Do we really need to sacrifice privacy for health in the fight against covid-19? The DP-3T protocol can save lives without furthering surveillance capitalism.

• Originally published at n.case.me.
• Download this comic as a .zip!
• Sources: DP-3T, TCN Protocol, Ferretti & Wymant et al

The post How Contact Tracing Apps Can Foil Both COVID-19 and Big Brother appeared first on P2P Foundation.

There is much hype around circular and collaborative economies over the past few years. From Davos to the European Union, everyone is eager to grab a piece of the new mode of industrial development. But what lies beneath these grand narratives?

In this 3-part short series we attempt to critically review the current discussion on the circular and collaborative economy and provide insights from some alternative trajectories.

This short series based on a workshop on circular, collaborative and distributed production designed and facilitated by Chris Giotitsas and Alex Pazaitis on the occasion of the participation of OD&M project at the 83rd Florence International Handycraft Fair, on April 24, 2019 in Florence.

Part 1: On the circular economy.

The most widely known and basic definition for a circular economy (accepted even by the European Union) entails cycles of production, ranging from repair, to maintenance, to re-use, refurbishment, and last to recycling. For this conceptualization to work, products need to be designed to fit these cycles. Meaning that we need to rethink how we design and make things. For instance, a phone may be designed so that it can be more durable, easier to repair and easier to recycle. So far so good.

However, considering the production and distribution networks today, that would presumably take place on a global scale. A product would be produced in one place, then purchased on the other side of the planet, then repaired or refurbished and resold somewhere else entirely. Until ultimately it is recycled for material and entering the cycle all over again. The question here, then, is: who would do the repair/ refurbishment/ recycling on that scale? As it is currently conceptualized, it is the service provider or the manufacturer that does it. How? Would manufacturers have processing facilities all over the planet, or would the products be sent to their locations thus increasing energy consumption and pollution? Doesn’t this reverse the whole point of circularity related to sustainability?  

Furthermore, how would manufacturers and service providers keep track of all these products? Apparently, it is with the help of the “Internet of Things”, by making products smart and trackable. But if we’re talking about a circular system of this complexity then this means that the “manufacturer” would need to have massive operational capacities and resources as well as tracking (or surveilling really) data to an alarming degree.

From a different perspective, if one looks at the EU reports on the issue of circular economies they will find assessments based on collected data and while there is plenty available on a state and municipal level (regarding, for instance, recycling) there is next to none when it comes to industry. That is hardly surprising. It is costs money to track and collect information and when there is no clear profit foreseen, then why would a private manufacturer do it? The idea is to incentivize industry to change their practices. Allow them to make money in a different, more sustainable way. But even then, why would they share data? And how would the protocols and processes of one huge manufacturer work with those of another. They are competitors after all and the profit of one signals the loss of another. 

So, circularity without being open source, is not really circularity. By making it so, then it would ensure interoperability for start. Meaning the products of one manufacturer would work with those of another. Open licenses and standards for parts, tools, materials as well as the sharing of all relevant information would mean that the product of one manufacturer would be possible to be repaired or maintained by whomever locally. Their materials would also be easier to locate, distribute, and reuse. However, at least for now, this seems not to be the goal.

When it comes to the circular economy, we are attempting to apply a concept on a production system that is incompatible. And the attempts so far, seem either too small or they end up being co-opted to such a degree that they lose any transformative potential.  

Part 2: On the Sharing Economy

As a global society, we are facing what could be understood as an existential dilemma with the sharing economy. As a phenomenon, the sharing economy has been increasingly gaining attention since -roughly- 2004, as it gets more and more share in the global markets. But sharing, as a practice, is not a new phenomenon. It has been present in communities since the dawn of human history. And, frankly, in our current form of economic organisation we have not always been very fond of it…. 

Those of us who have been old enough to witness a primitive type of audiovisual technology called “Digital Video Disc” (aka DVD), have often found ourselves irritated with -and simultaneously amused by- aggressive anti-piracy ads like this one. In all their ridiculousness, comparing a downloaded movie with car theft, what they were basically tackling was early forms of peer-to-peer file-sharing.  

So what has happened in less than 10 years that made sharing (esp. over the internet) from a criminal activity to the whole “sharing is caring” story? 

Apparently, the answer lies in some people making enormous amounts of money through sharing. A glimpse on the net worth of Mark Zuckerberg or the market value of tech start-ups like Uber or AirBnB nicely illustrate this. On the other hand, a closer look in their underlying infrastructures (and also their tax returns) shows that, despite profiting on sharing capacities, they are not equally interested in sharing themselves. So, to put it bluntly, what is interesting about sharing, is the sharing economy. What is less obvious is what it is about the economy that is of the interest of sharing. 

In a broader view, the economy can be described as a system that caters for the production and distribution of the means necessary for our subsistence and well-being. In the specific kind of economic system we broadly refer to as capitalism, economic affairs usually involve two main institutions: (a) private property; and (b) market exchange. The latter is fundamentally dependent on the former, and, respectively, the former rationalises the latter. This line of economic understanding also by and large underpins the definition of the sharing (or collaborative) economy from the European Union (European Commission (2016). A European Agenda for the Collaborative Economy. Available): 

“[…] the term “collaborative economy” refers to business models where activities are facilitated by collaborative platforms that create an open marketplace for the temporary usage of goods or services often provided by private individuals” 

And further it is pointed out: 

“Collaborative economy transactions generally do not involve a change of ownership and can be carried out for profit or not-for-profit” 

More or less, the understanding of sharing on behalf of the EU is reduced to the extent it can relate to these fundamental institutions of property and exchange. The focus is then placed on regulating issues evolving around these relations, concerning both things and people, including labour, liability and taxation. 

Nevertheless, the same document still cannot move away from pointing out -even if in a footnote- a certain element that is significantly different: 

“Collaborative economy services may involve some transfer of ownership of intellectual property […]” 

And I would add a hint: often without conventional market-based transactions. Earlier examinations of the phenomenon focus exactly on this dynamic, explaining those conditions that allow them to have massive economic impact. Harvard Law Professor, Yochai Benkler, more than a decade before the EU became interested in the sharing economy (Benkler, Y. 2004. Sharing Nicely: On Shareable Goods and the Emergence of Sharing as a Form of Economic Production. The Yale Law Journal, 114(2): 273-358), eloquently argues on sharing as a form of economic production and nicely summarises his position as follows (again in a footnote, yet for different reasons here): 

“I am concerned with the production of things and actions/services valued materially, throughnon-market mechanisms of social sharing […]” 

And then continues: 

“Sharing’, then, offers a less freighted name for evaluating mechanisms of social-relations-based economic production” 

The phrase “valued materially” concerns the real value of sharing, not the one expressed in financial markets or the balance sheets of Facebook’s partner advertising companies. It relates to the very human interaction of sharing stuff and our own time and capacities in things we consider meaningful, from food, shelter and rides, to knowledge, information and technology. The meaning, or value, of this interaction, contrary to the so-called sharing economy, is not guided by price signals between the people, commodities and services. It is a form of an economy, i.e. a system catering for human subsistence and well-being, based solely on social relations. And this is partly why a Harvard professor has to come up with a “less freighted name” for it, as we can all imagine the all-too-freighted name of it that any Fox News anchor would instinctively shout out based on the above definition alone. 

And here lies the real transformative dynamic of sharing as a form of economic production. It is this element that allows a group of uncoordinated software developers create better a web-server than Microsoft; or thousands of people, contributing their knowledge with no predefined structure, roles or economic incentives, create a digital encyclopedia that outgrows Britannica. But such sharing-enabled success stories typically don’t mobilise huge cash flows and don’t create “added value”, which basically entails an understanding of value stemming exclusively from selling stuff to people.  

Going back to our existential issues with sharing, our general position as societies is that we basically think of sharing as a nice thing to do, but lack the institutions to really appreciate its value for our economic system. This massively restrains the actual dynamics of sharing, which are gradually subsumed by the dominant private-property-and-market-driven system. 

There are of course great alternatives in the digital economy alone that build on this sharing capacity in a more humane and socially-minded way, from early neighbourhood tools and rides sharing platforms, to Free and Open Source Software, open design projects and Wikipedia. There is frankly as much sharing taking place on Facebook as in Wikipedia, at least on the front end. But the underlying value models and, subsequently, potential outcomes for the majority of the people involved are vastly different. 

