John Curl is the author of the book: * For All The People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements, and Communalism in America (PM Press, 2009), which we reviewed previously. Watch the video presentation here (embed function disabled by request) (strange though how a author, or interviewer, on cooperatives would want to restrict… Continue reading
Wikileaks (1): the secrecy tax*, or the triumph of Monitory Democracy
The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive “secrecy tax”) and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption…. Continue reading
Study: foundation-managed open source projects do better than corporate managed ones
From these results it follows as an obvious recommendation that vendors participating in open source development and business, should look into participating in collaborative community developed projects – where the standard and familiar governance form is a non-profit foundation. If a vendor is currently in control of an open source project, it should explore the… Continue reading