Vet inte om ni märkt av grälet om Maria Sveland på seminariet Gräv 2013? Jag själv upptäckte debatten via en artikel i GT, som diskuterades i mitt flöde: Sofia Mirjamsdotter hade kallat panelen för gubbslem, och diskussionen gällde om det verkligen var okej att säga så.

Det visade sig att Täppas Fogelberg hade kallat sig för gubbslem och Mirjamsdotter återanvände det. Okej, så ett sammanhang missades i artikeln i GT. Fine. Men Sveland fortsatte att dyka upp i flödet som var smått förvirrande, så jag bestämde mig för att försöka klura ut vad som var vad.

Maria Sveland skrev och publicerade nyligen en bok som heter “Hatet”. Den har uppmärksammats i medierna och har med anledning av näthatsdebatter och kvinnodagen i fredags, varit högaktuell. Boken är inte helt oproblematiskt uppställd, om man får tro på Kristian Ekenberg som recenserat den i Arbetarbladet:

När man läser de sista sidorna är det som att se Maria Sveland sträcka ut handen och rycka ur mikrofonsladden för sina politiska motståndare. Jag kan förstå den impulsen om man som hon har levt under ständig attack under flera år, men den vägen är en återvändsgränd. Ett offentligt samtal utan röster som Maria Svelands vore lika olyckligt som ett samtal där bara sådana röster får höras medan de andra sitter tystade med Breivik i knät.

Detta uppfattar jag vara paneldeltagaren Janne Josefssons ungefärliga inställning också, när jag läser Maria Svelands personliga beskrivning* om vad som hände. Skillnaden i Ekenbergs och Josefssons kritik framstår dock milsvid, då både publik och deltagare har upplevt den senares insats i paneldebatten som olustig. Det var det aggressiva upplägget:

Det absurda var att här satt det två upprörda män som både skällde på mig för att jag synts och hörts så mycket (alldeles för mycket) i media senaste tiden, samtidigt som de anklagade mig för att vara antidemokrat eftersom jag ”vägrade ta debatten”.

Nu fattar jag inte riktigt hur det kommer sig att det där seminariet anordnades av Gräv 2013, alls. På Grävs hemsida kan man läsa om tänkt profilering och ändamål med seminarierna, men personligen får jag inte riktigt ihop hur Sveland-debatten passar in i det:

Temat ”hands-on” innebär bland annat att alla inbjudna föreläsare uppmanas vara väldigt konkreta. De ska inte nöja sig med att berätta ”så här gjorde jag” utan gå ett steg till för att använda sina kunskaper och tipsa ”gör så här!”. Programmet är upplagt som ett grävprojekt i fyra steg, idé-research-ansvarsutkrävande-publicering.

Var det biten om ansvarsutkrävande, som just Sveland-seminariet var tänkt att illustrera? För mig som sitter och försöker läsa ifatt går det inte riktigt ihop emellertid, eftersom ansvarsutkrävandet kan ju knappast läggas på den det skrivs om? Jag är i alla fall osäker på syftet eller ändamålet med paneldebatten, kanske har det också nån mening i detta som man som utomstående åskådare inte lätt plockar upp.

Nåt gick väldigt snett och en namnlista har publicerats på folk som avkräver en ursäkt av Gräv 2013 för händelsen. Det som började med medial uppmärksamhet om en tveksam formulering av Mirjamsdotter slutar i att notera en tveksam insats av Josefsson, Fogelberg och Gräv 2013. Samt en kvinnlig deltagare, Britt-Marie Mattsson, trots ord som gubbslem och gubbvälde. En person som inte syntes till alls i diskussionerna förrän jag läste Svelands inlägg och vilket kanske är lite mer symptomatiskt än man orkar fundera på.

Jag vet ärligt talat inte om jag är mindre förvirrad nu, än när jag började rota runt efter information. Den här diskussionen har nog inte sett sin ände på långa vägar. Men tänkte att fler kanske undrade, så lägger upp länkarna jag hittat såhär långt, så får ni dra era egna slutsatser.

*Just nu ligger Svelands blogg nere, gissar på att trafiken överbelastat den. Under tiden kan man läsa den via Google-cache. //edit: Ajour har lagt upp posten i sin helhet.

Läs artikeln hos DN

DN skriver om #mepblock-affären, alltså att Europaparlamentet överväger att uttala sig för ett generellt porrförbud, och dessutom har lagt in ett filter som sorterar bort mail från medborgare som vill uttrycka sin mening om rapporten ”Avskaffande av könsstereotyper i EU” där uttalandet om porrförbud finns.

Jag är citerad i artikeln, och får bland annat frågan:

Anser du inte att porr är objektifierande och förnedrande?

– Sex är inte något förnedrande. Jag kan inte heller se att det är något fel om samtyckande vuxna har sex med varandra, säger Christian Engström.

Han påpekar att det är människors rätt till privatliv som ligger Piratpartiet ”varmare om hjärtat” än produktionen och konsumtionen av pornografi. Christian Engström nämner Europeiska konventionen om skydd för de mänskliga rättigheterna.

– Artikel 8 säger att alla har rätt till skydd för sitt privat- och familjeliv, sitt hem och sin korrespondens.

Läs mer hos DN

…………

Uppdatering: Anna Troberg skriver klokt och resonerande: Det föreslagna porrförbudet handlar inte om porr

I said yesterday in my blog post that I would be sending a letter today to the President of the European Parliament, protesting about the blocking of certain emails from citizens to their elected representatives.

I would have hoped to have sent this letter in the morning today, and I am still working on getting it sent today, but since I am working from home in Stockholm, I have run into a problem:

The European Parliament blocks certain emails that I am trying to send from christian.engstrom@piratpartiet.se to my own office address christian.engstroem@europarl.europa.eu or to colleagues inside the parliament.

Not all emails get blocked, but all my attempts to send my draft letter to the President to my office address have been silently blocked by the filter. I suspect the reason is that in the draft, I mention the name of the report — ”eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU”.

My guess, without knowing any details about the parliament’s filtering system, but understanding the basic principle behind Bayesian spam filtering, is that the word ”gender” phrase ”gender stereotypes” (which is quite distinct in this case) probably triggers the filter on all or most occasions. This is of course only a guess, but still:

It appears that today, on International Women’s Day, the European Parliament is silently blocking all or most emails that contain the phrase ”gender stereotypes”.

Welcome to the wonderful world of internet blocking in the EU. And to yet another demonstration of what censorship means in practice.

…………

Update: In the original version of this post I suggested that the word ”gender” (alone) might be the culprit, but a test email containing the ”g word” just got through to the europarl address from an activist in Portugal, so perhaps the filter is not quite as simple as I thought. But when I try to resend my own draft letter (which contains the phrase ”gender stereotypes”) to the europarl address, it still gets blocked.

Upon reflection, the word ”stereotypes” is almost certainly just as distinctive as ”gender”, so it is reasonable to think that the filter probably looks at both of those words. I have updated the post and the title to say ”gender stereotypes” instead of just ”gender”, accordingly.

Update 3: To clarify, I did the following experiment: I took the letter I had been trying to send all day and replaced the phrase ”gender stereotypes” with ”market barriers”, so that the title of the report read ”eliminating market barriers in the EU”. Then the mail got through immediately. After this, I made yet another attempt to resend the same mail but with the original title of the report. This mail again disappeared without a trace, and with no notice given to either sender or recipient, just as it had on the previous two occasions.

Update 2: It’s now Friday evening and the europarl mailbox is unattended, so there is no point in sending further test mails, unfortunately.

Freedom of Speech: The European Parliament has responded to protests against a ban on pornography by spamfiltering its consistuents’ protests, then deleting the explanation of what the bill does from the bill. While this can be typical behavior from the European Parliament (as we saw in the ACTA battle), that doesn’t make it any more excusable. This is, quite frankly, not something that politicians deserve to get away with.

First, some background: a so-called initiative report is coming to a vote next week that seeks to reinforce a previous ban on pornography in advertising and extend it into an undefined scope of internet traffic. As the report is written, it is easy to read its language as including all sexual communication online between consenting adults; the language is very broad and vague in scope.

An initiative report is a way for Parliament to express its opinion to those actually drafting legislation. It has been described as “legally non-binding”, but it is a little more than that – when legislation is drafted, it falls back on the opinions expressed by Parliament. Therefore, it is closer to a request for drafting of legislation on the matter, which would later come to a (binding) vote.

So, “stop a pebble before you have to stop a landslide”.

Like all other reports, this one has a single Member of European Parliament who is responsible for it, but up until yesterday, it was a done deal. It would just pass without notice. This morning, a lot of confusion was caused as hundreds and hundreds of people mailed (as per yesterday’s article) to all of Parliament. The issue went from a done deal to open for discussion. This was a huge win in itself, and we should all pat ourselves on the back for that.

What happened next is just dishonorable. The European Parliament’s IT group started classifying mail from its constituents as spam, on the server side, so the Members of European Parliament never saw the protests. Apparently, this happened following requests from individual MEPs. The Pirate Party office in Brussels was practically screaming in French-language emails to explain the dishonor in this behavior, and MEP Christian Engström has more details.

Also, hundreds of protest mails kept pouring in that protested agricultural subsidies, so it was just the protests against the ban on online pornography that was targeted for spam filtering.

(UPDATE on this topic: technical tests showed that it was the words “gender stereotypes” that caused a mail to be silently dropped. On International Women’s Day. You couldn’t make it up if they gave you a million. Therefore, the mail template below deliberately misspells “gender stereotypes”.)

The second thing that happened was that a MEP that acted as responsible for the ban on online pornography removed the explanation of that from the report. Removed the explanation, but not the effect. The new report, as written, still extends a previous ban on pornography in advertising into new forms of media, specifically the internet, and still calls for ISP to police that ban. It just carefully hides the fact that it does so:

17. Calls on the EU and its Member States to take concrete action on its resolution of 16 September 1997 on discrimination against women in advertising, which called for a ban on all forms of pornography in the media and on the advertising of sex tourism;

Even with those words taken out, this is still a reference to this report, which still has this wording describing a legislative carpet ban on pornography in “the media”:

5. Calls for statutory measures to prevent any form of pornography in the media and in advertising and for a ban on advertising for pornographic products and sex tourism

So striking out those words in point 17 of the new report has no other effect than deliberately obscuring the purpose of the new report, following loud objections over it. The key words “the media” in the old report are still redefined in point 14 in the new report to include the Internet, and Internet Service Providers are still called upon to unaccountably police the net:

14. Points out that a policy to eliminate stereotypes in the media will of necessity involve action in the digital field; considers that this requires the launching of initiatives coordinated at EU level with a view to developing a genuine culture of equality on the internet; calls on the Commission to draw up in partnership with the parties concerned a charter to which all internet operators will be invited to adhere

This can feel a bit like wrapping your head against a gentle slice of sweet soft lime, then banging it hard against a brick wall.

When I set up the mail alias yesterday to make it easier to mail the European Parliament, that was my goal – I wanted to lower the wall between elected and electorate. The elected swiftly responded by erecting new walls to not have to bother with their constituents, and that has me seriously annoyed. So instead of using my remailer at europarl-all-mar2013@falkvinge.net, I will supply you with all the addresses so that you can mail them all individually, rather than going through my server.

Therefore, I include the full list of addresses below. It looks quite large. That’s because it is.

The mail that has the best effect to Parliament is always one where you write exactly what you think and feel about an issue. One such mail is worth a hundred copied-and-pasted letters. So while I provide a sample mail below, I would really encourage you to write to the European Parliament from your heart instead. Don’t worry about getting the tone or the formalities right – these people work for you. You pay their salary. It is their job to listen to your concerns.