For this we need to finally mature with regards to our issues with sharing and, eventually, make a choice for the kind of sharing for which we would design our institutions and societies. And hopefully that would be the one that would help us escape the current dead ends on the social and ecological front. 

Part 3: Needs-based design as an alternative paradigm 

Despite the serious conceptual and systemic problems described in the previous parts of this short series, it does not necessarily mean that there are no examples of true implementation for collaborative and circular practices right now. In fact, there are several technological development communities that make it happen to some significant degree. More specifically,  needs-based design and grassroots innovation as community-driven endeavours offer a serious alternative paradigm. 

In other words, communities can harness these ICT-enabled capabilities to collaboratively create technology for themselves, and promote sustainable practices based on shared values, knowledge and infrastructure. For instance, small-scale farmers in the agricultural communities of L’atelier paysan and Farm Hack, collaborate to produce tools and machines, often from recycled scrap material, suitable for their type of agriculture, which conventional market channels often fail to adequately cover. 

Yet, this type of self-construction activity is limited in simpler, frugal solutions, whereas  to address today’s challenges we need a broader engagement of design and engineering. But for a community to create complex technologies and systems, advanced skills still need to be employed, including designers, engineers and software developers. The main difference is the type of relationship they have with the community of users. This means the experts would act according to their own motives for engagement but with an explicit purpose to provide a solution which best serves the users of the technology. 

As far as the users are concerned, designers take up a specific purpose. They serve the role of guides or “Sherpas” (with reference to the ethnic group of the Himalayas that are expert mountaineers helping other groups). In that sense, the design process begins after a need within a community is made explicit. Then the designer meets with the community several times to discuss the parameters of the problem that needs solving and uses her expertise to design the solution, which is then reviewed by the community. This is an iterative process until a final artefact is produced, often through a collective process.

Nevertheless, engaging in such a creative activity  and simultaneously making a living out of its is no easy task, yet it is better than the alternative. Having a community as a base of support beats deciding to engage in “social innovation” on your own. At least if we are defining social innovation as something that you make for the common good rather than a thing to make money out of. For instance, designers in the agricultural communities mentioned above, could receive funds to help farmers refurbish or redesign an existing tool, or they could crowdfund within the community for the creation of a new tool. 

Such hybrid and radical models may lead to some sustainability for the designer willing to engage in social production. In our view however, for these terms to be genuinely meaningful in terms of sustainability, openness and equity, structural changes need to take place starting from a policy level. These communities provide a certain blueprint to inform the direction which needs to be taken. 

For instance, instead of incentives for manufacturers, perhaps more focus could be placed in empowering communities to tackle parts of the extremely complex problems of circular production. Likewise, user-communities can harness favourable licences and legal tools to build on shared capacities for collaborative forms of production and distribution. Individuals like designers could also be given incentives and support to engage with these communities in a relationship that is not profit-driven but informed by mutually shared values. 

What this would look like may take many forms, especially depending on local cultures and social contexts. For instance, such a community in the US, which generally lacks serious welfare structures, means that farmers need to rely largely on themselves and each other. Designers that work with them, manage to secure limited funding through the national agriculture organisations and donors while doing also something else to secure their personal sustainability. A similar community in Europe, on the other hand, which still manages to maintain basic social welfare amidst austerity obsessions, means that designers and engineers working with the farmers can secure state funding. So the volume of the work, as well as the quality of tools and documentation can be significantly increased. 

In conclusion, collaborative and circular economies are possible. But we need, as a society, to engage with these ideas in more radical ways than it is happening at the moment.

The post OD&M: Designing for Sustainable Economic Transformations appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The trend goes by several attractive names, like “smart” farming, “precision” or digital agriculture. The vision is common though: a ‘technocentric’ approach, including gradual to extreme mechanization of farm management supported by algorithmic, data-driven procedures and sophisticated tools, like cloud computing, specialized software, drones and Internet of Things.

The agri-industry and policy makers are majorly implicated in this new digital era: Giant agri-corporate mergers, like Bayer/Monsanto, develop a very strong parallel agricultural data-science agenda and market policy, buying smaller companies which specialize solely in data management related to soil, irrigation, weather or climate, like Monsanto did with start-up Climate Corp. Another mix of smaller, ambitious, and often opportunistic entrepreneurial players enter as well the agricultural sector with a multitude of promises on digital solutions to important agricultural and environmental issues.

Both EU and global data economy policies back these efforts by facilitating the creation of a market players’ ecosystem, including corporations, researchers, developers and infrastructure providers, in order to ensure that value will be extracted by data and a novel economic sector will rise. Of course, this new business expresses a genuine market-oriented and neoliberal approach, for delivering profits and entrepreneurship opportunities from new topics.

But, before evaluating the effectiveness of such solutions, we must identify the well- documented problems, stemming from the modern food production system. What is taken for granted both by scholars and international institutions like FAO, is that combating the scarcity of resources, the reduction of soil and water pollution, the greenhouse gas emissions and the loss of species and habitat are major issues that have to be managed quickly. It is also undeniable that this kind of global change requires developing much more sustainable agricultural systems, which will depend less on high synthetic inputs and fossil fuels and will be characterised by efficient resource use, low environmental impacts and, last but not least, climate change resiliency, in order to produce sufficient and healthy food.

So, can digital and (bio)technological innovations really meet these goals? Despite the hype, it appears not to be the case. The paradigm derived by such approaches is largely conceived to aim only at a “weak” ecological modernisation of agriculture, as many scientific authors suggest. Their effect is restricted to a partial increase in the efficiency of inputs and resource use and some decrease of production costs, which are however accompanied by the high costs of farm management’s mechanization. Often these tools developed ignore main ecological processes, under whose principles the agricultural ecosystems function. In a better case scenario, these innovations may just lead to partial substitution of inputs with some short-term positive effects on the sustainability and stability of the food system. And that’s it. They fail to address serious concerns on the structural weakness of the modern food system, which generates a major part of the negative impact to environment and society.

Another key issue is the problematic innovation process followed. In the above mentioned approaches, the narrative and practice of innovation is restricted to a framework of economically driven developments promoting technological solutions. The innovation transfer’s mode mainly follows a top–down procedure towards the end users, farmers or agronomists. Under this framework, as innovators are regarded only the scientists and agricultural advisors, who design and promote tools and practices, and companies, that develop and provide the technological solutions. Technological development is mostly out of reach to any but the agTech giants, as highlighted in the debate’s opening article. Suddenly sort-of-solutions become ‘one size-fits-all’ recommendations: farmers then must follow strategies and practices that evolve along with their research outputs and corporate technologies. In other words, these are innovation processes that create vertically developed and hierarchically-based tools, obviously fitting to serve better an industrially-scaled and profit-oriented farming system and the market itself.

Of course, the above criticism does not suggest some kind of agro-Luddism approach condemning advanced technologies, which are here already – like it or not. It has been already recognised that alternative examples of digital or analogue agricultural innovations that support the transition towards truly sustainable food systems can exist and are not inherently incompatible with the framework of an agroecological approach. The examples of open source agricultural technology initiatives, like farmhack in US, collaborative projects for the creation of technology solutions and innovation by farmers, as l’Atelier Paysan in France or international research projects, like Capsella. As many times described, agroecology is an emerging concept which provides a holistic approach for the design of genuinely sustainable food systems. It does not simply seek temporary solutions that will improve partially the environmental performance and productivity of the food systems. It stands mostly for a systemic paradigm of perception change, towards a full harmonization with ecological processes, low external inputs, use of biodiversity and cultivation of agricultural knowledge.

The important thing about agroecological design of the food systems is that they emphasize independent and participatory experimentation and not the reliance on high technology and external suppliers, with a high degree of dependency on additional support services. Therefore, it becomes obvious that hi-tech and any other technological solutions can stand as a complementary element to agroecological innovation processes, and only when the development of innovative tools includes a peer-to-peer planning framework and user involvement within the reach of an economy of the commons, as the above mentioned examples do.

Thus, the main issue is related to the way innovation processes evolve – in whose interests, and with who’s participation, do they emerge? We should realise that innovation lies in the creative process, not only in the generated tool itself. Bearing this in mind, it becomes evident that it is the lack of autonomy that matters – in other words, the absence of the end user’s engagement in the technology’s development. Appropriately used, technology can share power with all actors collectively involved in developing the innovation. And this appropriate use of technology allows us to democratize knowledge.

