The document can be reached here.

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This document was compiled from the German pirate party Wiki page. It has been translated through Google Translate and I take no responsibility for accuracy of translations or that this is the current stances of Piratenpartei. Might have missed some newer versions of programs as well if they were not on the Wiki. Tried finding other stances towards education change in other countries wiki’s but didn’t find much. Sweden has a few specific for education and Catalunya has a few both not very detailed. See this compilation as inspirational samples to form your own ideas

I found this text through Lola Voronina who is the International Coordinator for Pirate Party of Russia. 

The concept of the Moscow Convention for the Copyright

The need to reform the copyright law

The need to reform the copyright law, under national and international levels is the conclusion, to which the professionals (lawyers, artists, economists and representatives of the content industry) come worldwide. Established in the industrial age, the system of author rights was fully consistent with the way of functioning of the industry in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century but it is no longer corresponding to the digital age. The principles of the protection of authors’ rights that are set out in the main international agreements – the Berne and Geneva Conventions and WIPO Copyright Treaty, – may not be fully realized in an environment where the methods of production, distribution, access and use of the culture have changed under the influence of digital technology and the Internet.

In the last few years it’s appeared to be a number of fundamental new ways of communication and collaboration. The basis for economic development is the speed the creation and sharing of works, as well as ease of their revision. Often the product is no longer even and complete, but represents a complex of individual results of intellectual activity, which can constantly change. Basically the whole Internet society has become authors. Anyone who was actively using the network, was creating the protected works, often without knowing it. This led to the fact that on the one hand, the amount of available information became enormous – for one day people create more protectable works, than in all of the XIX century. On the other hand, the commercial value of most of the results of intellectual activity is very low and often non-existent. So the value of the potential actions in protecting them are many times bigger than their value. Usually the authors of such works and do not mean that their creations will be protected, but not making efforts to make the public aware of it or allow to use their works for free.

Besides that, the Internet has aggravated the problem of so-called “orphan” works, the search for authors and copyright-holders of which is impossible or requires a lot of effort, so many of these works fall out of the public turnover.

To tighten security is the way to a dead end

The conclusions that seem to be logical – the tightening of the protection requirements and increasing of the control over the content distribution  – do not stand a technical audit and do not meet the capabilities of the control services, as well as they contrary to the way of life of the digital age people. Copyright law definitely needs be changed, and not by bringing the new restrictions, but by a new understanding of it’s principles.

The basic principles of the reform

The basis of a new international convention on copyright should form a realistic and realizable principles, corresponding to the interests of society, protecting the creator law in using the works, and the public’s right of access the culture. Only by following these requirements, the copyright will be respected, and will give the new opportunities for the creativity and social development.

To protect the protected

The state must protect the personal rights of the author (moral and nonproprietary), his proprietary rights of commercial use of his creations, the right of free distribution of works and also the cultural heritage that is in the public domain.

The protection of the creators rights has to distinguish the difference between two kinds of rights – proprietary (commercial disposal) and non-proprietary (personal or moral). Personal rights – in particular the right of name, must be protected independently throughout the duration of protection of copyright. Protection of the right of commercial use is provided to the author by the state as a benefit for a limited period of time. The way of protection should depend on the context of the publication and the way of its use. In particular, the use of the product for personal, nonprofit matters should not be a subject to state regulation or any restriction.

Registration of commercial exploitation of the works

Implementation of these principles is possible through a reference to historical legal experience, which some countries do have – for example a registration of works designed by the authors for the commercial turnover with the financial rewards to them. The use of the product for personal nonprofit use is impossible to control, because you can only monitor the information which is available. To obtain the material rewards the work should be registered. The registration shall be maintained under the control of the state, which thus learns what works should be protected. Perhaps the paid registration may be implemented, similar to any property registration. The implementing of the registration would solve the problem of “orphan” works, would limit the amount of state control, would make the authors make serious decisions regarding their rights, and will lead to the increase of the information in the public domain.

The freedom of using

The authors, who wish to establish the conditions for distribution of the works, can express their wishes in the form of a free public license. Free licenses for the works, do not imply any material reward for the author and do not require a formal registration, they are recognized and protected by the state. The works in relation to which the authors have not expressed their will in a free public license, or have not registered for commercial use will be deemed to have passed into the public domain.

The registration period

Registration of works to be undertaken for a certain period. This period may be 5 years, as proposed by a joint team of the Green Party and the European Free Alliance, or 14 years as offers the well-known expert on copyright Lawrence Lessig. A specific period of registration may be discussed at a new convention on copyright, but it should be fairly short and manageable. The registration itself may be renewed various times, if the author thinks that the commercial exploitation of the work is still relevant.

The deadline for protection

The registration can not be extended indefinitely and should be limited by the deadline for protection. That may be, for example, 20 years from the date of publication or even 50 years after his death (a period specified by the Berne Convention).

The duration of the deadline is the subject of future discussion of specific proposals of the new convention on copyright. However, it is absolutely clear that for the vast majority of the works of art and science embodied in most countries, the period of protection should be reduced – “70 years after his death” in reality means “life inprisonment” for such works.

The limit should depend on the format of the work – the same protection for films, scientific articles, computer programs and comments on blogs, is obviously irrational. In particular, this applies to the scientific texts, whose term of protection is advisible to limit to the bare minimum due to the rapidity of changes taking place in science. This will lead to a more rapid turnover and multiplication of scientific knowledge.

Support of the public domain

The state is obliged to care not only about the interests of authors, but also about the interests of the society, the state has to protect and support the public cultural heritage. According to the principles of a new convention on copyright, public domain sector will be increased by the works which protection period has expired, with works, non-registered for commercial use and for which the authors haven’t expressed their will in the form of free public licenses, as well as works created at the expences of the government.