So send a mail right now:

From: (You)
To: anne.delvaux@europarl.europa.eu,jean-luc.dehaene@europarl.europa.eu,ivo.belet@europarl.europa.eu,marianne.thyssen@europarl.europa.eu,mathieu.grosch@europarl.europa.eu,louis.michel@europarl.europa.eu,frederique.ries@europarl.europa.eu,guy.verhofstadt@europarl.europa.eu,philippe.debacker@europarl.europa.eu,annemie.neyts-uyttebroeck@europarl.europa.eu,isabelle.durant@europarl.europa.eu,philippe.lamberts@europarl.europa.eu,bart.staes@europarl.europa.eu,derkjan.eppink@europarl.europa.eu,frank.vanhecke@europarl.europa.eu,frederic.daerden@europarl.europa.eu,veronique.dekeyser@europarl.europa.eu,marc.tarabella@europarl.europa.eu,said.elkhadraoui@europarl.europa.eu,kathleen.vanbrempt@europarl.europa.eu,philip.claeys@europarl.europa.eu,Nadezhda.Neynsky@europarl.europa.eu,svetoslav.malinov@europarl.europa.eu,mariya.nedelcheva@europarl.europa.eu,andrey.kovatchev@europarl.europa.eu,emilstefanov.stoyanov@europarl.europa.eu,iliana.ivanova@europarl.europa.eu,vladimir.urutchev@europarl.europa.eu,metin.kazak@europarl.europa.eu,vladkotodorov.panayotov@europarl.europa.eu,filizhakaeva.hyusmenova@europarl.europa.eu,antonyia.parvanova@europarl.europa.eu,stanimir.ilchev@europarl.europa.eu,ivailo.kalfin@europarl.europa.eu,kristian.vigenin@europarl.europa.eu,ilianamalinova.iotova@europarl.europa.eu,evgeni.kirilov@europarl.europa.eu,slavi.binev@europarl.europa.eu,dimitar.stoyanov@europarl.europa.eu,eleni.theocharous@europarl.europa.eu,ioannis.kasoulides@europarl.europa.eu,takis.hadjigeorgiou@europarl.europa.eu,kyriacos.triantaphyllides@europarl.europa.eu,antigoni.papadopoulou@europarl.europa.eu,kyriakos.mavronikolas@europarl.europa.eu,bendt.bendtsen@europarl.europa.eu,annee.jensen@europarl.europa.eu,jens.rohde@europarl.europa.eu,morten.lokkegaard@europarl.europa.eu,margrete.auken@europarl.europa.eu,emilie.turunen@europarl.europa.eu,sorenbo.sondergaard@europarl.europa.eu,anna.rosbach@europarl.europa.eu,morten.messerschmidt@europarl.europa.eu,britta.thomsen@europarl.europa.eu,dan.jorgensen@europarl.europa.eu,ole.christensen@europarl.europa.eu,christel.schaldemose@europarl.europa.eu,tunne.kelam@europarl.europa.eu,siiri.oviir@europarl.europa.eu,vilja.savisaar-toomast@europarl.europa.eu,kristiina.ojuland@europarl.europa.eu,indrek.tarand@europarl.europa.eu,ivari.padar@europarl.europa.eu,sirpa.pietikainen@europarl.europa.eu,petri.sarvamaa@europarl.europa.eu,eija-riitta.korhola@europarl.europa.eu,sari.essayah@europarl.europa.eu,hannu.takkula@europarl.europa.eu,riikka.manner@europarl.europa.eu,anneli.jaatteenmaki@europarl.europa.eu,tarja.cronberg@europarl.europa.eu,satu.hassi@europarl.europa.eu,sampo.terho@europarl.europa.eu,mitro.repo@europarl.europa.eu,liisa.jaakonsaari@europarl.europa.eu,michele.striffler@europarl.europa.eu,marielle.gallo@europarl.europa.eu,jean-marie.cavada@europarl.europa.eu,sophie.auconie@europarl.europa.eu,dominique.riquet@europarl.europa.eu,francoise.grossetete@europarl.europa.eu,maurice.ponga@europarl.europa.eu,franck.proust@europarl.europa.eu,jean-paul.gauzes@europarl.europa.eu,agnes.lebrun@europarl.europa.eu,arnaud.danjean@europarl.europa.eu,michel.dantin@europarl.europa.eu,rachida.dati@europarl.europa.eu,joseph.daul@europarl.europa.eu,jean.roatta@europarl.europa.eu,constance.legrip@europarl.europa.eu,alain.lamassoure@europarl.europa.eu,christine.deveyrac@europarl.europa.eu,gaston.franco@europarl.europa.eu,alain.cadec@europarl.europa.eu,brice.hortefeux@europarl.europa.eu,dominique.vlasto@europarl.europa.eu,philippe.juvin@europarl.europa.eu,elisabeth.morinchartier@europarl.europa.eu,philippe.boulland@europarl.europa.eu,jean-pierre.audy@europarl.europa.eu,marie-therese.sanchez-schmid@europarl.europa.eu,veronique.mathieu@europarl.europa.eu,tokia.saifi@europarl.europa.eu,corinne.lepage@europarl.europa.eu,sylvie.goulard@europarl.europa.eu,nathalie.griesbeck@europarl.europa.eu,robert.rochefort@europarl.europa.eu,marielle.desarnez@europarl.europa.eu,jean-luc.bennahmias@europarl.europa.eu,jose.bove@europarl.europa.eu,malika.benarab-attou@europarl.europa.eu,eva.joly@europarl.europa.eu,michele.rivasi@europarl.europa.eu,sandrine.belier@europarl.europa.eu,jean-paul.besset@europarl.europa.eu,catherine.greze@europarl.europa.eu,daniel.cohn-bendit@europarl.europa.eu,yves.cochet@europarl.europa.eu,karima.delli@europarl.europa.eu,helene.flautre@europarl.europa.eu,nicole.kiil-nielsen@europarl.europa.eu,yannick.jadot@europarl.europa.eu,francois.alfonsi@europarl.europa.eu,jacky.henin@europarl.europa.eu,marie-christine.vergiat@europarl.europa.eu,patrick.lehyaric@europarl.europa.eu,jean-luc.melenchon@europarl.europa.eu,younous.omarjee@europarl.europa.eu,philippe.devilliers@europarl.europa.eu,henri.weber@europarl.europa.eu,bernadette.vergnaud@europarl.europa.eu,pervenche.beres@europarl.europa.eu,stephane.lefoll@europarl.europa.eu,harlem.desir@europarl.europa.eu,liem.hoangngoc@europarl.europa.eu,catherine.trautmann@europarl.europa.eu,gilles.pargneaux@europarl.europa.eu,francoise.castex@europarl.europa.eu,patrice.tirolien@europarl.europa.eu,sylvie.guillaume@europarl.europa.eu,jean-marie.lepen@europarl.europa.eu,bruno.gollnisch@europarl.europa.eu,marine.lepen@europarl.europa.eu,rodi.kratsa-tsagaropoulou@europarl.europa.eu,georgios.papanikolaou@europarl.europa.eu,georgios.papastamkos@europarl.europa.eu,marietta.giannakou@europarl.europa.eu,konstantinos.poupakis@europarl.europa.eu,georgios.koumoutsakos@europarl.europa.eu,ioannis.tsoukalas@europarl.europa.eu,theodoros.skylakakis@europarl.europa.eu,nikos.chrysogelos@europarl.europa.eu,nikolaos.chountis@europarl.europa.eu,charalampos.angourakis@europarl.europa.eu,georgios.toussas@europarl.europa.eu,niki.tzavela@europarl.europa.eu,nikolaos.salavrakos@europarl.europa.eu,anni.podimata@europarl.europa.eu,chrysoula.paliadeli@europarl.europa.eu,mariaeleni.koppa@europarl.europa.eu,sylvana.rapti@europarl.europa.eu,dimitrios.droutsas@europarl.europa.eu,georgios.stavrakakis@europarl.europa.eu,kriton.arsenis@europarl.europa.eu,spyros.danellis@europarl.europa.eu,sean.kelly@europarl.europa.eu,jim.higgins@europarl.europa.eu,gay.mitchell@europarl.europa.eu,mairead.mcguinness@europarl.europa.eu,marian.harkin@europarl.europa.eu,liam.aylward@europarl.europa.eu,briancrowleymep@eircom.net,patthecope.gallagher@europarl.europa.eu,paul.murphy@europarl.europa.eu,phil.prendergast@europarl.europa.eu,emer.costello@europarl.europa.eu,nessa.childers@europarl.europa.eu,cristiana.muscardini@europarl.europa.eu,salvatore.tatarella@europarl.europa.eu,alfredo.pallone@europarl.europa.eu,paolo.bartolozzi@europarl.europa.eu,iva.zanicchi@europarl.europa.eu,elisabetta.gardini@europarl.europa.eu,barbara.matera@europarl.europa.eu,mario.mauro@europarl.europa.eu,alfredo.antoniozzi@europarl.europa.eu,aldo.patriciello@europarl.europa.eu,lara.comi@europarl.europa.eu,amalia.sartori@europarl.europa.eu,raffaele.baldassarre@europarl.europa.eu,gabriele.albertini@europarl.europa.eu,carlo.fidanza@europarl.europa.eu,giovanni.lavia@europarl.europa.eu,erminia.mazzoni@europarl.europa.eu,sergio.berlato@europarl.europa.eu,salvatore.iacolino@europarl.europa.eu,potito.salatto@europarl.europa.eu,crescenzio.rivellini@europarl.europa.eu,vito.bonsignore@europarl.europa.eu,marco.scurria@europarl.europa.eu,sergio.silvestris@europarl.europa.eu,licia.ronzulli@europarl.europa.eu,antonio.cancian@europarl.europa.eu,roberta.angelilli@europarl.europa.eu,herbert.dorfmann@europarl.europa.eu,tiziano.motti@europarl.europa.eu,luigiciriaco.demita@europarl.europa.eu,giuseppe.gargani@europarl.europa.eu,carlo.casini@europarl.europa.eu,gino.trematerra@europarl.europa.eu,antonello.antinoro@europarl.europa.eu,clemente.mastella@europarl.europa.eu,vincenzo.iovine@europarl.europa.eu,giommaria.uggias@europarl.europa.eu,niccolo.rinaldi@europarl.europa.eu,andrea.zanoni@europarl.europa.eu,sonia.alfano@europarl.europa.eu,gianni.vattimo@europarl.europa.eu,magdicristiano.allam@europarl.europa.eu,matteo.salvini@europarl.europa.eu,fiorello.provera@europarl.europa.eu,oreste.rossi@europarl.europa.eu,mara.bizzotto@europarl.europa.eu,lorenzo.fontana@europarl.europa.eu,mario.borghezio@europarl.europa.eu,claudio.morganti@europarl.europa.eu,giancarlo.scotta@europarl.europa.eu,francescoenrico.speroni@europarl.europa.eu,gianluca.susta@europarl.europa.eu,rita.borsellino@europarl.europa.eu,patrizia.toia@europarl.europa.eu,francesco.deangelis@europarl.europa.eu,roberto.gualtieri@europarl.europa.eu,guido.milana@europarl.europa.eu,leonardo.domenici@europarl.europa.eu,luigi.berlinguer@europarl.europa.eu,paolo.decastro@europarl.europa.eu,debora.serracchiani@europarl.europa.eu,pino.arlacchi@europarl.europa.eu,gianni.pittella@europarl.europa.eu,mario.pirillo@europarl.europa.eu,silvia.costa@europarl.europa.eu,sergio.cofferati@europarl.europa.eu,vittorio.prodi@europarl.europa.eu,francesca.balzani@europarl.europa.eu,david.sassoli@europarl.europa.eu,salvatore.caronna@europarl.europa.eu,pierantonio.panzeri@europarl.europa.eu,andrea.cozzolino@europarl.europa.eu,krisjanis.karins@europarl.europa.eu,inese.vaidere@europarl.europa.eu,karlis.sadurskis@europarl.europa.eu,sandra.kalniete@europarl.europa.eu,ivars.godmanis@europarl.europa.eu,tatjana.zdanoka@europarl.europa.eu,alfreds.rubiks@europarl.europa.eu,roberts.zile@europarl.europa.eu,alexander.mirsky@europarl.europa.eu,laimaliucija.andrikiene@europarl.europa.eu,radvile.morkunaite-mikuleniene@europarl.europa.eu,vytautas.landsbergis@europarl.europa.eu,algirdas.saudargas@europarl.europa.eu,viktor.uspaskich@europarl.europa.eu,leonidas.donskis@europarl.europa.eu,valdemar.tomasevski@europarl.europa.eu,rolandas.paksas@europarl.europa.eu,juozas.imbrasas@europarl.europa.eu,vilija.blinkeviciute@europarl.europa.eu,zigmantas.balcytis@europarl.europa.eu,justas.paleckis@europarl.europa.eu,georges.bach@europarl.europa.eu,frank.engel@europarl.europa.eu,astrid.lulling@europarl.europa.eu,charles.goerens@europarl.europa.eu,claude.turmes@europarl.europa.eu,robert.goebbels@europarl.europa.eu,david.casa@europarl.europa.eu,simon.busuttil@europarl.europa.eu,louis.grech@europarl.europa.eu,joseph.cuschieri@europarl.europa.eu,john.attard-montalto@europarl.europa.eu,edward.scicluna@europarl.europa.eu,lambert.vannistelrooij@europarl.europa.eu,wim.vandecamp@europarl.europa.eu,corien.wortmann@europarl.europa.eu,ria.oomen-ruijten@europarl.europa.eu,esther.delange@europarl.europa.eu,sophie.intveld@europarl.europa.eu,marietje.schaake@europarl.europa.eu,gerben-jan.gerbrandy@europarl.europa.eu,toine.manders@europarl.europa.eu,hans.vanbaalen@europarl.europa.eu,jan.mulder@europarl.europa.eu,marije.cornelissen@europarl.europa.eu,bas.eickhout@europarl.europa.eu,judith.sargentini@europarl.europa.eu,kartikatamara.liotard@europarl.europa.eu,dennis.dejong@europarl.europa.eu,peter.vandalen@europarl.europa.eu,bastiaan.belder@europarl.europa.eu,thijs.berman@europarl.europa.eu,emine.bozkurt@europarl.europa.eu,judith.merkies@europarl.europa.eu,daniel.vanderstoep@europarl.europa.eu,barry.madlener@europarl.europa.eu,lucas.hartong@europarl.europa.eu,auke.zijlstra@europarl.europa.eu,laurence.stassen@europarl.europa.eu,elzbieta.lukacijewska@europarl.europa.eu,rafal.trzaskowski@europarl.europa.eu,jacek.protasiewicz@europarl.europa.eu,joanna.skrzydlewska@europarl.europa.eu,jacek.saryusz-wolski@europarl.europa.eu,jan.kozlowski@europarl.europa.eu,slawomir.nitras@europarl.europa.eu,jan.olbrycht@europarl.europa.eu,jolantaemilia.hibner@europarl.europa.eu,tadeusz.zwiefka@europarl.europa.eu,piotr.borys@europarl.europa.eu,malgorzata.handzlik@europarl.europa.eu,krzysztof.lisek@europarl.europa.eu,roza.thun@europarl.europa.eu,artur.zasada@europarl.europa.eu,filip.kaczmarek@europarl.europa.eu,jaroslaw.walesa@europarl.europa.eu,lena.kolarska-bobinska@europarl.europa.eu,danuta.huebner@europarl.europa.eu,sidonia.jedrzejewska@europarl.europa.eu,jerzy.buzek@europarl.europa.eu,danuta.jazlowiecka@europarl.europa.eu,bogdan.marcinkiewicz@europarl.europa.eu,boguslaw.sonik@europarl.europa.eu,pawel.zalewski@europarl.europa.eu,andrzej.grzyb@europarl.europa.eu,jaroslaw.kalinowski@europarl.europa.eu,czeslaw.siekierski@europarl.europa.eu,arkadiusztomasz.bratkowski@europarl.europa.eu,marekhenryk.migalski@europarl.europa.eu,biuro@pawelkowal.pl,adam.bielan@europarl.europa.eu,michaltomasz.kaminski@europarl.europa.eu,miroslaw.piotrowski@europarl.europa.eu,janusz.wojciechowski@europarl.europa.eu,tomasz.poreba@europarl.europa.eu,ryszardantoni.legutko@europarl.europa.eu,marekjozef.grobarczyk@europarl.europa.eu,konrad.szymanski@europarl.europa.eu,ryszard.czarnecki@europarl.europa.eu,jacek.kurski@europarl.europa.eu,tadeusz.cymanski@europarl.europa.eu,zbigniew.ziobro@europarl.europa.eu,jacekwladyslaw.wlosowicz@europarl.europa.eu,wojciech.olejniczak@europarl.europa.eu,joanna.senyszyn@europarl.europa.eu,marek.siwiec@europarl.europa.eu,boguslaw.liberadzki@europarl.europa.eu,lidiajoanna.geringerdeoedenberg@europarl.europa.eu,janusz.zemke@europarl.europa.eu,adam.gierek@europarl.europa.eu,nuno.melo@europarl.europa.eu,diogo.feio@europarl.europa.eu,paulo.rangel@europarl.europa.eu,mariadagraca.carvalho@europarl.europa.eu,carlos.coelho@europarl.europa.eu,josemanuel.fernandes@europarl.europa.eu,nuno.teixeira@europarl.europa.eu,mariadoceu.patraoneves@europarl.europa.eu,regina.bastos@europarl.europa.eu,mario.david@europarl.europa.eu,rui.tavares@europarl.europa.eu,marisa.matias@europarl.europa.eu,ines.zuber@europarl.europa.eu,joao.ferreira@europarl.europa.eu,antonio.campos@europarl.europa.eu,luispaulo.alves@europarl.europa.eu,vital.moreira@europarl.europa.eu,anamaria.gomes@europarl.europa.eu,elisa.ferreira@europarl.europa.eu,luismanuel.capoulassantos@europarl.europa.eu,edite.estrela@europarl.europa.eu,traian.ungureanu@europarl.europa.eu,theodordumitru.stolojan@europarl.europa.eu,petru.luhan@europarl.europa.eu,marian-jean.marinescu@europarl.europa.eu,oana.antonescu@europarl.europa.eu,rares-lucian.niculescu@europarl.europa.eu,elena.basescu@europarl.europa.eu,sebastianvalentin.bodu@europarl.europa.eu,monica.macovei@europarl.europa.eu,iosif.matula@europarl.europa.eu,cristiandan.preda@europarl.europa.eu,iuliu.winkler@europarl.europa.eu,csaba.sogor@europarl.europa.eu,laszlo.tokes@europarl.europa.eu,norica.nicolai@europarl.europa.eu,adinaioana.valean@europarl.europa.eu,ramonanicole.manescu@europarl.europa.eu,renate.weber@europarl.europa.eu,cristiansilviu.busoi@europarl.europa.eu,catalin-sorin.ivan@europarl.europa.eu,vasilicaviorica.dancila@europarl.europa.eu,victor.bostinaru@europarl.europa.eu,silviaadriana.ticau@europarl.europa.eu,corina.cretu@europarl.europa.eu,dacianaoctavia.sarbu@europarl.europa.eu,rovana.plumb@europarl.europa.eu,ioan.enciu@europarl.europa.eu,claudiuciprian.tanasescu@europarl.europa.eu,ioanmircea.pascu@europarl.europa.eu,georgesabin.cutas@europarl.europa.eu,tudorcorneliu.vadim@europarl.europa.eu,george.becali@europarl.europa.eu,adrian.severin@europarl.europa.eu,miroslav.mikolasik@europarl.europa.eu,anna.zaborska@europarl.europa.eu,peter.stastny@europarl.europa.eu,eduard.kukan@europarl.europa.eu,edit.bauer@europarl.europa.eu,alajos.meszaros@europarl.europa.eu,sergej.k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europa.eu,michaelhenry.nattrass@europarl.europa.eu,nikki.sinclaire@europarl.europa.eu,alf.svensson@europarl.europa.eu,anna.ibrisagic@europarl.europa.eu,christofer.fjellner@europarl.europa.eu,annamaria.corazzabildt@europarl.europa.eu,gunnar.hokmark@europarl.europa.eu,kent.johansson@europarl.europa.eu,olle.schmidt@europarl.europa.eu,marit.paulsen@europarl.europa.eu,cecilia.wikstrom@europarl.europa.eu,carl.schlyter@europarl.europa.eu,isabella.loevin@europarl.europa.eu,christian.engstroem@europarl.europa.eu
Subject: Disappointed and concerned regarding handling of gedner steroetype report