Vassilis (Vasileios) Gkisakis, Agronomist (MSc, PhD): Vassilis specialises in Sustainable Agriculture and Agrobiodiversity, with a background in Food Science. He worked previously in the organic farming sector, while he has collaborated with several research groups across Europe on organic farming/agroecology, olive production, biodiversity management strategies and food quality.

He is a contracted lecturer of i) Organic Farming and ii) Food Production Systems in the TEI of Crete and visiting lecturer of Agroecology & Sustainable Food Production Systems in the Agricultural University of Plovdiv. He is official reviewer in one scientific journal, Board member of the European Association for Agroecology and moderator of the Agroecological Network of Greece and also the owner of a 20 ha organic olive and grain farm.

The post AgTechTakeback | Neither neoLuddism nor Corporate Ag – Towards a Holistic Agroecology appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Spanish-language cartoon Tiranía (Tyranny). Superstition sits on the throne, advised by a priest and a devil by Claudio Linati, 1826. Wikicommons. Public domain.

Xnet (https://xnet-x.net/en/), an activist group working for civil rights in the Internet, is the founder member in Spain of the #SaveYourInternet coalition, which has among its participants groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), European Digital Rights (EDRi) and others. We have come together to organise a campaign to inform the public about the hidden dangers of the new European Copyright Directive.

With the approval in the European Parliament of the final text of the Copyright Directive, which will be definitely put to the vote in a very few months’, the European Union has lost a historic opportunity to produce copyright legislation adapted for the Internet in the twenty-first century. What the European Parliament will finally vote on is a technophobic text, tailor-made for the interests of the copyright monopolies which, moreover, doesn’t guarantee the right of authors to have a reasonable standard of living as a result of their work.

If the law is eventually passed, it will be used for wholesale curtailment of freedoms and more censorship, in keeping with the bizarre idea that anything that doesn’t produce hard cash for the major players – which doesn’t mean authors! – has to be prohibited and eliminated.The amount of money the real authors receive in the end is zero or almost zero.

This is a tragedy for workers in the domain of culture who (with a few, brave, and praiseworthy exceptions) have once again been frivolously incapable of informing themselves about the real state of affairs. They have passively swallowed the version fed to them by their masters and, avidly playing the victim, have become the chief mouthpiece of freedom-killing propaganda without the slightest understanding that this is not going to enhance their rights but will do away with the rights of everyone.

Alarm bells started ringing almost two years ago when we discovered that, rather than being a proposal for an obsolete copyright law, the directive is being used as a Trojan horse to introduce surveillance, automatic data processing, government by opaque algorithms, and censorship without court orders, etc.

This threat to such basic rights as freedom of expression and access to culture and information lurks in ruses which are mainly hidden in two articles of the Directive:

Article 11: no link without a licence

Article 11, otherwise known as the “Linktax” article, has created a new economic “right” for magnates of the written press. This ‘right’, moreover, implies indefinitely restricting the possibility of citing the press online.

If this seems absurd, arbitrary and counterproductive, we invite you to read the proposal itself. This is an ambiguous text, described by the jurist Andrej Savin as “One of the worst texts I have ever seen in my 23-year-long career as a law scholar.” Given its muzzy formulation, the safest response for any platform will be not to link to any media publication without explicit permission.“One of the worst texts I have ever seen in my 23-year-long career as a law scholar.”

This perverse measure will be the equivalent, on a European scale, to the “Google tax”, which is already in force in Spain and Germany. Even its promoters were soon to regret it, when Google shut down Google News in Spain after it was approved. The Google tax is paradoxical and those responsible for initiating it know very well it won’t work in Europe. For example, Xnet revealed that the big German publishing company Alex Springer was paying itself – having linked up to pay itself – in an outlandish pretence that “everything’s fine”.

Where are they trying to go with this? What sense is there in this move by the press barons to push laws which prevent you from linking up to their content, disseminating it, and commenting on them? Is this just a mix of ignorance and greed, or something like shooting yourself in the foot?

There is certainly something of this involved, but we believe that this is a mix of ignorance and greed which, in the end, means cutting off your nose to spite your face (when you’re trying to damage someone else’s face). With laws like this, the press barons can engage in legal harassment to the point of closing down social aggregators and communities like Meneame or Reddit, eliminating any new competitor, consolidating their monopoly, and thus becoming the lone voice on the Internet, the only ones who speak. In short, they are aspiring to become a new kind of television.

Article 13: no uploading content without a licence

Platforms – from medium-sized providers of services storing subject material through to the giants of the Internet – will be considered responsible for any copyright infringement committed by their users, and they are bulldozed into taking preventive measures. In other words, this isn’t a matter of eliminating content but directly preventing people from uploading it.

Of course, nobody is forcing them to do anything. They are simply being made responsible for material uploaded by their users. It’s like a car salesman being held responsible for crimes committed by people who buy his cars. This can only end up with algorithmic upload filters being applied to absolutely everything or, in other words, prior, automatic, and massive Internet censorship.This can only end up with algorithmic upload filters being applied to absolutely everything or, in other words, prior, automatic, and massive Internet censorship.

Recently, YouTube prevented the pianist James Rhodes from uploading one of his own videos in which he is playing Bach. This kind of “error”, which always favours privatisation of the public domain, is the everyday reality for all authors who use YouTube.

And this isn’t just about the “errors” that lead to the privatisation of the public domain. It is about the difficulty or impossibility of uploading on the Internet any kind of derivative work: parodies, memes, remixes, fandom, satires, and so on or, in other words, the very essence of culture, political freedom and freedom of expression.

Repeating the medieval experience of the invention of the printing press

This whole setup, which looks like a science-fiction dystopia, an impossible attempt to lock the doors when the horse has bolted, or an exaggeratedly grim prophecy being spread by concerned activists, is already being implemented today on big platforms.

At present, there are two options:

The Spotify model

 In this case, the platform would acquire all national and international licences and then make all contents available unidirectionally in such a way that users can’t upload content. Even so, in the case of Spotify, one of the few giants with the resources to do this today, paying the copyright monopolies has raised its overheads so much that, despite its commercial success, its medium-term sustainability isn’t guaranteed. If this is the situation of Spotify, it’s not difficult to imagine what will happen to medium-sized Internet companies.

This model has another defect which is obvious to most artists. The amount of money the real authors receive in the end is zero or almost zero.

The Facebook/Google model

These new Internet monopolies refuse to share the cake with the old copyright monopolies and therefore opt for large-scale, automatic filtering of all content. They will find it easier to adapt to Article 13 since now they will only need to apply the filtering mechanisms before uploading takes place.

This technology, besides being opaque and exclusive, is very expensive. Since it will be obligatory, it will also mean that these giants are very unlikely to have competitors that have any chance of prospering.

Google has spent approximately 100 million dollars to create the technology that has so far enabled it to respond to copyright claims coming in from only 1% of its users.

The effect which these arbitrary regulations will have on free Internet conversation, on diffusion of culture and information, and access to them will be devastating.

Whose rights are at stake?

Authors’ rights (Droits des auteurs→ copyright) are important. But what are these rights? And which authors have them?

Any democratic proposal seeking widespread consensus and aspiring to guarantee the decent employment of authors without jeopardising the basic rights of citizens would need, finally, to take a bold stand against the copyright monopolies and management entities which are suspected of abuse when not directly investigated, tried, and condemned, as we succeeding in doing with SGAE (the Spanish Society of Authors and Publishers).

It should also take as given the fact that the concept of the author or medium has changed in the last twenty years. Since the earliest days of Web 2.0, the content generated by users has evolved from being an interesting social experiment to the digital reality in which we are immersed day in day out.

In a society like that of Spain, for example, content generated by entities which were once “big” media now account for less than 5% of Internet traffic. The EU must respect citizens as content generators and not regard them simply as people who steal content generated by the elite.The EU must respect citizens as content generators and not regard them simply as people who steal content generated by the elite.

No single company, medium, or author has written Wikipedia, or turned the Web into the repository of gazillions of videos, or generated hundreds of millions of tweets per day. We – the people – did this. The Internet doesn’t belong to them.

The threats skulking behind the Copyright Directive are part of an attempt to stuff the genie back into the bottle and embark on an inquisition that would allow the oligarchs to take control of the Internet. Our politicians and big company bosses are envious of the Chinese model.

Open architecture

The initial idea of the fathers and mothers of the World Wide Web and the Internet, as we know it, this idea of an open architecture for sharing links without restriction, was crucial to its success. And it would be radically undermined if the directive is approved.

