Via David Bollier: “Luigi de Magistris, a former prosecutor and member of the European Parliament, was elected mayor of Naples in May 2011 on a law and order platform. He has now become a big-time champion of the commons. As Anthony Quattrone of the Naples Politics blog puts it, Naples is now a hothouse of… Continue reading
Date archives "March 2012"
Book of the Day: Emergence of an Economy of Communion
Book: New Financial Horizons: The Emergence of an Economy of Communion. Lorna Gold. New City Press, 2010. New edition of the book celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Economy of Communion. The Economy of Communion, which started within the Focolare Movement in 1991, involves a worldwide network of solidarity among some 800 firms that together… Continue reading
Project of the Day: Community Power drives the Energy Internet
Two projects underline the power of mutualizing resources in the quest to promote distributed energy generation: 1. Mount Pleasant Solar Cooperative “We are a diverse and growing group of families and friends who want to help solve the global problem of climate change one neighborhood at a time — starting with our own. Mt. Pleasant… Continue reading
Essay of the Day: Piracy as Marketing
Excerpted from Matthew Ingram: “As an artist who probably makes a substantial income from licensing his music, you might think Neil Young would frown on piracy and file-sharing, but that appears not to be the case, according to an interview he gave at the Dive Into Media conference in Los Angeles. Instead of railing against… Continue reading
The Occupy Exchange Fellowship Program
The Firedoglake Writers’ Foundation is starting a new project called Occupy Exchange: a fellowship program that will send skilled Occupiers on visits to other Occupy encampments, where they will share their knowledge on the subjects their hosts need help with the most. Afterwards, our fellows will write up their experiences and lessons-learned and share them… Continue reading
Person of the Day: Annie Leonard on the Commons of Stuff
Annie Leonard, documentary-maker of the Story of Stuff talks about the commons to Jay Walljasper: Excerpt from the interview: ‘ What strategies do you recommend for making more people aware of the importance of the commons? Talking about the commons is a critical first step. We’re so indoctrinated in an individualist focused approach to stuff… Continue reading
Debate: Is the Decision-Making of the #OccupyWallStreet Movement Bureaucratic?
Excerpted from Marianne Maeckelbergh: “The task facing meeting ‘facilitators’ today is considerably harder than the task facing facilitators in the alterglobalization movement. Even before I arrived in the US, I was struck by how often I heard via email, phone, facebook, and via-via complaints about how ‘bureaucratic’ the process of decision-making had become in the… Continue reading
A report on Occupy Wall Street (OWS) Forum on the commons
By Mayo Fuster Morell: I did write a report on the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) Forum on the commons 16-17 Feb 2012 in NYC. It is too long to be a blog post, but you could download it here: Download a doc version of the report: owsforumonthecommons_mayofm I have been involved on the commons in… Continue reading
Video of the Day: The Everything is a Remix theory of creativity
Source: Cory Doctorow Kirby Ferguson, creator of the absolutely outstanding Everything is a Remix series, explains his theory of creative inspiration, remix, and cultural commons, citing some of history’s best-loved “individual” creators and explaining how what they did was a remix, an extension and a part of the work that came before them.
Interview: Bill Mitchell on Modern Monetary Theory
Great explanation of what MMT is bringing to the table. ‘Bill Mitchell is the Research Professor in Economics and the Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity at the University of Newcastle, Australia. The following is an edited transcript of the interview, conducted August 15, 2011 by Winston Gee.” Interview excerpts: I wanted… Continue reading
FSF Opposes Restricted Boot
Source: Lucy Black The Free Software Foundation is running a Restricted Boot Webcomic Contest to raise awareness of the issues surrounding Microsoft’s “Secure Boot” feature on Windows 8 ARM-based machines which threatens to lock out other operating systems. This is marketing masquerading as security. You may not have come across the Secure Boot versus Restricted… Continue reading
Zipcar Shows An Interest In P2P Car Sharing
Source: Beth Buczynski With 673,000 members sharing a fleet of 8,900 vehicles, Zipcar has quickly grown to be one of the largest car sharing networks in the world. But owning and maintaining this vast collection of vehicles is expensive, and can act as a roadblock to growth. That may be why Zipcar recently hinted at plans… Continue reading
How the ‘moral depreciation of machines’ undergirds the present value crisis of capitalism
The article that I wrote for Al Jazeera is really making the waves and bringing the p2p-theoretical ideas of the value crisis (i.e. “abundance doesn’t work well with markets”) to a more mainstream audience. Thanks to editor Sam Bollier for this opportunity! Here is an amendment to the value crisis debate, from the partitaimaginaria blog… Continue reading
P2P-F in the “1st Creative Commons Buenos Aires Festival”
The 1st Creative Commons Buenos Aires Festival1st Creative Commons Buenos Aires Festival will take place from 13th to 16th of March in Argentina. The event consists of screening of films (all of them under open/free licenses) and debate spaces. From it’s web site: The objective of this event is to open a participatory space for… Continue reading
Video of the Day: Kim Dotcom from Megaupload in exclusive TV interview
Video source: TV3 (apologies for advertising in front of the video)
Essay of the Day: ‘Balanced’ Copyright, Not A Magic Solving Word
By Alan Story It was obviously a moment of some embarrassment for the US Department of Commerce and the World Intellectual Property Organisation. Hardly two weeks after more than 100 NGOs and a few individuals, mostly located in the global South, requested that these two agencies postpone the upcoming Africa IP Summit, this is exactly… Continue reading