Dear MEP,

(Write your own here. Below provided as sample. Do not use.)

I have a problem with three recent events in the European Parliament, and I would ask you to listen to my concerns.

Yesterday, there was a legitimate protest against an extension on a ban against pornography in advertising to cover the Internet in the report “Eliminating Genedr Steoretypes in the EU”. The language is so vague and broad that it can easily be read to include a ban on sexual communication against consenting adults, and as such, passing this report would be incompatible with fundamental rights and freedoms in a democratic society.

This report is my first problem. The response to the legitimate objections are the two others.

The European Parliament responded by deleting the explanation (but not the legal meaning) of this report, deliberately obscuring the legal meaning that led to the protests, and by classifying mail from its own constituents as spam, filtering out voters who tried to reach their representatives – essentially throwing letters from voters in the trash, letters about gedner steroretypes (deliberately misspelled here) on International Women’s Day. Seriously, what was Parliament _thinking_?

While the first can be seen as an understandable mistake that is intended to be caught by democratic checks and balances, the other two of these actions are unprofessional and unworthy of the European Union as the world’s largest democracy. We elect you every five years and expect you to be proud of your work when presenting it in full to the electorate for re-election. This is not something I would be proud of in such a situation.

In summary, I urge you to reject the initiative report mentioned above, and consider the fact that we do put a value on being in touch with our elected representatives.

Sincerely,
[Your name]
[Your country]

Mail something like this to the European Parliament right now and tell them exactly how you feel about this display of disrespect and unprofessionalism.

Next week the European parliament will be voting on a resolution to ”ban all forms of pornography in media”. After this information became known to a wider audience, many citizens have decided to contact members of the European parliament to express their views on this issue.

This is absolutely excellent. Citizens engaging actively in the democratic process is a very positive thing, at least in my opinion. Before noon, some 350 emails had arrived in my office.

But around noon, these mails suddenly stopped arriving. When we started investigating why this happened so suddenly, we soon found out:

The IT department of the European Parliament is blocking the delivery of the emails on this issue, after some members of the parliament complained about getting emails from citizens.

This is an absolute disgrace, in my opinion. A parliament that views input from citizens on a current issue as spam, has very little democratic legitimacy in my opinion.

I will be writing a letter to the President of the European Parliament to complain about this totally undemocratic practice.

In the meantime, please continue to email members of the parliament on both the issue of the porn ban and on any other issue that you feel that you want to bring to the attention your elected representatives. Citizens taking active part in the political process is a fantastic asset for a democratic system, not a spam problem.

I am very disappointed that some of my colleagues in this house evidently have a different opinion.

Diagrams showing how snus has reduced smoking and smoking related diseases in Sweden (click to enlarge)

The EU is currently working on a revision of the Tobacco products directive. The primary goal of this directive is to reduce the harm to public health caused by smoking.

It is undisputed that smoking poses a major health problem, and there are a number of provisions in the directive that aim at getting fewer young people to start smoking in the first place: plain packaging, pictorial warnings, a ban on cigarette flavourings etc. Judging from the general mood in the European parliament, I would expect these measures to get the support from a large majority.

However, no matter how successful these actions will be in preventing young people from starting smoking, it will take decades before we will see any health improvements in the population from these actions alone.

The only way to get a positive health impact in the meanwhile is to get current smokers to quit.

Here is a letter (pdf) written by several independent public health specialists and addressed to the Swedish minister for public health. My position on snus is the same as theirs. They write:

There has been a remarkable success for public health in Sweden that deserves more recognition by policy‐makers. According to the most recent Eurobarometer survey, adult smoking prevalence in Sweden is just 13%. That is far lower than the EU average of 28% and the next closest member state at 23%. The reason for this is perfectly clear: it is that, in Sweden, snus has been widely used to quit smoking or as an alternative to cigarettes. Given that the risks associated with snus use are of the order of 95‐99% lower than for smoking, this has resulted in substantially reduced burdens of tobacco‐related disease (cancer, cardiovascular disease, emphysema) compared to other member states. Today’s low rates of smoking will translate to significant health benefits in future, relative to other member states.

Here is also a pdf with diagrams (from the same experts) that illustrate the success story of snus as a means for reducing smoking, and thus smoking related diseases, in Sweden.

Their policy recommendations, which I agree with, can be summarized:

1. Let the decision to ban or not ban oral tobacco become a matter for each member state – reflecting the diverse cultural traditions in tobacco use and the different attitudes to harm reduction.
2. Create a regulatory framework for all smokeless tobacco that would limit the toxic contaminants that potentially cause harm, that would be used by member states that decide to allow any form of oral tobacco.
3. Allow characterizing flavours in smokeless tobacco (but ban them in cigarettes).

We are all in complete agreement that the EU needs to adopt policies to reduce smoking and the harm it causes. It is my belief that this policy on snus and oral tobacco would help achieve that goal.

…………

Further scientific data on the health effects of snus

…………

Declaration of interest: I am a snus user, which has allowed me to cut down my smoking drastically, even though I have not stopped completely yet. My wife used to smoke, but gave it up completely several years ago by switching to eucalyptus flavoured snus.