Now the EU wants to create an Internet with a licence. And since we are a civilised society, they can’t call it censorship so they say “copyright”.

In the final vote, all the power and wealth will be on one side. We, the people, who are on the other side ­– in favour of freedom of expression, an open Internet, and copyright laws adapted to the twenty-first century, which will enable authors to make a decent living and not have to scrabble for crumbs dropped from the table of the Internet moguls ­ – will be vilified, slandered as thieves, hackers and pirates, and absurd allegations will be made against us.

This situation has happened before. And what it most clearly evokes is the relationship between the invention of the printing press and the censorship of the Holy Inquisition.

Inscribed in pen and ink. “Spanish Inquisition” by Thomas Rowlandson (1756 – 1827). Wikicommons/ Google Cultural Institute. Some rights reserved.

What is the responsibility of artists and (left) political parties?

The vote has not yet been cast. We have a few months to get everyone to understand the magnitude of the danger. We can win this battle. We have already won in extremis in other situations like the fight for net neutrality and ACTA, and we can do it again.

What would help:

• –  Artists who will step forward and say, “NOT in my name”.

• –  A clear, effective, and non-opportunist stance from the left in favour of an open Internet and freedom of expression.

The left instead tends all too often to cultivate a technophobic position which contributes towards censoring narratives. The case of Spain is paradigmatic. The PP (right-wing party) and PSOE (“socialist” party) voted and will vote in block for whatever the Copyright Monopolies and the SGAE tells them to vote for, which is to say what most favours control and censorship.

But the example of the left-wing electoral alliance Unidos Podemos is also instructive. They joined the SaveYourInternet campaign at the last moment in order to coopt these citizen-activists. The next day, one Anova and two Izquierda Unida members of parliament abstained from voting and nobody in either party as much as batted an eyelid. It would seem that none of our politicians take these basic rights very seriously.

We citizens who are active in battling for civil rights on the Internet will meet our obligation and fight the good fight. We’ll stop this attack on the Internet and democracy sooner or later, with or without the help of the “artists” or the “parliamentary left”, but not without bitterly calling attention to the dangerous future that is looming for freedom of expression and information, and our other freedoms in the new context of the digital age in which, again and again, the tool is being destroyed and the messenger killed in order to preserve a status quo that must not continue.

Heretics brought before the tribunal of the Inquisition, Seville by F.Moyse, 1870. Wikicommons. Public domain.

Photo by Madame Etepetete

The post The EU call it copyright, but it is massive Internet censorship and must be stopped appeared first on P2P Foundation.

For the past seven decades, GDP growth has stood as the primary economic objective of European nations. But as our economies have grown, so has our negative impact on the environment. We are now exceeding the safe operating space for humanity on this planet, and there is no sign that economic activity is being decoupled from resource use or pollution at anything like the scale required. Today, solving social problems within European nations does not require more growth. It requires a fairer distribution of the income and wealth that we already have.

Growth is also becoming harder to achieve due to declining productivity gains, market saturation, and ecological degradation. If current trends continue, there may be no growth at all in Europe within a decade. Right now the response is to try to fuel growth by issuing more debt, shredding environmental regulations, extending working hours, and cutting social protections. This aggressive pursuit of growth at all costs divides society, creates economic instability, and undermines democracy.

Those in power have not been willing to engage with these issues, at least not until now. The European commission’s Beyond GDP project became GDP and Beyond. The official mantra remains growth — redressed as “sustainable”, “green”, or “inclusive” – but first and foremost, growth. Even the new UN sustainable development goals include the pursuit of economic growth as a policy goal for all countries, despite the fundamental contradiction between growth and sustainability.

The good news is that within civil society and academia, a post-growth movement has been emerging. It goes by different names in different places: décroissance, Postwachstum, steady-state or doughnut economics, prosperity without growth, to name a few. Since 2008, regular degrowth conferences have gathered thousands of participants. A new global initiative, the Wellbeing Economies Alliance (or WE-All), is making connections between these movements, while a European research network has been developing new “ecological macroeconomic models”. Such work suggests that it’s possible to improve quality of life, restore the living world, reduce inequality, and provide meaningful jobs – all without the need for economic growth, provided we enact policies to overcome our current growth dependence.

Some of the changes that have been proposed include limits on resource use, progressive taxation to stem the tide of rising inequality, and a gradual reduction in working time. Resource use could be curbed by introducing a carbon tax, and the revenue could be returned as a dividend for everyone or used to finance social programmes. Introducing both a basic and a maximum income would reduce inequality further, while helping to redistribute care work and reducing the power imbalances that undermine democracy. New technologies could be used to reduce working time and improve quality of life, instead of being used to lay off masses of workers and increase the profits of the privileged few.

Given the risks at stake, it would be irresponsible for politicians and policymakers not to explore possibilities for a post-growth future. The conference happening in Brussels is a promising start, but much stronger commitments are needed. As a group of concerned social and natural scientists representing all Europe, we call on the European Union, its institutions, and member states to:

1. Constitute a special commission on post-growth futures in the EU parliament. This commission should actively debate the future of growth, devise policy alternatives for post-growth futures, and reconsider the pursuit of growth as an overarching policy goal.

2. Incorporate alternative indicators into the macroeconomic framework of the EU and its member states. Economic policies should be evaluated in terms of their impact on human wellbeing, resource use, inequality, and the provision of decent work. These indicators should be given higher priority than GDP in decision-making.

3. Turn the stability and growth pact (SGP) into a stability and wellbeing pact. The SGP is a set of rules aimed at limiting government deficits and national debt. It should be revised to ensure member states meet the basic needs of their citizens, while reducing resource use and waste emissions to a sustainable level.

4. Establish a ministry for economic transition in each member state. A new economy that focuses directly on human and ecological wellbeing could offer a much better future than one that is structurally dependent on economic growth.

