From Void Network In order to liberate ourselves from debt we must destroy the economy The political and financial spectacle has now lost its confidence. Its acts are entirely convulsive. The government of “emergency” that has taken over the maintenance of social cohesion is failing in conserving the labour, and at the same time… Continue reading
Date archives "February 2012"
Book of the Day: Digitally Enabled Social Change
Book: Digitally Enabled Social Change. Activism in the Internet Age. Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimport. MIT Press, 2011 “Much attention has been paid in recent years to the emergence of “Internet activism,” but scholars and pundits disagree about whether online political activity is different in kind from more traditional forms of activism. Does the global… Continue reading
Green European Foundation Conference on the Commons
Via Silke Helfrich: The Green European Foundation is organising, with support of the Belgian Green foundations Oikos and Etopia, a congress discussing the commons, as a new organisational concept of managing natural resources and of developing new forms of cooperation. The financial and economic crisis brought both the markets and the nation states into a… Continue reading
Movement of the Day: Economy of Communion
A “social-Catholic” approach to economics. Luigini Bruni: “The EoC is a project that currently involves hundreds (754) of businesses in five continents and has attracted the interest of scholars and economists alike. The project started in 1991 when Chiara Lubich visited the city of San Paulo in Brazil. Whoever arrives in that metropolis is confronted… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: Commons: A framework and kaleidoscope of social practices for another possible world
This article was produced as part of the Rio+20 preparation meeting of the World Social Forum, from the ‘Thematic Group on the Commons’. More information: http://dialogos2012.org/grupos-tematicos/benscomuns/?lang=en Challenges of the current context: the dangerous conspiracy between state and market State and market, at least in its hegemonic shape, are closely linked and it is hard to… Continue reading
George Dafermos on the Peer Governance of Open Source Projects
Source: Interview conducted by Michel Bauwens and Neal Gorenflo While peer production is now well-known after the pioneering work of Yochai Benkler and the evident success of open-source software, the governance of these communities is the subject of much less debate and study. Yet, evaluation of governance is crucial, as there can’t really be any… Continue reading
HitRECord – open collaborative production of creative works…
HitRECord is a company that brings together creative artists to share and re-mix their works, and to turn these works into products that will bring in a financial return. While HitRECord is a for-profit enterprise, their business model is all about sharing and re-mixing the creative output of writers, musicians, film makers, photographers, illustrators, animators… Continue reading
Pirate Bay Founders’ Prison Sentences Final, Supreme Court Appeal Rejected
Source: TorrentFreak A few moments ago Sweden’s Supreme Court announced its decision not to grant leave to appeal in the long-running Pirate Bay criminal trial. This means that the previously determined jail sentences and fines handed out to Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström will stand. November 2010, the Swedish Court of… Continue reading
Project of the Day: Hitrecord’s collaborative cultural production and 50% revenue-sharing model
This cultural creation model is worth looking at: How it works “By becoming a member of hitRECord.org you agree to the following main principles: 1. The RECords you upload are 100% original to you. 2. You grant every user on hitRECord.org the right to remix your RECords. 3. You grant hitRECord.org the non-exclusive right to… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: Peer-to-Peer Themes and Urban Priorities for the Self-organizing Society
* Article: Beyond Left and Right: Peer-to-Peer themes and urban priorities for the self-organizing society. Nikos A. Salingaros. University of Texas at San Antonio. Nikos Salingaros: Introduction. “I would like to respond to Michel Bauwens’ article published on 3 April 2010, which examines the nature of a broad alliance that could be expected to adopt… Continue reading
The Next Battleground in the War Over the Internet
Source: Dave Thier The internet may have been very quick to rest on its laurels after the successful opposition to SOPA. First there was the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, a highly restrictive, multi-national law that looked a lot like SOPA and covered everything from music downloads to crops. That bill saw much of the same opposition… Continue reading
The $20 Trillion Carbon Bubble, or why the fossil fuel industry is so adamantly opposed to renewables
Excerpted from Bill McKibben: “When I talked about a carbon bubble at the beginning of this essay, this is what I meant. Here are some of the relevant numbers, courtesy of the Capital Institute: we’re already seeing widespread climate disruption, but if we want to avoid utter, civilization-shaking disaster, many scientists have pointed to a… Continue reading
Person of the Day: Ugo Mattei on the privatization of common goods and spaces in the European Union
Michel asked me to search in the Italian part of the Internet interesting quotes from, or comments about, Ugo Mattei and his work and thoughts about the Commons. I’m surely not expert enough to answer such a request in the best way. This said, what I found more interesting among Mattei’s recent writings or interviews… Continue reading
Video of the Day: SOPA, ACTA and WIPO: where is the copyfight headed?
Source: BoingBoing Michael Geist sez, “I’ve posted a video version of a recent talk on SOPA activism and what it means for the next generation of global copyright agreements such as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and the Trans Pacific Partnership. The talk is about an hour as it also assesses the global strategies employed by… Continue reading
Project of the Day: Alpha Lo’s Gift Circles
Charles Eistenstein discusses the practice of gift circles: “Given the circular nature of gift flow, I was excited to learn that one of the most promising social inventions that I’ve come across for building community is called the Gift Circle. Developed by Alpha Lo, co-author of The Open Collaboration Encyclopedia, and his friends in Marin… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: The Commons as a Challenge for Classical Economics
Silke Helfrich, David Bollier et al. argue that: Commons are the enabler for all other social goals, including environmental ones, which in essence are social. This document was prepared by the Steering Committee of the International Commons Conference “Constructing a Commons (ICC) based policy platform organized by the Commons Strategies Group and the Heinrich Böll… Continue reading