Reflections – Zacqary Adam Green: My fellow artists, we need to talk. We’re all starving, our fans are starving, and life just sucks for all of us. The only way we’re going to make a living as entertainers is to sit back, cool our jets, and take a reality check. We are, and always have been, buskers.

I know it doesn’t seem like we’re on a street corner, guitar case propped open, ready to accept money from passers-by. We’re on the Internet. We’re selling albums, and movies, and games, and books, and all sorts of products. Right? And when people download our stuff without paying us, that’s theft. Of our products. Which we’re selling in our stores.

Except that’s a lie. We’ve had holes poked in the argument that we’re selling things, or that making a copy is theft, but it was a lie even before everything went digital. Even when our songs, our films, our novels, our software only came on physical media, we were never salespeople. We were never manufacturers. Those vinyl discs and hardback books were nice collectables, sure, but they were never more than packaging. Without the music, the story, the experience inside, who would want to buy those random knick-knacks we sold?

No, it’s never been about selling. Or pushing a product. The big distributors and publishers sure made us think that it was, but come on, artists. We’ve always known it was about the art.

We never stopped busking, guys.

I’m on a street corner playing my guitar, singing my heart out, and some jackass freeloader walks on by without even throwing a coin in my guitar case. What a scumbag! “Get back here, you ungrateful pirate!” I shout. “Stop, you thief!” And then the police come running, and look at me like I’m crazy.

That’s what we’re doing when we get mad at people who pirate our work. Except the police don’t always think we’re crazy. Maybe they ought to.

It sucks when someone enjoys your work and can’t help you put food on your table, I know. A lot of the time they’d like to help and just can’t afford it. But I’ve had people flat-out tell me, “That was great, but I don’t think I’ll be donating,” and of course it stings a little bit. You know what, though? That’s life. Wait for the ones who will pay.

And you know, maybe it sucks too that we don’t get to think of what we do as selling a product. Maybe it’d be easier if we weren’t glorified buskers. But I say it’s easier to embrace that. Do we really want it to be our job to sell products and move units? Hell no! We’re artists, man! Our job is to move people, to make people laugh, cry, and feel things they’ve never felt before. Our job is to connect with people. And the more people you connect with, the more likely it is that one of them can spare some cash for you.

I don’t know about you, but I never wanted to be a salesman anyway.

Freedom of Speech: Next Tuesday, the European Parliament will vote yes to a report calling for a legislative ban on all pornography in “media”. This “media” is worded to include the internet, and is broad and vague enough to even include photos you take of yourself and send to friends, as well as simple text messaging. This horrendous attack on our fundamental freedoms of speech and expression needs action now.

(UPDATE on the “Next Tuesday”: The bill passed but only after significant watering-down removing the worst of it.)

The deceptively-named report is titled Eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU, which sounds good and something you’d give your approval on first glance, right? We’ve seen this kind of deception before, with bills named things like “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA), “Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement” (ACTA), and the “Patriot Act”, that were all named to trigger a “yes” vote, but which were really about tearing down the most fundamental of our rights and liberties.

The current state of affairs in the European Parliament is a clear majority in favor of this report, much because of its title and a belief that there’s nothing odd about it.

Next week’s vote, which will probably be on Tuesday, isn’t really on legislation as such – rather, it is about requesting legislation to be drafted on the matter, and final legislation will come back to a vote. Thus, this isn’t the final vote in the legislative process; rather, it’s the first vote in the legislative sausage machine (“what goes in, must come out”). This is a so-called initiative report. Still, it is important to send a very clear message that this is unacceptable at first opportunity, or it will become a legislative proposal which is much harder to fight.

As part of this report, we find a call to enforce a carpet ban on pornography, across “the media”. This is a hair-raising attack on freedom of speech and freedom of expression that should never have made it past the first cursory review (my highlighting):

17. Calls on the EU and its Member States to take concrete action on its resolution of 16 September 1997 on discrimination against women in advertising, which called for a ban on all forms of pornography in the media and on the advertising of sex tourism;

This refers to an earlier decision, which is just as horrendous and that neither can nor should be enforced:

Freedoms of speech and expression most definitely include sending erotic material – text, images, sound – between consenting adults. This is a political invasion of people’s bedrooms that is unacceptable and intolerable.

But “the media” is kind of vague in point 17 above – could it be referring only to commercial, for-profit media? Not really. If we look closer, we see that the Internet is most definitely included – and also that the European Parliament is trying to abdicate political responsibility for this decision, by pushing responsibility onto Internet Service Providers for policing the morals of a total carpet ban on anything remotely pornographic (my highlighting):

14. Points out that a policy to eliminate stereotypes in the media will of necessity involve action in the digital field; considers that this requires the launching of initiatives coordinated at EU level with a view to developing a genuine culture of equality on the internet; calls on the Commission to draw up in partnership with the parties concerned a charter to which all internet operators will be invited to adhere

So yes, the European Parliament is really voting to create a ban using language that is broad and vague enough in scope to include sexual communication between consenting adults over the internet, and using unaccountable Internet Service Providers to do their policing for them. This is as unacceptable as it gets, but make no mistake – the Members of European Parliament are going to vote yes to this report come Tuesday, unless they hear from us very loudly and clearly. In other words, it is therefore time to mail the European Parliament with our opinions.

You may remember how we did that in the anti-ACTA campaign. I have set up a mail alias that resolves to every Member of European Parliament (all some 750 of them); the mail alias is europarl-all-mar2013@falkvinge.net. Mail them right now, regardless of whether you are an EU citizen or not. Write a mail with just whatever you feel about this issue from a personal standpoint, maybe picking inspiration from one of these sample letters, mixing and matching them, or rolling your own entirely:

UPDATE: Since lunchtime Thursday, the European Parliament is dishonorably classifying citizens and voters in their constituency as spam (!!) so you’ll need to put the mail alias on the BCC line, as below. You may have to enable it under “View => BCC” in your mail client. Further, you may want to use an alternative mail alias, europarl@piratenpartij.nl.

UPDATE 2: Followup article – Europarl responds by spamfiltering constituents, then deletes explanation of porn ban but keeps effect.

From: (You)
To: Dear MEPs <make up an address>
BCC: europarl@piratenpartij.nl
Subject: Please REJECT the report “Eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU”.

Next week, the European Parliament will vote on an initiative report called “Eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU”. While this report may look beneficial and uncontroversial on the surface, it includes provisions to ban all kinds of pornographic material, across “the media”.

We can also read in the report that “the media” includes the Internet, and that Internet Service Providers are encouraged to do this policing in an unaccountable manner.

This is an unacceptable political invasion of people’s bedrooms. Fundamental freedoms of speech and expression most definitely include the ability to send erotic material between consenting adults in any manner they so choose and wish.

While there may be good parts in the report, as a whole, this report is not compatible with fundamental rights and freedoms in a democratic society. I therefore urge you to reject it.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]
[Your Country]

From: (You)
To: Dear MEPs <make up an address>
BCC: europarl@piratenpartij.nl
Subject: Next week’s report on “eliminating gender stereotypes” must be rejected.

There is a report on “eliminating gender stereotypes” coming to a vote next week. This is a deceptive title; the report hides legislative language that is not compatible with fundamental rights and freedoms in a democratic society.

The report seeks an enforcement of a ban on every form of pornography, across a definition of media that includes the internet (points 14 and 17). Further, it calls on Internet Service Providers to enforce this ban, outside of legislative accountability.

This is a political invasion of adult people’s bedrooms that is neither acceptable nor tolerable. Politicians have no say in what consenting adults communicate between one another, and yet, this report seeks to impose an extrajudicial censorship of such communication in the most unaccountable of ways. I find this despicable and a completely unacceptable attack on the most basic of freedoms of speech and expression.

Therefore, I urge you to decisively REJECT this report, and also to tell your colleagues of its deceptive title compared to its actual contents.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]
[Your Country]

From: (You)
To: Dear MEPs <make up an address>
BCC: europarl@piratenpartij.nl
Subject: Next week’s report “Eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU” is deceptive. Please reject it.

There is an initiative report coming to a vote next week titled “Eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU”. This title is deceptive and hides an unacceptable attack on fundamental rights and freedoms – one that is not compatible with a democratic society.

Looking at points 14 and 17 in the report, it calls for a complete ban on all forms of pornography in media, and makes it clear that this includes anything on the Internet. In other words, it applies to any kind of erotic material – text, images, sound – and not just the commercial kind. This is a political invasion of adult people’s bedrooms – adult VOTERS’ bedrooms – that goes far beyond the tolerable. If consenting adults choose to share erotic material with one another, this is not a matter that politicians have any kind of say about.

While there may be good parts in the report, as a whole, this report is not compatible with fundamental rights and freedoms in a democratic society. I therefore
urge you to reject it and to inform your colleagues of this attempted deception.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]
[Your Country]

See also Christian Engström, MEP who goes more in-depth in his analysis of the report, (updated) as well as the European Digital Rights Initiative‘s write-up.

Next week in Strasbourg, probably on Tuesday, the European Parliament will be voting on a Report on eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU. To promote gender equality and eliminating gender stereotypes are of course very laudable goals, so my guess would be that unless something happens, the report will be approved by the parliament, possibly by a very large majority.

But as always, the devil is in the detail.

Article 17 of the report says (with emphasis added):

17. Calls on the EU and its Member States to take concrete action on its resolution of 16 September 1997 on discrimination against women in advertising, which called for a ban on all forms of pornography in the media and on the advertising of sex tourism;

The resolution of 16 September 1997 in turn said:

5. Calls for statutory measures to prevent any form of pornography in the media and in advertising and for a ban on advertising for pornographic products and sex tourism;

To a certain extent, the exact meaning on this proposed ban on pornography is unclear, since neither the 1997 resolution nor the text we will be voting on next week contains any definition of what is meant by ”in the media”.

Magazines and cable television would presumably be considered to be ”media” by most people, but what about the internet? Without any definition of ”media” in either of the two resolutions, the answer is not obvious from reading just those two articles, at least not to me.

But the resolution we will be voting on next week has other things to say about the internet. Article 14 reads (again with my highlighting):

14. Points out that a policy to eliminate stereotypes in the media will of necessity involve action in the digital field; considers that this requires the launching of initiatives coordinated at EU level with a view to developing a genuine culture of equality on the internet; calls on the Commission to draw up in partnership with the parties concerned a charter to which all internet operators will be invited to adhere;

This is quite clearly yet another attempt to get the internet service providers to start policing what citizens do on the internet, not by legislation, but by ”self-regulation”. This is something we have seen before in a number of different proposals, and which is one of the big threats against information freedom in our society.

The digital rights organisation EDRI has produced a booklet called The slide from ”self-regulation” to corporate censorship, where they point out that:

…now, increasing coercion of internet intermediaries to police and punish their own consumers is being implemented under the flag of “self-regulation” even though it is not regulation – it is policing – and it is not “self-” because it is their consumers and not themselves that are being policed.

In the battle against the ACTA treaty, the fact that ACTA contained similar ”self-regulation” proposals to get internet service providers to start policing their customers was one of the reasons why the European Parliament rejected the treaty in the end.

Many members of the parliament (including me) felt and feel that this kind of ”self-regulation” is nothing more than an attempt to circumvent the article on information freedom in the European Convention on Human rights, which says that everyone has the right to receive and impart information without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers, and that any restrictions to this right have to be prescribed by law and be necessary in a democratic society.

Next week’s resolution is a so-called ”own initiative report” by the parliament. This means that it does not automatically become law even if it is adopted, but is just a way for the European parliament to express its opinion.

But the purpose of these own initiative reports is to serve as the basis for the Commission when it decides to present legislative proposals to the parliament. If this own initiative report is adopted by the parliament, it will strengthen the Commission’s position if and when it wants to propose various ”self-regulation” schemes in the future.

Although I completely agree that eliminating outdated gender stereotypes in the EU is a worthwhile goal, I will be voting against this resolution next week.

Göran Widham skrev igår ett inlägg, där han skriver:

Den sista gruppen jag tänkte tala om är de som inte bara vill ändra lagen utan också vill stödja den olagliga fildelningen på varje tänkbart sätt. Det är de som hjälper till att hålla igång sajter som Tankafetast och The Pirate Bay. Det är de som cammar filmer, rippar DVD:er och skapar orginaltorrenter.

http://fridholm.net/2013/03/05/om-att-dra-alla-over-samma-kam/

Just det där med "varför piratkopierar folk och gör det tillgängligt" har nog lika många anledningar som människor som gör det. Jag tänker att det framför allt — och ganska övergripande — handlar om sociala anledningar. Och att det nånstans handlar om att någon är ett fan, och vill att andra ska se vad det nu kan handla om.