• Dr Dan O’Neill, Associate Professor, University of Leeds, UK
• Dr Federico Demaria, Researcher, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
• Dr Giorgos Kallis, Professor, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
• Dr Kate Raworth, Author of ‘Doughnut Economics’, UK
• Dr Tim Jackson, Professor, University of Surrey, UK
• Dr Jason Hickel, Lecturer, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
• Dr Lorenzo Fioramonti, Professor, University of Pretoria, South Africa
• Dr Marta Conde, President of Research & Degrowth, Spain
• Dr Kevin Anderson, Deputy Director, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, UK
• Dr Steve Keen, Professor, Kingston University, UK
• Dr Saskia Sassen, Professor of Sociology, Columbia University, USA
• Dr Ann Pettifor, Director, Policy Research in Macroeconomics (PRIME), UK
• Dr Serge Latouche, Université Paris Sud, France
• Dr Kate Pickett, Professor, University of York, UK
• Dr Susan George, President of the Transnational Institute-TNI, Netherlands
• Dr Joan Martinez Alier, Professor, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Catalonia
• Dr David Graeber, Professor, London School of Economics, UK
• Dr Juan Carlos Monedero Fernández, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
• Dr Dominique Méda, Professor, University Paris Dauphine, France
• Dr Lourdes Beneria, Professor Emerita, Cornell University, USA
• Dr Inge Røpke, Professor, Aalborg University, Denmark
• Dr Niko Paech, Professor, University of Siegen, Germany
• Dr Jean Gadrey, Professor, University of Lille, France
• Dr Nadia Johanisova, Lecturer, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
• Dr Wolfgang Sachs, Research Director Emeritus, Wuppertal Institut, Germany
• Dr Stefania Barca, Senior Researcher, Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal
• Dr Gilbert Rist, Emeritus Professor, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Switzerland
• Dr György Pataki, Professor, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary
• Dr Simone D’Alessandro, Professor, University of Pisa, Italy
• Dr Ian Gough, Visiting Professor, London School of Economics, UK
• Dr Iñigo Capellán-Pérez, Researcher, University of Valladolid, Spain
• Dr Amaia Pérez Orozco, Researcher, Colectiva XXK, Spain
• Dr Max Koch, Professor, Lund University, Sweden
• Dr Fabrice Flipo, Professor, Institut Mines Télécom-BS et LCSP Paris 7 Diderot, France
• Dr Matthias Schmelzer, Researcher, University of Jena and Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie, Germany
• Dr Óscar Carpintero, Associate Professor, University of Valladolid, Spain
• Dr Hubert Buch-Hansen, Associate Professor, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
• Dr Christos Zografos, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain
• Dr Tereza Stöckelová, Associate Professor, Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic
• Dr Alf Hornborg, Professor, Lund University, Sweden
• Dr Eric Clark, Professor, Lund University, Sweden
• Dr Miklós Antal, Researcher, University of Leeds, UK
• Dr Jordi Roca Jusmet, Professor, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
• Dr Philippe Defeyt, Chairman, Institute for Sustainable Development, Belgium
• Dr Erik Swyngedouw, Professor, University of Manchester, UK
• Dr Christian Kerschner, Assistant Professor, Modul University Vienna, Austria
• Dr Agata Hummel, Assistant Professor, University of Adam Mickiewicz, Poland
• Dr Frank Moulaert, Emeritus Professor, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
• Dr Frank Adler, Researcher, Brandenburg-Berlin Institute for Social Scientific Research, Germany
• Dr Janne I. Hukkinen, Professor, University of Helsinki, Finland
• Dr Jorge Riechmann, Professor, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain
• Samuel Martín-Sosa Rodríguez, Responsable de Internacional, Ecologistas en Acción, Spain
• Dr John Barry, Professor, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland
• Dr Linda Nierling, Senior Scientist, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
• Dr Ines Omann, Senior Researcher, Austrian Foundation for Development Research, Austria
• Dr Hug March, Associate Professor, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain
• Dr Jakub Kronenberg, Associate Professor, University of Lodz, Poland
• Yayo Herrero, Miembro del Foro de Transiciones, Spain
• Dr Isabelle Anguelovski, Professor, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
• Dr François Schneider, Researcher, Research & Degrowth, France
• Dr Vasilis Kostakis, Senior Researcher, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
• Dr Enric Tello, Professor, University of Barcelona, Spain
• Dr Andrew Sayer, Professor, Lancaster University, UK
• Dr Kate Soper, Emerita Professor, London Metropolitan University, UK
• Dr Klaus Hubacek, Professor, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria
• Dr Brent Bleys, Assistant Professor, Ghent University, Belgium
• Dr Jill Jäger, Independent Scholar, Vienna, Austria
• Dr Mauro Gallegati, Professor, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy
• Dr Peadar Kirby, Professor Emeritus, University of Limerick, Ireland
• Dr Inés Marco, Researcher, University of Barcelona, Spain
• Dr Ivan Murray Mas, Assistant Lecturer, Universitat de les Illes Balears, Spain
• Dr Alexandros Kioupkiolis, Assistant Professor, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
• Dr Aurore Lalucq, Co-Director, Veblen Institute, France
• Dr Gaël Plumecocq, Researcher, French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), France
• Dr David Soto Fernández, Associate Professor, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Spain
• Dr Christian Kimmich, Researcher, Masaryk University Brno, Czech Republic
• Dr Giacomo D’Alisa, Researcher, Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal
• Dr Seth Schindler, Senior Lecturer, University of Manchester, UK
• Dr Philippe Roman, Researcher, ICHEC Brussels Management School, Belgium
• Dr Lorenzo Pellegrini, Associate Professor, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands
• Dr Erik Gómez-Baggethun, Professor, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway
• Dr Tommaso Luzzati, Assistant Professor, University of Pisa, Italy
• Dr Christoph Gran, ZOE Institute for Future Fit Economies, Germany
• Dr Tor A. Benjaminsen, Professor, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway
• Dr Barry McMullin, Professor, Dublin City University, Ireland
• Dr Edwin Zaccai, Professor, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
• Dr Jens Friis Lund, Professor, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
• Dr Pierre Ozer, Researcher, Université de Liège, Belgium
• Dr Louison Cahen-Fourot, Researcher, Institute for Ecological Economics, Wirtschaftsuniversität Vienna, Austria
• Dr Tommaso Rondinella, Researcher, Italian National Institute of Statistics, Italy
• Dr Julia Steinberger, Associate Professor, University of Leeds, UK
• Dr Andrew Fanning, Marie Curie Research Fellow, University of Leeds, UK
• Jose Luis Fdez Casadevante Kois, Miembro del Foro Transiciones, Spain
• Dr Seema Arora-Jonsson, Professor, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
• Dr Astrid Agenjo Calderón, Lecturer, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Spain
• Dr Tom Bauler, Professor, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
• Dr Gregers Andersen, Independent Researcher, Denmark
• Dr Peter Söderbaum, Professor Emeritus, Mälardalen University, Sweden
• Dr Lourenzo Fernandez Priero, Professor, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain
• Dr John R Porter, Emeritus Professor, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
• Dr François Thoreau, Senior Researcher, University of Liege, France
• Mariagiulia Costanzo Talarico, Researcher, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Spain
• Dr Maria Nikolaidi, Senior Lecturer, University of Greenwich, UK
• Dr Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, Lecturer, Lund University, Sweden
• Dr Stefan Gaarsmand Jacobsen, Assistant Professor, University of Roskilde, Denmark
• Dimitar Sabev, Researcher, University of National and World Economy, Bulgaria
• Dr Mladen Domazet, Research Director, Institute for Political Ecology, Croatia
• Dr Hans Diefenbacher, Professor, University of Heidelberg, Germany
• Dr Marco Armiero, Director of the Environmental Humanities Laboratory, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
• Dr Irene Ring, Professor, Technische Universität Dresden, Germany
• Dr Christine Bauhardt, Professor, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
• Dr Dominique Bourg, Professor, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
• Dr Tomas Ryska, Lecturer, University of Economics, Czech Republic
• Dr Filka Sekulova, Researcher, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
• Dr Andrej Lukšič, Associate Professor, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Dr Adrian Smith, Professor, University of Sussex, UK
  Dr Serenella Iovino, Professor, Università di Torino, Italy
• Dr Helga Kromp-Kolb, Professor, University of Renewable Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria
• Dr Roberto De Vogli, Associate Professor, University of Padova, Italy
• Dr Danijela Dolenec, Assistant Professor, University of Zagreb, Croatia
• Dr Alexandra Köves, Senior Lecturer, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary
• Dr Antoine Bailleux, Professor, Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles, Belgium
• Dr Christof Mauch, Director, Rachel Carson Centre for Environment and Society, Germany
• Ajda Pistotnik, Independent Researcher, EnaBanda, Slovenia
• Dr Branko Ančić, Researcher, Institute for Social Research for Social Research in Zagreb, Croatia
• Dr Marija Brajdic Vukovic, Assistant Professor, University of Zagreb, Croatia
• Dr Manuel González de Molina, Professor, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Spain
• Dr Kye Askins, Reader, University of Glasgow, UK
• Dr Carlos de Castro Carranza, Profesor Titular de Física Aplicada, Universidad de Valladolid, Spain
• Dr Annika Pissin, Researcher, Lund University, Sweden
• Dr Eva Fraňková, Assistant Professor, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
• Dr Helga Kromp-Kolb, Professor, University of Renewable Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria
• Dr Lidija Živčič, Senior Expert, Focus, Association for Sustainable Development, Slovenia
• Dr Martin Pogačar, Research Fellow, ZRC SAZU, Slovenia
• Dr Peter Nielsen, Associate Professor, Roskilde University, Denmark
• Yaryna Khmara, Researcher, University of Lodz, Poland
• Dr Ika Darnhofer, Associate Professor, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Austria
• Dr Isabelle Cassiers, Professor, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium
• Dr Mihnea Tanasescu, Researcher, Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) and Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium
• Dr Daniel Hausknost, Assistant Professor, Institute for Social Change and Sustainability, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
• Dr Christoph Görg, Professor, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Austria
• Dr Andreas Novy, Professor, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
• Dr Fikret Adaman, Professor, Boğaziçi University, Turkey
• Dr Bengi Akbulut, Assistant Professor, Concordia University, Canada
• Dr Kevin Maréchal, Professor, Université de Liège, Belgium
• Dr Anke Schaffartzik, Researcher, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
• Dr Milena Buchs, Associate Professor, University of Leeds, UK
• Dr Jean-Louis Aillon, Researcher, University of Genova, Italy
• Dr Melanie Pichler, Researcher, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Austria
• Dr Helmut Haberl, Associate Professor, Institute of Social Ecology, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Austria
• Dr Julien-François Gerber, Assistant Professor, International Institute of Social Studies, Netherlands
• Dr John Holten-Andersen, Associate Professor, Aalborg University, Denmark
• Theresa Klostermeyer, Officer for Sustainability and Social Change, German League for Nature, Animal and Environmental Protection, Germany
• Dr Lyla Mehta, Professor, Institute of Development Studies, UK
• Dr Geneviève Azam, Professor, Université Jean Jaurès, France
• Dr Hermann E. Ott, Professor, University of Sustainable Development Eberswalde, Germany
• Dr Angelika Zahrnt, Professor, Institute for Ecological Economic Research, Germany
• Dr Melissa Leach, Director, Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex, UK
• Dr Irmi Seidl, Assistant Professor, Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Switzerland
• Dr Shilpi Srivastava, Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies, UK
• Dr Elgars Felcis, Researcher, University of Latvia, Chairman of Latvian Permaculture Association, Latvia
• Dr Tilman Santarius, Professor, Technische Universität Berlin and Einstein Center Digital Futures, Germany
• Nina Treu, Coordinator of Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie, Germany
• Dr Laura Horn, Associate Professor, Roskilde University, Denmark
• Jennifer Hinton, Researcher, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden
• Dr Friedrich Hinterberger, President, Sustainable Europe Research Institute, Austria
• Dr Miriam Lang, Assistant Professor, Universidad Andina Simón Bolivar, Ecuador
• Dr Susse Georg, Professor, Aalborg University, Denmark
• Dr Silvio Cristiano, Researcher, Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘Parthenope’ & Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italy
• Dr Petr Jehlička, Senior Lecturer, Open University, UK
• Dr Maja Göpel, Professor, Leuphana University, Member Club of Rome, Germany
• Dr Geraldine Thiry, Associate Professor, ICHEC Brussels Management School, Belgium
• Dr Olivier Malay, Researcher, University of Louvain, Belgium
• Dr Richard Lane, Researcher, Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Netherlands
• Dr Laura Centemeri, Researcher, National Centre for Scientific Research, France
• Dr Stephan Lessenich, Professor, Ludwig Maximilians University, Germany
• Timothée Parrique, Researcher, Stockholm University, Sweden
• Dr Ludivine Damay, Lecturer, Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
• Dr Janis Brizga, Researcher, University of Latvia, Latvia
• Dr Claudio Cattaneo, Associate Professor, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
• Dr Miquel Ortega Cerdà, Advisor, Barcelona City Council
• Dr Olivier De Schutter, Professor, Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium
• Dr Annalisa Colombino, Assistant Professor, Institute of Geography and Regional Sciences, University of Graz, Austria
• Dr Philip von Brockdorff, Head of the Department of Economics, University of Malta, Malta
• Dr Sarah Cornell, Senior Researcher, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden
• Dr Ruth Kinna, Professor, Loughborough University, UK
• Francesco Gonella, Professor, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italy
• Orsolya Lazanyi, Researcher, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary
• Dr Eva Friman, Director at Swedesd, Uppsala University, Sweden
• Dr Pernilla Hagbert, Researcher, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
• Vincent Liegey, Co-Author of ‘A Degrowth Project’, Hungary
• Dr Manlio Iofrida, Associate Professor, University of Bologna, Italy
• Dr Mauro Bonaiuti, Lecturer, University of Turin, Italy
• Dr Marco Deriu, Researcher, University of Parma, Italy
• Dr Eeva Houtbeckers, Postdoctoral Researcher, Aalto University, Finland
• Dr Guy Julier, Professor, Aalto University, Finland
• Dr Anna Kaijser, Lecturer, Linköping University, Sweden
• Dr Petter Næss, Professor, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway
• Dr Irina Velicu, Researcher, Center for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal
• Dr Ulrich Brand, Professor, University of Vienna, Austria
• Dr Christina Plank, Researcher, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Austria
• Dr Karolina Isaksson, Senior Research Leader, Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute, Sweden
• Dr Jin Xue, Associate Professor, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway
• Dr Rasmus Steffansen, Researcher, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway
• Dr Irmak Ertör, Researcher, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
• Dr Maria Hadjimichael, Researcher, University of Cyprus, Cyprus
• Dr Carlo Aall, Researcher, Western Norway Research Institute, Norway
• Dr Claudiu Craciun, Lecturer, National School of Political Studies and Administration (SNSPA), Romania
• Dr Tuuli Hirvilammi, Researcher, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
• Dr Tuula Helne, Senior Researcher, The Social Insurance Institution of Finland, Finland
• Davide Biolghini, Researcher, Rete italiana Economia Solidale (RES), Italy
• Dr Pasi Heikkurinen, Lecturer, University of Leeds, UK
• Dr Anne Tittor, Researcher, University of Jena, Germany
• Dr Dennis Eversberg, Researcher, University of Jena, Germany
• Dr Herman Stål, Lecturer, Umea School of Business, Economics and Statistics, Sweden
• Dr Hervé Corvellec, Professor, Lund University, Sweden
• Dr Anna Heikkinen, Researcher, University of Tampere, Finland
• Dr Karl Bonnedahl, Researcher, Umea University, Sweden
• Dr Meri Koivusalo, Professor, University of Tampere, Finland
• Dr Martin Fritz, Researcher, Bielefeld University, Germany
• Dr Daniel Bergquist, Researcher, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
• Dr Yuri Kazepov, Professor, University of Vienna, Austria
• Dr Salvador Pueyo, Researcher, Universitat de Barcelona, Catalonia
• Dr Lars Rydén, Professor, Uppsala University, Sweden
• Patrick ten Brink, Director of EU Policy, European Environmental Bureau, Belgium
• Dr Ebba Lisberg Jensen, Associate Professor, Malmö University, Sweden
• Dr Alevgul H. Sorman, Researcher, Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3), Spain
• Dr Aram Ziai, Professor, University of Kassel, Germany
• Dr Panos Petridis, Researcher, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Austria
• Dr Gary Dymski, Professor, University of Leeds, UK
• Dr Markus Wissen, Professor, Berlin School of Economics and Law, Germany
• Dr Wendy Harcourt, Professor, International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University, The Netherlands
• Dr John Barrett, Professor, University of Leeds, UK
• Dr Silke van Dyk, Professor, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany
• Dr Vasna Ramasar, Senior Lecturer, Lund University, Sweden
• Danijela Tamše, Managing Editor of the Journal for the Critique of Science, Imagination, and New Anthropology, Slovenia
• Dr Camil Ungureanu, Associate Professor, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
• Dr Mirela Holy, Lecturer, VERN’ University of Zagreb, Croatia