En socialiserande faktor finns nog även bland s.k. scen-grupper, som man kan hitta i fildelningsnätverken. De kan ha nördat in sig på tekniska grejer och vill visa varandra vad de åstadkommit. (Flera scengrupper är starkt emot fildelning, till och med, och blir förbannade när de ser sina releaser på stora fildelningssidor, ska sägas.)

Själv har jag rippat filmer av lite äldre datum, som jag delade med mig av till en tajt grupp för flera där hade missat såna pärlor som Bladerunner eller Brazil exempelvis. Det blev som en grej, att "utbilda dom", eftersom de inte hade något intresse av att se filmerna genom att betala för dom – och inte riktigt fattade storheten.

Sen har vi såna som den här farbrorn i New York som ville göra något hyggligt för soldater som är posterade internationellt: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/27/nyregion/at-92-movie-bootlegger-is-soldiers-hero.html

Det är i det sociala sammanhanget som något blir intressant och sticker ut, rent allmänt. Det är där som nyfikenhet och intresse odlas och varför många pekar på den oerhörda marknadsföringspotentialen som bor i fildelningsnätverken. Går du in på forum vill alla "dela med sig av saker". Om det så handlar om nåt fint man sett på stan, en renovering hemma, berömda foton, tv-program eller filmer. Man vill dela sina upplevelser och fylla på med feedback genom att höra andras.

Nånstans är det helt naturligt att det är så, men man tänker nog inte så ofta på det. Det är inte alls konstigt att industrierna gärna vill använda sig av "virala egenskaper" när de marknadsför grejer.

#opassande  

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Swarm Economy: Bitcoin’s value is at an all-time high again. Following the hype peak and crash in 2011, many seemed to have thought it was just another dotcom fluke. But bitcoin was much more than that, and it has returned with a vengeance – its market cap is now twice what it was in the 2011 peak, and it is nowhere near its potential, which is four orders of magnitude above today’s value.

In this, a lot of people are confused at the fact that bitcoin has climbed 200% since the start of this year alone, and wonder what to make of it. It is currently at $41.50 and climbing fast, and I see a lot of people just looking at the numbers and guessing from charts how things will pan out.

I am seeing guesses of $50, $100, $150, even $1,000. These numbers seem pulled out of thin air from just looking at the charts – nobody seems to have done due diligence from the other direction, from the most fundamental observation of all:

Bitcoin is a transactional currency. As such, it is competing for market share on the transactional currency market.

Talking about bitcoin value is not about happily watching numbers go up and down while having popcorn. This is about identifying a global market, looking at its size and estimating a target market share based on the strengths and weaknesses of the competing product or service under analysis.

When you know the size of the target market, and have an estimate for your projected market share, you can estimate the value of your product or service as a percentage of the value of the total market. I haven’t seen anybody do that for bitcoin.

The total size of the transactional currency market is hard to estimate, but has been pegged at about $60 trillion (the amount of money in circulation worldwide). Seeing how this number is roughly on par with the world’s GDP, it is a reasonable enough number to be in the right ballpark. Based on my four earlier estimates (one, two, three, four), I think it is reasonable that bitcoin captures a 1% to 10% market share of this market.

The low end of 1% would be if it captures international and internet trade. The 10% would be if bitcoin also manages to capture some brick-and-mortar retail trade, which we are already seeing strong signs that it might – operations provide a 3% to 5% extra profit margin on sales when you can cut out the credit card processors, so the incentive to switch is immense: those 3% to 5% cost savings translate to 50% to 100% increased profits, as margins are typically very slim in retail.

Furthermore, some people will undoubtedly invest in bitcoin and keep their portion of bitcoin away from the transactional pool, like all people tend to hoard money if they are able. This decreases the amount of bitcoin that must fulfill the market share, further driving up value for each individual bitcoin. As a rough estimate, let’s assume that only one in four bitcoins is actually used in transactions, and the rest are in some kind of savings or investment plans.

This leads us to a target market cap of 600 billion to 6 trillion USD, to be fulfilled by about 6 million bitcoin, which makes for easy calculations. That means that each bitcoin would be worth $100,000 at the low market cap and $1,000,000 at the high market cap.

In the light of this, present-day projections of $100 that present themselves as “daring and optimistic” actually come across as rather shortsighted and almost dealing with peanuts.

So is the projected market share realistic? Bitcoin certainly has hurdles to overcome – scalability and usability being two of them – but it has done remarkably well in maturing in the two years since I started looking at it. My prediction of a mainstream breakthrough around the year 2019 remains, and it still depends on getting mainstream usability; a target market cap may be reached about a decade after that happens, as a technology typically takes ten years from mainstream breakthrough to maturity.

Now, there are definitely uncertainties in this projection and its assumptions – but it does indicate what kind of ballpark we are talking about.

DISCLOSURE
The author has a significant investment in bitcoin. Specifically, he went all-in two years ago after having run these very numbers.

Bradley Manning

Pressmeddelande från Piratpartiet:

Piratpartiets ledamöter i Europaparlamentet, Christian Engström och Amelia Andersdotter, har nominerat Bradley Manning till Nobels fredspris.

Manning är den soldat som står inför rätta i USA för att ha läckt information om krigen i Irak och Afghanistan samt amerikanska ambassadtelegram till Wikileaks. Bland de övriga som undertecknat nomineringen märks den isländska alltingsledamoten Birgitta Jónsdóttir och den tunisiske internetaktivisten och ex-ministern Slim Amamou.

- Bradley Manning har gjort en genuint demokratisk gärning. Han har visat vanligt folk vad som sker i de krig som våra ledare för i vårt namn. Och han har avslöjat att våra politiker i verkligheten driver en annan politik än den de gått till val på och fått demokratiskt mandat för, säger Christian Engström som är ledamot av Europaparlamentet för Piratpartiet.

- Manning visar ett civilkurage som är allt för sällsynt. Efter att den norska nobelkommittén under flera år delat ut fredspriset till politiska ledare vars insatser för freden kan ifrågasättas, så är det dags att man ger priset till en verklig hjälte. Det säger Amelia Andersdotter, piratpartistik ledamot av Europaparlamentet.

Bradley Manning har suttit fängslad mer än 1.000 dagar. Just nu pågår rättegången mot honom i USA, i vilken han riskerar att dömas till livstids fängelse.

Läs hela nomineringen här:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/bradley-manning-nobel-peace-prize-nomination-2013/5325138

…………

Uppdatering: TT rapporterar om nomineringen med ett pratminus från mig:

- Manning har avslöjat att USA har begått krigsförbrytelser och det är en välgärning. Tyvärr sitter han i amerikanskt fängelse för det, säger Engström.

Infrastructure: Yesterday’s big story was definitely about The Pirate Bay having moved to North Korea. If you asked the Internet’s infrastructure, the net itself would tell you about the move, and The Pirate Bay issued a press release confirming the story. But reports surfaced that it could have been an elaborate hoax, and closer inspection proves that.

The problem with verifying the story or its debunking was the technical level of expertise required to understand the reports. When you started talking about “traceroutes” and “whois lookups”, you would lose 99.9% of the audience, who would be incapable of independently verifying what you said. When you added in the reports claiming to debunk the story, but which were instead about “Border Gateway Protocol” (BGP) and “Autonomous Systems” (AS) numbers, you lost another 99.9% – including me.

I can’t verify or disprove the report based on BGP and AS numbers. But there’s something else I can use. The laws of physics.

I’m going to focus on the traceroute quoted below. You can think of it in terms of a telephone line trace. It is a list of the way the signals go from your computer to The Pirate Bay. To illustrate, the first hop in the chain from my workstation is my firewall (named firewall.internal.falkvinge.net), and my ISP alltele is visible as a next step in hop #4. The crucial evidence here is in the timings: my firewall is 379 microseconds away from me, and my ISP is 3.3 milliseconds away from me.

You, too, can run this trace from where you are. Open a prompt (in Windows, it’s Windows+R, then cmd and Enter, on a Mac, you run Terminal, and on any flavor of GNU/Linux, you hit Ctrl-Alt-T) and run traceroute thepiratebay.se – on some systems, the command is just tracert thepiratebay.se. It should produce a document similar to the one below.

rick@battlestation:~$ traceroute thepiratebay.se traceroute to thepiratebay.se (194.71.107.15), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets 1 firewall.internal.falkvinge.net (192.168.80.1) 0.379 ms 2 * * * (unknown hop) 3 * * * (unknown hop) 4 h88-129-128-10.static.se.alltele.net (88.129.128.10) 3.327 ms 5 te0-7-0-7.ccr21.sto01.atlas.cogentco.com (149.6.168.49) 3.992 ms 6 te0-3-0-4.ccr22.sto03.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.60.21) 19.605 ms 7 te0-3-0-2.ccr22.ham01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.73.65) 22.574 ms 8 te0-3-0-6.ccr22.fra03.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.49.213) 28.316 ms 9 francetelecom.fra03.atlas.cogentco.com (130.117.14.178) 35.297 ms 10 xe-3-2.r00.dsdfge02.de.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.5.61) 31.762 ms 11 213.198.77.122 (213.198.77.122) 31.516 ms 12 * * * (unknown hop) 13 xe-0-1-0-3.r02.frnkge03.de.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.5.62) 38.855 ms 14 xe-0.level3.frnkge03.de.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.8.202) 38.566 ms 15 vlan90.csw4.Frankfurt1.Level3.net (4.69.154.254) 118.681 ms 16 ae-82-82.ebr2.Frankfurt1.Level3.net (4.69.140.25) 122.293 ms 17 ae-61-61.csw1.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.69.134.66) 130.630 ms 18 ae-21-70.car1.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.69.155.67) 132.708 ms 19 INTELSAT-IN.car1.NewYork1.Level3.net (64.156.82.14) 135.094 ms 20 209.159.170.215 (209.159.170.215) 202.517 ms 21 202.72.96.6 (202.72.96.6) 703.997 ms 22 175.45.177.217 (175.45.177.217) 707.161 ms

So we see 22 hops in the trace, where the last one was famously in North Korea, almost a full second from where we are sitting, 700 milliseconds out. But let’s not look at that for a moment, let’s look instead at hops #16 to #17. Hop #16 is in Frankfurt and hop #17 is in New York or Kansas City. Let’s assume New York; that’s where the transatlantic cables land. Yet, in the trace, they are eight milliseconds apart.

Let’s focus on this. The distance from Frankfurt to New York (measured in Internet signalling time) is reported to be just over twice the distance from my firewall to my ISP. This sets us thinking. What is the physical distance from Frankfurt to New York?

The distance from Frankfurt to New York is 6,195 kilometers.

The physical distance that hop #17 has to cover is 6,195 kilometers. It covers this hop in eight milliseconds. Here, let’s take a look at the laws of physics. What is the speed of light? What is the limit, as told by the laws of physics, to how fast the signals in a fiberoptic cable can cover this distance?

The speed of light is exactly 299,792,458 meters per second. To cover 6,195,000 meters, light needs 0.020 seconds, or 20 milliseconds. But we just saw that the traceroute reported eight milliseconds for this jump. That’s troubling. More precisely, this violates the laws of physics. The traceroute claims that internet signals travel at more than twice the speed of light.

This hop in the traceroute violates the laws of physics. And with that one hop in the traceroute proven to be impossible, the whole traceroute is shown to be an elaborate hoax.

Just to double-check, I am getting ping times of 30-ish milliseconds to the Frankfurt address from Stockholm, Sweden, and ping times of 110 milliseconds to the New York address. Differences of 80-ish milliseconds seem much more reasonable than the eight milliseconds claimed in the traceroute.

So how do you fake a traceroute to this degree? You meddle with the deepest routing logic of the Internet, that’s how. That kind of wizardry goes beyond my horizon. But after observing that the traceroute violates the laws of physics, I can tell with certainty that it is faked.

As Anna Troberg, leader of the Swedish Pirate Party, wrote yesterday; “The joke’s on you. The Pirate Bay is enormously skilled at two things: keeping their site online and lulzing the establishment.”

So with this evidence in hand, where in the world is The Pirate Bay? San Diego? Austria? Cambodia? Still in Oslo? Nobody knows at the moment. Hacking the internet to this degree is deep wizardry far beyond my ability to untangle it.

UPDATE: Some have pointed at the fact that Level3 is a U.S. provider, and that they could name their U.S. routers “Frankfurt”, and that the transatlantic hop actually happened between hops #14 and #15, a hop of 80 milliseconds. This is plausible on first thought. Then again, a geographic lookup places hop #16 in Frankfurt, and I have a ping to hop #16 of 30ms, and to hop #17 of 110, as stated in the article. As usual, there’s no authoritative source for anything and we have to add all the data together to see what we believe or not. Personally, I don’t think the trace hits Level3 at all, I think that entire part is faked. Above all, I don’t think anymore that The Pirate Bay is in North Korea.

UPDATE 2: One way to tell a fake traceroute is to trace it from multiple locations around the globe. In this case, another telltale sign is a traceroute from within Level3, which is a big internet service provider. You will notice the trace starts in Dallas at Level3, moves to Amsterdam, from there to Dresden and Frankfurt, then back to Level3 and then the rest of the route. Anything starting out at Level3, jumping to a different continent, and then going back to Level3 is faked with near-damn-certainty. So everything after Frankfurt is faked; the route above never hits Level3 at all. Is Frankfurt fake too? Well, who knows. But Level3 almost certainly is.

Igår delade jag Anna Trobergs skräckblandade förtjusning när jag läste att The Pirate Bay numera “bor” i Nordkorea. Skräck eftersom Nordkorea knappast är ett land som nån associerar till yttrandefrihet och demokrati. Förtjusning, för att det nånstans var så innibomben bisarrt att det var svårt att tro på, för att inte tala om ironin det innebar, att det nånstans inte gick att låta bli att skratta. Jag följde hela händelseförloppet med spänning, och i slutändan visade det sig att det var ett gigantiskt s.k. “lulz” från The Pirate Bay. Rent tekniskt (be mig inte förklara detaljerna) så lyckades de fejka närvaro i Nordkorea och karusellen brakade loss.

Under kvällen fick de medier som skrivit nyheten skriva om den — det dråpligaste var nog stackars Clas Svahn på Dagens Nyheter som i ett förstaläge citerade The Pirate Bays pressrelease med formuleringen “Något naivt skriver TPB också…” vilket så att säga blev en smått karmabetonad backlash. I realtid kunde vi sedan följa uppdateringarna och tilläggen, tills det blev den version som ligger uppe nu.

Om det var en rolig hoax eller inte i egentlig mening kan man diskutera. Vi blev i alla fall alla rejält lurade på en global skala, och det blir på sätt och vis en stilstudie i hur vi i ganska stor utsträckning “hjälper till” att lura flera, inte sällan bara genom att vi hade “åsikter” om nyheten.

Att medierna ibland går på nitar i hastigheten är inget nytt, inte heller att folk sprider felaktigheter utan att mena det. Jag noterar att inga av de som var lite triggerhappy igår på bl.a. twitter korrigerat sin information till sina följare. Funderar på det där rent allmänt — när man hänger på internet så är det väldigt svårt att inte bli delaktig i ryktesspridning på olika sätt, men motsvarande reaktioner när det väl händer har inte riktigt utvecklats, vad det verkar.

Som kändis är det extra känsligt att sprida information som visar sig vara felaktig, då de når en rätt stor krets människor. För tidningar har ju det här såklart alltid varit besvärligt och medierna har en återkommande diskussion om hur man tacklar det. För vanliga dödliga är det inte riktigt samma levande diskussion. De flesta blir förbannade när de känner sig lurade, och känner nog inget generellt ansvar i någon mening.

Det har hänt mig, det har nog hänt de flesta. Då har jag fått bita i det sura äpplet och lyfta det “ojdå, det var visst fel” eller dylikt, men det kanske inte är en utbredd nätkultur, utan mest bara en personlig inställning? Tycker i alla fall att det här är riktigt intressant. I tyckonomin är det nån slags förväntning som antagligen inte minst läggs på en själv för att “passa in” eller rent av profilera sig, men det verkar inte riktigt ha utvecklats nån bra kultur för hur man mea culpar på nåt bra sätt. Spontant så känns det som att även vi vanliga dödliga behöver diskutera det generellt sett. Det borde rimligtvis vara enklare att erkänna att ha fel, nu när det är så enkelt att göra fel. Kan jag tycka. ;)

Nånstans är det här i alla fall en ganska bra pedagogik i när det handlar om huruvida Piratpartiet och The Pirate Bay skulle föreställa vara “samma sak”. Nu blev det väldigt tydligt att piratbukten är sin alldeles egna, autonoma organisation (om man kan kalla det för det) som tar sina egna beslut och gör det de själva vill, även om deras beslut i stor utsträckning baseras på flera tämligen allvarliga frågeställningar — budbärarimmuniteten, inte minst. Förhoppningsvis har några av de som hetsade som värst på twitter igår lärt sig se skillnad, även om jag nu inte håller andan. Det hör ju till, nånstans, att en åsikt inte alltid behöver vara rotad i nån slags kunskap eller fakta.

Intressant var det i alla fall att se vilka det var som valde att kalla Piratpartiet för diktaturkramare igår.

Jag är i Bryssel och surfar runt på nyheten att The Pirate Bay har lyckats övertyga ett antal twittrare om att trafiken till TPB numera går via Nordkorea.

En länk som dyker upp i flödet är http://thepiratebay.se/blog/229 som jag vill kolla på. Men det kan jag inte, för istället möts jag av meddelandet

Vous venez d’être redirigé vers cette page. Le site que vous essayez de consulter contient des informations illégales au regard de la législation belge. Si vous êtes gestionnaire ou propriétaire de ce site web et si vous pensez que cette mesure a été prise à tort, vous pouvez toujours envoyer un fax au numéro +32(0)2/733.56.16.

Vad den aktuella bloggposten på The Pirate Bay’s blogg än må innehålla, är internetleverantören i Beligen tydligen absolut tvärsäker på att det skulle bryta mot belgisk lag om jag läste den.

Hur hen kan vara så säker på det vet jag inte, i synnerhet som blockeringen av allt som företrädare för The Pirate Bay kan tänkas säga alldeles uppenbarligen bestämdes innan det där blogginlägget ens var skrivet.

Men allt är inte förlorat, tydligen. Om det är så att jag anser att det som jag inte har fått läsa faktiskt inte strider mot belgisk lag, då kan jag rapportera det för att få upprättelse.

Via fax. På faxnummer +32(0)2/733.56.16

Är det bara jag som tycker att det är konstigt att det går hur bra som helst att blockera ett blogginlägg automatiskt, men att det krävs tillgång till uråldrig nittonhundratalsteknologi för att ens ifrågasätta blockeringen? Av debattinlägget som man aldrig fick läsa?

Själv tycker jag att det är riktigt XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.

Hade det hänt i Nordkorea skulle majoriteten av mina politikerkollegor hålla med. Men när det händer här i Europa tycker de att det är bra.

Piratpartiet tycker annorlunda.

…………

Uppdatering: Så, nu har jag läst pressmeddelandet från The Pirate Bay ändå, trots blockeringen. Tack, Anonymouse!

I och med det har jag tydligen i Belgien berett mig tillgång till en sida som bryter mot belgisk lag.

Je have consultiert a site avec contient des informations illégales au regard de la législation belge, eller vad det kan heta på copy-paste-franska.

Se där, en bekännelse (ehuru väldigt ogrammatisk)!

Kom och ta mig, herrar Du Pont!

Freedom of Speech: The Pirate Bay is back online. Its new provider turned out to be none less than one in North Korea. This has all sorts of interesting geopolitical consequences.

People using The Pirate Bay right now will observe that it’s slightly slower than usual. Earlier today, the Norwegian Pirate Party sent a press release that they no longer supplied bandwidth to The Pirate Bay, as the party’s uplink had caved to threats from the copyright industry about kicking out The Pirate Bay. (This remains a concern in itself.)

Ten minutes after that article was posted, The Pirate Bay came back online with a new provider that was as-yet unidentified. The swarm has worked and discovered the origins of the new provider: North Korea.

This has all sorts of interesting geopolitical consequences.

(For the technically interested, the last link in the traceroute chain is 175.45.177.217. A whois lookup will tell you that this is an ISP based in North Korea.)

North Korea may have the one government on this planet which takes pride in asking Hollywood and United States interests to take a hike in the most public way imaginable. Many more governments could do well to learn that particular idea, even if they don’t need to pick up the other things that the NK government is up to.

The world’s most resilient site for safeguarding freedom of expression, going against the political interests of the United States’ elite cronyists, is now run from North Korea. Imagine that.

This is going to be really fun to watch. The local convenience store may run out of popcorn when this becomes known.

UPDATE: The operators of The Pirate Bay confirm the story in a press release with comments: “This is truly an ironic situation. We have been fighting for a free world, and our opponents are mostly huge corporations from the United States of America, a place where freedom and freedom of speech is said to be held high. At the same time, companies from that country is chasing a competitor from other countries, bribing police and lawmakers, threatening political parties and physically hunting people from our crew. And to our help comes a government famous in our part of the world for locking people up for their thoughts and forbidding access to information.”

UPDATE 2: Some reports are coming in that the traces to North Korea look funny, and suggest that they are an elaborate fake, and that the actual location of The Pirate Bay would be Phnom Penh, Cambodia. One report in particular looks credible, but goes beyond my technical ability to verify its claims.

UPDATE 3: This was a very elaborate prank pulled off by meddling with deep routing logic of the Internet. See the followup article.

Repression: The Pirate Bay is currently offline. The Norwegian Pirate Party has sent a press release saying that threats from the copyright industry has closed The Pirate Bay’s internet access in Norway. In a comment, party leader Geir Aaslid says it’s regrettable that the Pirate Party doesn’t have the economic muscle necessary to fight for freedom of expression on their own.

(UPDATE: Well, that was quick. The Pirate Bay is already back online at its usual address, as of 17:35 CET, with a new provider. No big surprises there. Still, the threats to the Norwegian Pirate Party remain very relevant and strong cause for concern.)

(UPDATE 2: Well, that’s a surprise. Their new provider is North Korea.)

Earlier this week, The Pirate Bay went from being supplied bandwidth by the Swedish Pirate Party to being supplied by the Norwegian and Catalan pirate parties. This move was made official on February 26. Regrettably, it took less than a week for our Norwegian brothers and sisters to be threatened with devastation by copyright monopolists, regardless of the letter and spirit of the actual law. Meanwhile, the Catalan Pirate Party hasn’t yet started supplying The Pirate Bay with bandwidth.

While precise details on what happened in Norway are scarce, it would appear that The Pirate Party’s uplink and not the party itself had been threatened by the copyright industry. In terms of safeguarding democratic checks and balances, is quite remarkable that an entertainment industry has the power to force a political party offline if it doesn’t have favorable policies.

There are several more Pirate Parties standing in line to supply The Pirate Bay with bandwidth. Doubtlessly, the operators also have other options available, and are rerouting as this article is being written. It remains to be seen where The Pirate Bay will pop up next, but few doubt that it will – the worst strike against The Pirate Bay so far, when all its servers were seized on May 31, 2006, resulted in a mere three days of downtime. A week ago, the operators had promised big changes with regards to the site’s resilience that would have been finished about now.

Meanwhile, The Pirate Bay keeps being effortlessly available on the anonymous I2P darknet, as well as on the TOR darknet. Sooner or later, this witch hunt from the copyright industry is going to cause a mass adoption of darknet technology.

(If you really can’t wait for The Pirate Bay to come back online, you can still access The Pirate Bay through the bridges of the TOR anonymizing network at this untraceable address, but be aware that it’s quite slow – TOR was not built for high-volume traffic.)

UPDATE: Well, that was quick. The Pirate Bay is already back online at its usual address (as of 17:35 CET), ten minutes after this article was posted. Still, the threats to the Norwegian Pirate Party remain very relevant and strong cause for concern.

Proportioner är ett sånt där ord som är rätt enkelt att förstå. Vi anpassar något efter hur stort något är. Jag använde mig ofta av det ordet när vi protesterade mot FRA-lagarna 2008. Det eventuella hot som råder tacklas med överdrivet stor åtgärd som inte är bra för samhället. Samma sak med jakten på fildelare — att det som motsvarar att spela in en låt från radion i min barndom på 70-talet, i dag skapar den här sortens rubriker, har passerat all rimlig proportionalitet.