Cross-posted from The Guardian
Photo by wackybadger

The post The EU needs a stability and wellbeing pact, not more growth appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Today Commons Network publishes a new policy paper that takes on the pharmaceutical system and presents real alternatives, based on open source research and the knowledge commons. Commons Network proposes a new vision for the biomedical research system that safeguards universal access to affordable medicines and scientific advances.

Taking the commons perspective allows us to offer a diagnostic of our biomedical innovation system and to put forth a political programme for a transition to a new public interest model. The EU’s market-dominated pharmaceutical policies are sized up from the ‘outside the box’ viewpoint of the common good.

This paper responds to the questions: How does the present pharma model work in Europe, what is wrong with it and what can be done right now to change it. This includes a comparison between the existing model, positive transitions and the transformative commons model with practical examples, principles and outcomes.

The paper also describes a broken pharmaceutical system, that in its current form prevents millions of people in Europe and around the world from getting the medicines they need. It goes on to show how ‘Big Pharma’ creates artificial scarcity by enclosing scientific knowledge resources which could easily be abundant and universally accessible.

The skyrocketing prices of medicines and the lack of affordable access to treatments are key traits of our pharmaceutical system. We are told there are no alternatives. This is not the case. There are alternatives to the current broken pharmaceutical innovation system that do not thrive on high prices nor the privatization of knowledge. Some of these alternatives are already in place on a small scale. Yet policy will have to support a transformation of the entire system for it to be sustainable, efficient and just.

The of medical treatments and knowledge based on patent monopolies, regulatory capture and unfair trade rules means a ‘tragedy of the anti-commons’ where over-medication and under-treatment are two sides of the same coin.

The solution to this conundrum of problems is to unleash the potential of the commons. In short: let’s commonify health-care treatments. We have to unlock the gates around medical knowledge and allow it to be governed democratically both by scientists and citizens as a whole.

This new paper by Commons Network presents the commons approach to biomedical innovation at a time when a new comprehensive approach is so direly needed. The biomedical commons represents a paradigm based on the sharing of knowledge, cooperation, stewardship, participation and social equity.

You can download the summary here,

Or you can read the entire paper embedded in Commons Network’s website.