Överlag kan man se exempel på hur proportionalitet inte tycks vara så jätteviktigt i samhället. Engagemang i olika saker möter ett ganska hårt motstånd där de överdrivna tongångarna lett till en slags rädsla för att ge tummen upp till något man vid första anblick sett som helt okej.

När jag följde memet Harlem Shake, till exempel, och såg det växa explosionsartat, slog det mig hur enkelt det var — hur man liksom “får” engagera sig i något extraordinärt ytligt och skaka loss. Det blir en intressant kontrast till den besvikelse som följde av Kony-kampanjen, där väldigt många gärna ville vara med och stödja, men där många av oss säkert kände sig exploaterade om inte lurade rent av. Intressant nog var det de lurades fel, var en stark trend i efterföljande diskussioner, inte de som kände empati och ville hjälpa till på ett aldrig så litet sätt de hade möjlighet till.

Vårt informationsflöde ställer stora krav på oss som individer, och får du stryk tillräckligt många gånger, så passar du dig såklart för att visa nåt slags intresse eller engagemang som kan tolkas vara felaktig. Vilket gör att cirkeln nu sluts med de som engagerat sig i Harlem Shake-videor, som får inse att denna utomordentligt ytliga aktivitet får kritik.

Inte ens i den ytliga nonsensaktiviteten är du “trygg”, det finns alltid någon som dömer dig för det. Du gör fel som förhåller dig till att endast plåta dina fikastunder på Instagram och du gör fel när du gör något mer som av någon möjligen nånstans kan anses vara opinionsbildande.

Jag diskuterade jantelagen med en god vän härom sistens. Denna som vi ser som ursvensk företeelse, att man inte ska tro att man är något. Några år online och jag har börjat inse att det är en global lag. Det spelar ingen roll vilket språk du socialiserar online med, det uppfostras så det står härliga till. Du ska passa in eller dra åt skogen. Och det är faktiskt lite intressant att fundera på hur det påverkar oss.

Reaktioner har tagit alla möjliga konstiga vägar, till exempel, inte minst språkligt. I fredags blev jag kallad för “arrogant” som valt att se Bradley Manning som Breanna Manning. För det jag kunnat läsa mig till är hennes könsidentitet. För mig blir det konstigt att inte respektera det nu när jag vet om det, men för den som kritiserade ställningstagandet var det “arrogant att jag gjort mig till uttolkare” av Mannings vilja. Som jag ser det resonerar både jag och den som motsätter sig det hela, ur nån slags grundläggande vilja till respekt för Manning och blir grund för nån slags irritation.

För mig personligen handlar det inte om att “tvinga andra” att tänka som jag, men det uppfattas som det. Och den uppfattningen ger alltså någon “rätten” att vara ganska oförskämd, ironiskt nog, även om det inte går att peka på någon avsikt.

Den här sortens debattkarusell ser man hela tiden. Du ska tycka rätt, tänka rätt och säga rätt saker — enligt någon annans subjektiva världsbild. Det handlar sällan eller aldrig om att lägga sig på nån slags proportionell nivå, att anpassa retoriken efter problemformuleringen.

Härom dagen kritiserades Piratpartiet för att ha en alldeles för hård retorik. När jag bläddrar tillbaka i arkiven över pressmeddelanden, så ser jag att det som hålls som exempel för nån slags låg nivå, senast sågs till för ett par-tre år sedan. Bilder lever alltså kvar om hur saker sett ut — likt en kamel som samlat på sig vatten i sina pucklar, samlas intryck ihop och sparas. Förändring ses inte, och kritiken känns därmed berättigad. Den landar inte i god jord, för de som förändrat arbetet de senaste åren känner inte igen sig i sin tur. För det är ju den personliga uppfattningen som räknas. Nu är det inte värre än att det kan snackas om och redas ut, vill jag poängtera, men blev bara ett exempel till i en vecka av “men hur ska (får) jag tycka, då?”-reaktioner.

Som exempel har jag suttit den senaste veckan och verkligen förbjudit mig själv att göra ett fotomontage från tunnelbanan, där skylten visar “papieren, bitte” istället för “Skärholmen”. Nånstans tycker jag att jag går över en retorisk gräns — Godwin-lagen — om jag gör det. Samtidigt så förhindrar ju inte en  diskussionsnorm att jag faktiskt känner att avkräva bevis om ursprung och tillhörighet från folk, är ett av de största varningstecknen på att nåt är åt helvete i samhället.

Hur folks uppfattning förändras tycker jag är en oerhört intressant fråga. Hur starkt man bör reagera på olika saker är också en intressant frågeställning. De som har verktygen, plattformarna och kunskapen har onekligen ett oerhört försprång.

Associerar lite till om hur det för 6-10 år sedan var vanligt förekommande att företag köpte nya fina datorer till de anställda, men glömde bort att skicka personalen på utbildning för hur de skulle användas. Kanske ska man dra igång kurser om hur man behåller sitt lugn i diskussioner — eller hur man undviker få panik när man blir kritiserad. Eller hur man formulerar kritik så att det blir proportionerligt och därmed har en chans att slå rot och faktiskt leda till en förändring?

Problemet är kanske att problemet ser olika ut för folk. Det finns nog inte något formulär 1A, som man kan sätta folk på skolbänken med. I bruset av allt tyckande letar vi förtvivlat efter sanningar, och frustrationen vi känner över att inte hitta den går ut över våra medmänniskor. Det här är yttrande- och åsiktsfrihet i praktiken, men även vi som värnar de principerna har en inte helt lätt uppgift att försöka bringa ordning i en frågeställning som antagligen måste vara rörig för att den ens ska fungera.

Lite sådär som jag inte riktigt fattar hur man ska kunna lära skolelever att bli entreprenörer i skolan…

Jag tänker att jag inte är ensam om att ha de här funderingarna. Att inte veta riktigt hur mycket fajt jag orkar ta om skitsaker, när något är större än en skitsak, eller hur mycket jag riskerar som person som “sticker ut näsan” och hur mycket ansvar jag behöver ta för en allmän fundering. Samtidigt är det jobbigt att tänka på att där var och en blir känsligare för att slippa behöva ställas till svars för enormt stora och svåra frågeställningar, blir vi i allt högre utsträckning exploaterade. Mina funderingar kring detta är helt enkelt inte proportionellt balanserade med tanke på vad jag ska föreställa ha för rättigheter.

Jovars, det är med flit jag lägger upp ämnen i allsköns röra. Ett slags minidopp i åsiktspoolen internet. Och nån av er kommer säkert fokusera på en frågeställning av alla, som jag lyft som exempel. Här på internet nischar vi ju. Men nu är det problematiken bakom alla frågeställningar, det där de har gemensamt som är själva grejen som jag försöker sätta fingret på, så hoppas ni inte blev allt för sjösjuka i metat. ;)

Jag träffade Janni Andersen förra helgen, som funderat på sitt och andras samhälls- och politiska engagemang. Jag erbjöd henne att gästblogga och här kommer ett inlägg med hennes funderingar. //emma

* * *

GÄSTINLÄGG: Jag vill inte leva i en värld där empati kommit att bli en raritet, kärlek ett tecken på svaghet och en vän är definitionen av någon som man kan bli full med. Jag vill inte leva i en värld som förtrycker allt som kan uppröra någon, ett samhälle så konflikträdd att var människa inte ens kan ta de diskussioner de har inom sig vilket leder till att alla har en massa undertryckta tankar och känslor. Var är stoltheten och respekten som förr var så viktigt för var människas värdighet? Var är de nya tankar vi så stolt påstår att vi tillför samhället? De är inte här.

Jag säger det nu, en gång för alla, rent ut; vi har blivit fega. Ingen vågar ta ställning då de är rädda för att förolämpa någon, vilket leder till att absolut ingenting händer. De som vågar ta ställning ansluter sig enbart till frågor som redan diskuteras. Inte konstigt att man inte tar dessa politiska diskussioner på allvar, för efter att ha hört i alla sina levnadsår att pensionerna bör höjas och att det bör skapas fler bostäder svalnar intresset för den samhällsdebatt som råder bland de större politiska partierna.

Förvisso har asylfrågan nu börjat diskuteras mer i och med SD.s intrång i riksdagen. Men att något sådant ska behöva ske för en reaktion överhuvudtaget ska uppstå är absurt, och vad som är än mer absurt är att diskussionerna gällande asylfrågan enbart fick sig en lite vindpust på glöden som gjorde att den för ett ögonblick glödde lite starkare medan SD fick väldigt stor medieuppmärksamhet och blev rannsakade in i benmärgen. Absolut bör man kontrollera politikerna och vara vaksamma mot de som har rasistiska tendenser, men är det inte viktigare att media fokuserar på att utveckla politiken snarare än att leka detektiv där Jimmy Åkesson och hans partikamrater är skurkarna?

Förr rådde visioner om det perfekta samhället. Folk skapade nya idéer om revolutioner som skulle förändra samhället de levde i, som skulle skapa det idealiska samhället. Men vad gör vi nu? Vi reformerar skolsystemet och privatiserar apoteken i det ”idealiska” samhället vi nu lever i. Att hänge sig åt kapitalismen är den nya definitionen av en demokrati, att nöja sig med att precis ha så mycket att man klarar sig var månad är att leva i välstånd. Och vågar du höja din röst för att klaga på de usla lärarlönerna får du höra ett och annat om fattiga barn i Afrika som måste gå flera kilometer för att hämta vatten, allt medan de rika blir allt rikare och politikerna hånfullt avnjuter rent ut sagt löjligt stora förmåner. Hur ska dessa människor, i det välstånd de nu befinner sig i, kunna föra en motiverad kamp för ett mer jämställt samhälle?

Och alltmedan politikerna ältar sina frågor förlorar de mer och mer av ungdomarnas intresse. Livet för ungdomarna har kommit att gå ut på att supa och försvinna in i alla dessa alternativa världar som dykt upp i den moderna tiden i samband med mobiltelefonernas utveckling och den växande populariteten inom spelindustrin. Det finns så mycket annat att göra än att spendera sin tid med att följa en död process, en debatt som inte kommer att leda till någon nämnvärd förändring. Men jag vädjar nu, till alla er unga framförallt, att driva en vidare debatt kring de frågor ni berörs av. Att tro på att samhället går att utveckla och att inse att den samhällsstruktur vi för närvarande lever i inte är den enda som existerar. Förändringar har skett för och kommer förmodligen ske igen. Varför inte se till att det är just du är med och skapar det nya samhället?

~Janni Andersen

Swarm Management: Launching a swarm is an intense event, where you can get hundreds or thousands of new colleagues in less than a day. You have a very short window for appreciating their interest, or they will take it elsewhere.

Swarmwise chapters – one chapter per month
1. Understanding The Swarm
2. Launching Your Swarm (this chapter)
3. Getting Your Swarm Organized: Herding Cats (Apr 1)
4. Control The Vision, But Never The Message (May 1)
4. Keep Everybody’s Eyes On Target, And Paint It Red Daily (Jun 1)
5. Screw Democracy, We’re On A Mission From God (July 1)
6. Surviving Growth Unlike Anything The MBAs Have Seen (Aug 1)
7. Using Social Dynamics To Their Potential (Sep 1)
9. Managing Oldmedia (Oct 1)
10. Beyond Success (Nov 1)

The actual book is expected to be available by June 1, 2013.

Ok, so you have a provocative idea. You’ve done the math. Everything appears good to go. How do you gather a swarm around the idea?

A traditional method would be to go about an advertising campaign to generate interest. Working swarmwise, though, two words about the idea of an advertising campaign: forget it. If your idea doesn’t generate enthusiasm on its own, no amount of whitewashing is going to create the grassroots activism that you need to form a swarm.

On the other hand, a swarm will form as long as you present a compelling enough idea that people feel that they can be part of. You don’t need to spend ten million on an advertising campaign. It can be enough to mention the idea just once in passing in a semi-obscure chat channel.

To traditional economists, this sounds ridiculous. But that’s what I did to kickstart a brand that’s now well known in the IT sector worldwide and has local presence in fifty-plus countries.

When I started the Pirate Party in Sweden, I took its website online, and wrote two lines in a file sharing hub’s lobby chat. This was on January 1, 2006, at 20:30 CET.

Hey look, the Pirate Party has its website up after New Year’s.
http://www.piratpartiet.se/

The site had a manifesto which was rough, unpolished, but which came across as credible, tangible, inclusive, and world-changing. The site itself was just as rough and unpolished – which is the typical swarm way of trial and error, of putting a stake in the ground and evolving from there:

The first website of the Pirate Party, translated for reference. It is no overstatement that it was rough and unpolished.