For more information or collaborations please contact Sophie Bloemen at [email protected] or [email protected]

Photo by mag3737

The post From Lab to Commons: Shifting to a Biomedical System that’s in the Public Interest appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Somewhere between convenience, efficiency, cost saving and a comprehensive EU surveillance mega state, the use of drones and other in-the-sky technologies for ensuring CAP compliance represents, as it were, a Brave New World. 

Helene Schulze: Imagine annual farm audits performed not by EU regulators pacing the fields and talking through the details with farmers but by gently buzzing machines flying overhead, measuring, photographing, assessing compliance to CAP rules and regulations. Whether this image inspires excitement or apprehension has divided opinion in Europe. How have AgTech tools like satellite mapping, remote sensing and drones been implemented in measuring CAP compliance? What are the concerns?

The EU spends almost half of its annual budget on agricultural subsidies, around €59 billion a year.These subsidies are allocated on a two-pillar basis; the first, a basic payment per hectare of agricultural land and the second funds based on voluntary agri-environmental service provision. A form of compensation for farmers, they encourage the maintenance of hedge rows, buffer strips and meadows, the limitation of fertiliser use and adherence to crop rotation plans, for example.

With such vast spending comes the necessity to ensure taxpayer funds are allocated fairly and accurately. High-tech data collection devices such as satellite mapping and drones are a way of doing this. Ray Purdy, Senior Research Fellow in environmental law at the University of Oxford, told me ‘almost all EU countries now use satellite technology, which can produce accurate maps of the size of agricultural parcels (ensuring farmers are only claiming subsidies for genuine farmland), and to check if claimants are complying with certain environmental conditions attached to subsidies.’

Since 1988, the Monitoring of Agriculture and Remote Sensing (MARS) programme has used satellite mapping to measure CAP compliance. Adherence assessment is the responsibility of each member state which must establish a paying agency to perform checks and audits. EU law stipulates that each year at least 5% of all farms must be audited.

In 2012, around 70% of these required inspections performed by satellites, Purdy notes. Primarily, this is a money-saving strategy: satellites are able to cover vast swathes of land in little time. Satellite monitoring a farm costs around a third the price of sending a regulator.

Additionally, Purdy said when queried, ‘they can make farmers happier, if they provide a level playing field i.e. if they know there is less chance of others breaking the law, they don’t have to because they’re not being put in a disadvantageous competitive position.’

As mentioned in a previous Arc2020 article, AgTech hardware is being employed by many farmers across the continent as part of their own farm management strategies. The European Commission supports these efforts, arguing that ‘technological development and digitisation make possible big leaps in resource efficiency enhancing an environment and climate smart agriculture, which reduce the environment-/climate impact of farming, increase resilience and soil health and decrease costs for farmers.’

A question submitted by NABU representative at recent Agriculture and Food Summit, 30th November Paris. Interestingly, Tobias Menne global head of digital farming at Bayer, who was on the panel on digital farming at the time, thought this would be a very bad idea, in terms of farmer trust. Photo (c) Oliver Moore

However, farms that tend to incorporate such AgTech tools currently are large agri-businesses. I asked Chris Henderson from NGO Practical Action about this scale and affordability issue: ‘new hardware such as drones and robots are unlikely to be within the financial reach of smallholders…they are more likely to find application in high-potential commercial areas with better off farmers. One thing that needs careful consideration at the macro level is the negative effects intensive agriculture (driven by new technologies) might have on the poor – perhaps displacing them from their land or out-competing with them for water.’

Image: Gavin Whitner (CC BY 2.0) http://musicoomph.com/

This points to a divergence in access and response to AgTech. Perhaps, if farmers are not employing drones, robots and satellite imagery on their own land, they may appear more critical of auditing bodies doing the same.  Since member states are responsible for their own compliance assessments, there has been some variance in the types of technologies and strategies of inspection, as well as responses to these across the continent. A 2008 study by Ray Purdy found that a third of farmers were opposed to satellite monitoring in the UK, where it has been used to combat subsidy fraud for over a decade. In his interviews with farmers Purdy found that many ‘made reference to ‘1984’ and ‘Big Brother’ and were concerned that the satellite would be ‘peeping’ or ‘spying’ on them.’

These are natural concerns. For one, with a human inspector one at least knows when the assessment is taking place whereas satellite monitoring gives no such indication. Farmers are unaware when they are undergoing an inspection. There are also questions to be raised about who has access to the collected data. This is powerful information, information which could give some farmers a competitive advantage. With the potential implementation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in CAP compliance testing, these concerns are heightened further. Drones can get a lot closer to the target, taking sharper photographs. Farms are also homes on private land and such inspection could be very intrusive. Whilst UAVs are being explored in the agricultural context and there are pilot projects across Europe, they have yet to be included in CAP monitoring.

When queried, Vicki Hird, food and farming policy coordinator at Sustain, argued that ‘there’s certainly a lot of potential here both in measuring compliance but also from the perspective of the farmers and workers as part of a sustainable farming strategy to assess needs and review progress on land. It can help bring the whole farming community into understanding about how nature and farming should work together on a whole farm basis.’ So, AgTech tools must be incorporated into other governance and management strategies which bring people together rather than alienate them which would risk farmers feeling observed from a distant, invisible body reading to subject penalties.

Purdy reiterates this call for the maintenance of human interaction in farm auditing; ‘if a machine is doing the monitoring it provides less contact between the farmer and the regulator, which might also be an opportunity to discuss other farming issues. Sometimes human contact can be important.’

Irrespective of these fears, CAP auditing will likely become only more technology-dominated in the years to come. Key is to consider in which frameworks such technology can be used to support farmers and prevent feelings of alienation and constant surveillance. Theoretically if collected data were made publicly available, small farmers could begin to benefit from AgTech developments currently too expensive for their own use. Through open-source initiatives, they could have access to information about their land currently only accessible to wealthy agri-businesses. It is also possible to collectively own and manage technologies, as the extensive CUMA machinery co-ops in France show. Again, for this to work these developments must be thought through thoroughly in consultation with farmers. Moreover, the delivery of any such tech should involve farmers – not so much as inspected from the sky, but, rather, as participants in the process of verifying their own management techniques.

It is also interesting to explore how these technologies might impact the relationships between companies, environmental NGOs, regulators and farmers: if Bayer sound more farmer-concerned than NABU, as the example from the politico event referenced in the image above suggests, we are in strange territory. And if farmers are ignored it is unlikely that such auditing technologies will receive widespread support in a climate of concern over an increasingly intrusive surveillance state.

The post Drones & CAP Compliance – savvy surveying or surveillance state? appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Current EU Copyright Review threatens Free and Open Source Software. Take action now to preserve the ability to collaboratively build software online!

The P2P Foundation supports the SAVE, CODE, SHARE campaign to defend our Internet sovereignty and digital collaborative spaces. Click here to sign as an individual or organization. The letter below, along with the signatures signatures, will be delivered
the Members of the European Parliament and the EU Council. The following is taken from SaveCodeShare.eu:

Open Letter to Secure Free and Open Source Software Ecosystem in the EU Copyright Review

Your mobile device, your car, your wifi router at home, your television, the airplanes in which you travel all contain Free and Open Source Software. This widespread reuse is possible because Free and Open Source Software can be shared openly, studied and customised to meet any need.

The EU is getting ready to vote a “Copyright Reform” package which fundamentally undermines the foundations upon which Free and Open Source Software is built. The proposed Article 13 of the EU Copyright Directive targets every online service that allows its users to upload and share content with each other, including code hosting platforms.

Under this proposal code hosting platforms will be compelled to prevent any possible copyright infringement by developing fundamentally flawed filtering technologies. These filtering algorithms will ultimately decide what material software developers should be allowed to share.

As a result of this ongoing copyright review, every user of a code sharing platform, be they an individual, a business or a public administration, is to be treated as a potential copyright infringer: their content, including entire code repositories, will be monitored and blocked from being shared online at any time. This restricts the freedom of developers to use specific software components and tools that in return leads to less competition and less innovation. Ultimately this can result in software that is less reliable and a less resilient software infrastructure for everybody.

We, individuals, developers, organisations and companies that develop or rely on the Free and Open Source Software ecosystem call upon European decision makers to protect open, collaborative software ecosystems. We call upon European policy makers to fundamentally rethink or delete Article 13 of the EU Copyright Reform in order to avoid the threat it poses for Free and Open Source Software.

Save Europe’s digital future, by making sure that there is a re-think or deletion of Article 13 in the EU Copyright Reform.

Please Save Code Share!

Take Action Now

About the initiative

#SaveCodeShare is an initiative launched by the FSFE and OpenForum Europe in September 2017. It aims to bring awareness about the unintended impact of Article 13 of the proposed Copyright Directive on software sharing platforms. Through the research presented in our White Paper, the initiative shows that better awareness is needed to understand where and how innovation takes place in the current market. This is a first step in order to create a proper regulatory framework. And this is what this initiative aims to achieve.

The post SAVE, CODE, SHARE! Current EU Copyright Review threatens Free and Open Source Software. Take action now! appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Julia Reda: Free software development as we know it is under threat by the EU copyright reform plans.

The battle on the EU copyright reform proposal continues, centering on the plan to introduce upload filters. In short, online platforms would be required to monitor their users’ uploads and try to prevent copyright infringement through automated filtering. As most communication online consists of uploads onto different platforms, such “censorship machines” have broad consequences, including for free and open source software (FOSS) repositories.

On these platforms, developers from across the world collaborate on software projects that anyone can freely use and adapt. Automated filters would be guaranteed to throw up many false positives. Automatic deletion means uploaders are presumed guilty until proven innocent: Legitimate contributions would be blocked.

The recent outcry about this in the FOSS community is showing some results: Our concerns are getting lawmakers’ attention. Unfortunately, though, most are misunderstanding the issue and drawing the wrong conclusions. Now that we know how powerful the community’s voice is, it is all the more important to keep speaking up!

Why is this happening?

The starting point for this legislation was a fight between big corporations, the music industry and YouTube, over money. The music industry complained that they receive less each time one of their music videos is played on a video platform like YouTube than they do when their tracks are listened to on subscription services like Spotify, calling the difference the “value gap”. They started a successful lobbying effort: The upload filter law is primarily intended to give them a bargaining chip to demand more money from Google in negotiations. Meanwhile, all other platforms are caught in the middle of that fight, including code sharing communities.

The lobbying has engrained in many legislators’ minds the false idea that platforms which host uploads for profit are necessarily exploiting creators.

Code sharing

There are, however, many examples where there is a symbiotic relationship between platform and creators. Developers use and upload to software repositories voluntarily, because the platforms add value. While Github is a for-profit company, it supports not-for-profit projects – it finances its free hosting of open source projects by charging for the commercial use of the site’s services. Thus open source activities will be affected by a law designed to regulate a fight between giant corporations.

In a recent blog post, Github sounded the alarm, citing three reasons why upload filters are a terrible fit for software projects:

1. Code needs to be filtered under this law because it is copyrightable – but many developers intend for their code to be shared under an open source license.
2. The risk for false positives is very high because different parts of a software project may be covered under different license terms, which is very hard for automated technology to adequately handle.
3. Automatically having to remove code suspected of infringing copyright may have devastating consequences for software developers who have built on common resources that they may find suddenly vanishing.

Concerns are being heard

In their latest draft, the Council of the European Union seeks to exclude “non-for profit open source software developing platforms” from the obligation to filter uploads. This amendment is a direct result of the FOSS community’s outcry. However, this exception would not cover for-profit platforms like Github and many others, even if only a branch of their operations is for-profit.

Rather than questioning the basic principle of the law, politicians are trying to quell criticism by proposing more and more specific exceptions for those who can credibly demonstrate that the law would adversely affect them. Creating such a list of exceptions is a Sisyphean task sure to remain incomplete. Rather, upload filters should be rejected as a whole as a disproportional measure that endangers the fundamental right to free expression online.

We can do it!

To achieve this, we need your help. The FOSS community can’t just solve problems with code: It has political clout, strength in numbers and allies in the Parliament. We have already started to effect change. Here’s how you can take action right now:

1. Sign the open letter at SaveCodeshare.
2. Use Mozilla’s free tool to call MEPs.
3. Tweet at the key players in the Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee via FixCopyright.

Technical Sidenote:

• Fundamentally, three players are involved in the legislative process. The Commission drafted an initial legal proposal, which the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union can propose changes to. Within the Parliament, this legislation is first discussed in the Legal Affairs Committee, with each political group nominating a negotiator. Once the Committee has voted to approve the compromise established by the negotiators, it will be put to vote in the plenary of the Parliament, before negotiations begin with the other institutions. The exact legislative path so far can be found here.

To the extent possible under law, the creator has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.

The post Censorship machines are coming: It’s time for the free software community to discover its political clout appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Deals between companies and governments working together to automate acceptable content online are too common. Whilst content filtering is being proposed in EU copyright law, in other situations it’s all wrapped up in a closed door agreement. 

Ruth Coustick-Deal, writing for OpenMedia.org lays out the “shadow regulation” complementing the dubious legal propositions which are being drafted to curtail sharing.

Ruth Coustick-Deal: As the excitement over using automation and algorithms in tech to “disrupt” daily life grows, so too does governments’ desire to use it to solve social problems. They hope “automation” will disrupt piracy, online harassment, and even terrorism.

This is particularly true in the case of deploying automated bots for content moderation on the web. These autonomous programs are designed to detect certain categories of posts, and then take-down or block them without any human intervention.

In the last few weeks:

1)The UK Government have announced they have developed an algorithmic tool to remove ISIS presence from the web.
2) Copyright industries have called for similar programs to be installed that can remove un-approved creative content in the United States.
3) The European Commission has suggested that filters can be used to “proactively detect, identify, and remove” anything illegal – from comments sections on news sites to Facebook posts.
4) The Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive, currently being debated by MEPs, is proposing using technical filters to block copyrighted content from being posted.

There’s a recklessness to all of these proposals – because so much of them involve sidestepping legal processes.

EFF coined the term “shadow regulation” for rules that are made outside of the legislative process, and that’s what is happening here. A cosy relationship between business and governments has developed that the public are being left outside of when it comes to limiting online speech.

Let’s take a look at Home Secretary Amber Rudd’s anti-terrorist propaganda tool. She claims it can identify “94% of IS propaganda with 99.995% accuracy.” Backed up by this amazingly bold claim, the UK Government want to make the tool available to be installed on countless platforms across the web (including major platforms like Vimeo and YouTube) which would be able to detect, and then remove such content. However, it’s likely to be in some form of unofficial “agreement”, rather than legislation that is scrutinised by parliament.

Similarly, in the European Commission’s communication on automating blocking illegal content, our friends at EDRi point out, “the draft reminds readers – twice – that the providers have “contractual freedom”, meaning that… safeguards will be purely optional.”

If these programs are installed without the necessary public debate, a legal framework, or political consensus – then who will they be accountable to? Who is going to be held responsible for censorship of the wrong content? Will it be the algorithm makers? Or the platforms that utilise them? How will people object to the changes?

Even when these ideas have been introduced through legal mechanisms they still give considerable powers to the platforms themselves. For example, the proposed copyright law we have been campaigning on through Save the Link prevents content from being posted that was simply identified by the media industry – not what is illegal.

The European Commission has suggested using police to tell the companies when a post, image, or video is illegal. There is no consideration of using courts – who elsewhere are the ones who make calls about justice. Instead we are installing systems that bypass the rule of law, with only vague gestures towards due process.

Governments are essentially ignoring their human rights obligations by putting private companies in charge. Whether via vague laws or back-room agreements, automated filtering is putting huge amounts of power in the hands of a few companies, who are getting to decide what restrictions are appropriate.

The truth is, the biggest platforms on the web already have unprecedented control over what gets published online. These platforms have become public spaces, where we go to communicate with one another. With these algorithms however, there is an insidious element of control that the owners of the platforms have over us. We should be trying to reduce the global power of these companies, rather than hand over the latest tools for automated censorship to use freely.

It’s not just the handing over of power that is problematic. Once something has been identified by police or by the online platform as “illegal,” governments argue that it should never be seen again.  What if that “illegal” content is being shown for criticism or news-worthy commentary? Should a witness to terrorism be censored for showing the situation to the world? Filters make mistakes. They cannot become our gods.

Content moderation is one of the trickiest subjects being debated by digital rights experts and academics at the moment. There have been many articles written, many conferences on the subject, and dozens of papers that have tried to consider how we can deal with the volumes of content on the web – and the horrific examples that surfact.

It is without a doubt that however content moderation happens online, there must be transparency. It must be specified in law what exactly gets blocked. And the right to free expression must be considered.

The post The dangerous trend for automating censorship, and circumventing laws appeared first on P2P Foundation.