And that’s it. Those two lines announcing the rough-looking site are all the advertising I ever did. The next two days, the site got three million hits. (Sweden has nine million people.) Media caught on quickly too. Worldwide. On the third day, my photo was in a Pakistani paper.

My point here is, if you’re thinking hard about how to gather a swarm for your idea:

Don’t worry about advertising.

Word of mouth is much more efficient than any campaign can ever be, but that requires that your idea – or rather, your presentation of it – meets four criteria: Tangible, Credible, Inclusive, and Epic.

• Tangible: You need to post an outline of the goals you intend to meet, when, and how.
• Credible: After having presented your daring goal, you need to present it as totally doable. Bonus points if nobody has done it before.
• Inclusive: There must be room for participation by every spectator who finds it interesting, and they need to realize this on hearing about the project.
• Epic: Finally, you must set out to change the entire world for the better – or at least make a major improvement for a lot of people.

If these four steps are good, then the swarm will form by itself. Quite rapidly, in the twenty-odd cases I have observed firsthand. Very rapidly. On the other hand, if these four components are not good enough, no amount of advertising or whitewashing is going to create the volunteer activist power that you want.

Let’s take a look at sample project plans. I’ve seen many examples of all of these three types.

A BAD EXAMPLE OF A PROJECT PLAN

Oh boy I am so starting a new project t0talli for Das Lulz!!11!!!oneone!!six!!11 lololol
I wonder what I will put in it?

ANOTHER EQUALLY BAD EXAMPLE

We are seeking a synergy between results-oriented actitivies related to dynamic business intelligence and competitive social media. Particularly, we are pursuing a path of cost-efficient achievements in quality predictability and static client satisfaction, measured by coupons used and referrals given. The means of achieving synergy is to strive for interaction with consumer focus groups in the field of cross-brand social communication and with student specialist groups in a study of networking revenue potential. The goal of the project is to raise the quarterly operating profits by up to two per cent.

A BETTER EXAMPLE

We will dropkick the politicians’ worldwide war against online anonymity by deploying one million anonymizing TOR exit nodes and get the corresponding TOR client into the default-install codebase of at least 25% of browsers used worldwide by user count.

We will do this in seven stages, increasing the number of TOR exit nodes by a factor of five every 60 days. One stage of installed exit nodes will commit to recruiting five of their friends for the next stage of exit nodes to change the world in this manner. We will provide worldwide network recognition for the best contributors.

Halfway through the project, in stage four, we get the Mozilla and Chrome developers to sign up on including the TOR client by default in the code base. If completed for deployment by stage five, everybody who wants to can be completely anonymous ever after.

We are going to change the world for the better and make it impossible for the stone age politicians to put the cat back in the bag. Want to be onboard for first stage of signups? Sign up HERE (link).

Now, we need to go back to our goals here. We want to gather tens of thousands of energized activists around an idea to change the world. Having an idea is not enough; the idea and its plan must energize people.

So don’t worry about advertising. Mention your idea and plan in a couple of places where your intended activists would typically hang out. That’s enough. If it’s good, people will pick it up and talk to their friends in turn. It snowballs very quickly from there. If it doesn’t energize, no advertising is going to change that.

If your idea is good and people can contribute, change the world, and see how it can be done, then you will have the first wave of hundreds of volunteers in less than a day. You will see hundreds of people holding out their hands, palms up, at you and say, “here, use my hands! I want to be a part of this! Give me something to do!” in the electronic channels where you announce your presence.

The idea doesn’t need to be polished. The important thing is to put that stake in the ground, start attracting people, and start working your way to the goal. In this, too much effort spent polishing the appearance of the idea rather than its own merits can even be counterproductive, as people can perceive it as glossed-over corporate whitewash.

This brings us to the next problem: taking care of these hundreds of people while they’re still interested. For they all turn to you, personally, and there’s just no way you would be physically able to give them all instructions on an one-to-one basis.

Surviving The Initial Impact

When your initiative hits the ground, and it is interesting enough to create a splash, then that splash will be unlike anything you have seen before. It can happen in many ways — it can be entirely word of mouth, it can become a major story in oldmedia, or most commonly, it can hit the front page on one of many social news sites (or several of them at the same time).

When that happens, you will go from having been alone to suddenly having hundreds of people who want nothing more than to help you out on your project in their spare time. But their attention span is short; you need to respond. If you don’t, they’ll shrug and your initiative will wane out of memory in less than 24 hours.

In order to retain these hundreds of people, you also need a focal point for their interest – something as simple as a signup page or a forum. Of course, that focal point needs to be ready and functional when the impact of the idea hits, or the activists will be lost.

With the focal point active and the idea launched, it’s said that one of the hardest steps you can take in a business is going from one person to two, as you recruit your first employee. When we’re dealing with a swarm, everything is on a different scale. Here, we go from one person — you, the founder — to three hundred or more in the first instant.

It goes without saying that it can be a bit tricky, and you have at most 24 hours to sort out the situation or lose the initiative to form a swarm around this idea. What’s worse, you can’t really do it yourself. There is no way you can give individual and meaningful instructions to 300 people in the attention span you have been given.

But the swarm can do it for you, it you let it. And you must.

The swarm’s very first task will be to self-organize, and it excels at such tasks. But it is you who must set the structure and explicitly give the swarm the task to self-organize.

This is where traditional organizational theory kicks in to some degree.

Initially, you will be able to coordinate at most 30 groups, so create a discussion forum with at most that number of subgroups. You’ll likely want to have people in streets and squares campaigning for the swarm’s cause before long, so subdividing your hatchling swarm by geography works well here – and when subdividing, create at most 30 subdivisions geographically. (Most countries have administrative divisions into counties, states, etc. that vary in number between 15 and 30 units. If you’re gunning for a Europe-wide movement, you can easily observe that the size of the EU plus a few hangaround countries fits the 30-state limit well, and so on. The United States with its 50 states would be trickier, as would North America. Just pick a way to divide it into at most 30 units.)

Your discussion forum can take many forms. It can be a traditional web forum, it can be a wiki, it can be an etherpad, it can be any kind of collaborative space where people can go uninvited and just start working with others. I prefer the traditional forum because of its well-recognized form.

You’ll need to make a judgment call on the approximate resulting group sizes, based on how many hands are at your disposal. Try to pick your geographical division so that the typical size is about 7 members, and that no subgroup has more than 30 members. Don’t announce this intent, as doing so would cause a distracting discussion about that action: just create the subgroups in a way that will cause this division to happen.

If you have more than a thousand people at your disposal in this initial splash, which can happen, then 30 subgroups of 30 people each will not be enough: that structure has a maximum of 30×30=900 people. In this rare case, you may need to exceed the 30-people-per-group limit and have as many as 150 people each in 30 subgroups. This is a rare case, though, and you are not likely to encounter this.

(The magic numbers 7, 30, and 150 are deeply integrated parts of the human social psyche – part of how we are wired. We’ll return to how people behave in groups of those sizes in the next chapter.)

Having set the initial structure, you need to tell everybody to go to the appropriate subgroup and meet with other people who go there. Tell everybody to introduce themselves to one another, and to select a leader between them for the subgroup. At this point, you can safely refrain from giving instructions as to how that leader should be selected; the subgroups will come up with different ways that each have legitimacy in their respective group, and that’s all that matters at this point.

As leaders get picked by the subgroups, contact those leaders in person – at least a voice or video call, preferably over beer or coffee if you live nearby – and introduce yourself, and get to know them more personally. You’ll be working closely with them in the near future, so you’ll want to get a feel for them as people and colleagues, and to allow them to get a feel for who you are as a person and colleague.

You’ll also want to set up a subforum where these subgroup leaders can discuss between themselves and with you. Make sure that other people can read it. Don’t keep secrets; rather, let everybody see the ongoing growth of your swarm.

This process takes a couple of days, but it kickstarts the swarm on all levels. You will have energized small subgroups of people who live reasonably close to each other, and they will have legitimate leaders – legitimate to themselves, anyway. The 30 leaders and you form an initial management team pyramid in the swarm’s scaffolding of officers, the swarm’s go-to people. Taken together, your subgroups form a comprehensive coverage of all the ground you intend to cover.

(A couple of weeks from this point, you will realize that you’ll need an intermediate layer of officers in-between you and these 30 – a few of them will have lost interest and gone radio silent, and you won’t have noticed, because 30 people are too many to keep track of to that level if they don’t contact you. Therefore, you will want an intermediate layer of five or six people between you and these 30 as the swarm grows. But don’t worry about that at this stage – that’s for the next chapter, and a couple of weeks out.)

The Swarm’s First Task

As the swarm organizes into these subgroups by geography, it needs to be given a task immediately that allows it to jell properly. If you just tell people to go to a forum, they will lose interest in a week if nothing more happens. These are people who wanted to help the swarm succeed with the work of their own hands, remember?

So in order to make this organization set and settle, there needs to be something to be done right away. In the case of the Swedish Pirate Party, that task was to collect 2,000 signatures from the public to support the party’s registration with the Election Authority. It needs to be a task that looks challenging but is doable for some hundred people, it needs to be a task where you can provide for internal competition between the 30-or-so geographic subdivisions that you have created, and it needs to be a task where everybody can see the clear benefit to the swarm on its completion. In the case of a political party, registering it with the Election Authority was an obvious benefit that everybody realized; you’ll need to have a similar task at hand that leads to such a goal.

What this does is cause the swarm to learn how to work together over the first four weeks or so of its existence, as this task is being carried out in a decentralized fashion. You should update the overall progress of the goal at least daily.

A swarm organization isn’t first and foremost reporting lines between boxes on an orgchart. A swarm organization is people who know other people and who choose to work together. Therefore, getting people to know other people should be an overarching goal of your activities at this point.

Do encourage people to meet, and be very clear that they should not make it formal. Do not meet in a protocolized formal meeting under any circumstance, but meet instead over beer, pizza, and laughs. Focus on creating opportunities for people to get to know people, and for new people to feel welcome to the group.

Once such meetings become regular, it becomes even more important to make sure that newcomers feel welcome. One method of accomplishing this can be to start every meeting with an introductory round where people present themselves briefly along with some piece of trivia, such as the latest thing they downloaded or shared: “Hi, I’m Rick, 40. I’m mostly known here for setting up an ugly website. The most recent thing I downloaded was an Ubuntu Linux release.” Seeing everybody present themselves helps newcomers immensely, and it provides for a convenient framing for the newcomers to introduce themselves, as well as for the regulars to learn the names of them. Also, the local leaders will need to pay particular attention to the newcomers in every meeting, personally welcoming them back to the next meeting.

The organization consists only of relations between people. For every new relation that is created, the organization grows.

Dealing With Attention Junkies

As the swarm has its initial successes, a very small amount of people will strive to join not because they sympathize with the swarm’s goals, but because they crave and demand attention to their person, and the visibility of the swarm seems to be able to provide this to them.

As the swarm is open, you cannot and should not try to keep these people out – but you can deny them the space and spotlights they crave. It can be hard to detect them, but one telltale sign is that these people will demand attention from you personally rather than trying to build the overall swarm with people who aren’t as visible yet. You will also notice that they think very much in terms of rank and hierarchy, whereas other people will think in terms of getting stuff done and changing the world.

A few particularly tricky people will work for the swarm’s goals very hard for the first couple of weeks, and then use the built-up credibility to cash in on attention. As this happens, the transparency of the swarm is the best conceivable antidote, as such people typically depend on other people not comparing the different versions of the story they’re being told.

This part of building a swarm is inevitable, it is tough to deal with, but you can rest assured that as long as you keep the swarm open and transparent, this kind of people won’t be able to hijack it for their own, personal visibility. They will eventually flush themselves out, sometimes in quite a bit of disruption.

 

This is the second chapter of Swarmwise, a book arriving this summer. Did you like it? It’s going to be free to share (it, like this excerpt, is CC-BY-NC), but you can also buy it hardcover. The first chapter is here.

 

EXCERPT FROM UPCOMING BOOK

This is a part of the upcoming book Swarmwise, due in the summer of 2013. It is an instruction manual for recruiting and leading tens of thousands of activists on a mission to change the world for the better, without having access to money, resources, or fame. The book is based on Falkvinge’s experiences in leading the Swedish Pirate Party into the European Parliament, starting from nothing, and covers all aspects of leading a swarm of activists into mainstream success.