The state should not allow the reverse transition of the works from the public domain, and should take care of the  public domain sector and provide the access to it in a digital form.

The transitional period 

After the adoption of the Convention the transitional period is required, it should last not more than the registration period. During this period the authors and their heirs  get the  opportunity to register their works for the commercial use, or to dispose them through the public distribution under a free license (if the protection period for the work has not yet exceeded the time limit for protection, approved by the Convention). Otherwise, these works go into the public domain.

“Soviet” warranty

Regardless of the prospects and timing of the Moscow Convention on copyright, as an act of good will and caring for the protection and enhancement of the world public cultural heritage, the Russian Federation may recognize that all the works created in the Soviet Union and which economic rights that are currently disposed to Russian Federation, federal services and municipal authorities, as well as other government agencies, or been disposed at the time of changing the form of government, should go into the public domain. In addition, in case that the protection period has expired the work can also be transfered into the public domain.

Association of Internet Publishers, Wikimedia Russia and the group of experts

The reason (c)opyright was invented was to restrict others from creating an object similar to yours. It was a way of giving creators protection and time for distribution of the creations. This system worked good when there was a very limited number of creations and distribution was slow but it’s a broken system now. In the information age we live in today most copyright act to restrict creativity by not allowing alterations or being too closely inspired by something.

A copyright seals the creative flow after the creator is finished with the work. The creative process is considered done and no further alterations should be made. The viewer of the creation is meant to only admire it. Copyright can be compared to a one-way monologue.

Objects without copyright can be considered finished as well but most of the time they’re seen as a “work in progress”. The viewer is able to interact and have a “dialogue” if they wish, taking the basic idea and altering it into something new. This new creation can in turn inspire to even more “dialogues” from new viewers.

One example on how this is detrimental to the creative process can be seen if we look at the area of culture which is supposed to be very creative and inspiring. First of all the word ‘culture’ today often excludes a lot of original creations. Something on the wrong side of the norm is often called “play”, sub-culture and sometimes even vandalism. It’s seen as something that doesn’t qualify to be called ‘culture’ and most of the time no value is put on it. If several contributors are involved it further complicates it by making a fuzzy line between the creator and the viewer of the work. Where does the work end and can it change from viewer to viewer?

Artists working full time with creating ‘culture’ are often dependent on a certain sustenance coming from the art which might restrict them from taking “too wide” artistic liberties. Someone not dependent in the same way of the outcome of the piece is more “creatively free” and able to take more liberties. Culture should not be considered an end to a creation (enforcing a monologue with the viewer because of a copyright applied)!

[pic: CC-BY-NC-ND ,CyberCraft Robots]

So why is this kind of cooperation important for the future of the Internet?

The Internet as we know it today is starting to change.  There is more pressure on ISPs to take responsibility for what their customers are doing. The ‘Mere Conduit’ principle (don’t blame the messenger) no longer seems to apply.

The US government doesn’t see a problem at all and thinks it’s good that the messengers (ISPs) start working together with the entertainment industry. One of the approaches the entertainment industry has imposed on ISPs is the ‘three strikes law‘ that has been passed in France, New Zealand and UK. It is putting a heavier responsibility on the ISPs to monitor their users to see what they’re doing and this sometimes goes very wrong. In Italy an ‘Internet kill act’ was proposed that would put demands on ISPs to censor big parts of the internet. Whenever someone discusses or uses copyrighted material they had not been allowed to talk about the ISPs would have to censure this. It would be a way ,“to reduce in silence those who express themselves on the Internet.”

Despite  all these aspects of the deteriorating Internet there are some forces fighting against this. 40 countries signed a statement condemning the three strikes law. US is funding a censor-evading internet project and in the Netherlands they understand that Net Neutrality is important enough to create laws to maintain.

At ‘la Notte della Rete’ (that I wrote about earlier) Stallman described his proposal for supporting artists in a better way than our current system. One of his solutions  was a system that works when “each player has a button you can push and it sends one euro anonymously to the artist”. This sounds very similar to how Flattr works. The Swedish ISP, Bredbandsbolaget, took an active stance for supporting artists through Flattr by their give-away of Flattr accounts. This initiative is something I think more ISPs should take. Supporting a new way of dealing with the current system. The alternative to ISPs not taking an active stance for more creativity and content on the net is defending themselves against veiled threats from the entertainment industry. The copyright system today is obviously broken. The entertainment industry will keep holding onto their old models of business, as long as they make a good profit, with the help of lobbying laws and regulations restricting creativity and freedom on the net.

I hope more ISPs decide to take an active stance in the support for a more free and creative Internet.

The proposal threatens to censor the free flow of ideas and information over the net. It would slow down innovation and creativity, the opposite of why copyright was created in the past. A censorship that threatens to silence the web as a meeting place, “to reduce in silence those who express themselves on the Internet.”

People have rallied around defending the freedom of the net. Bloggers, politicians, artists and activists have gathered together. It is a time for confronting the present and the future of democracy and participation in their country. A petition against this has been on avaaz.org and already gathered more than 210.000 signatures. The live stream was sent a few hours ago and collected many well know persons holding their small speeches. The only one speaking in English was Richard Stallman, founder of the the Free Software Foundation, who was holding a speech over distance.

To follow the progress of this you can follow the twitter hashtags: #notterete and #nowebcensure
You can see a recorded copy of the stream for the night. Here’s a transcription I did of Richard Stallman’s part (starts at 2h 13min until 2hr 18mins). My favorite parts is where he describes one of his solutions for dealing with the “piracy” problem: “if each player has a button you can push, and it sends one euro anonymously to the artist” <- Sounds like Flattr to me

I’m very happy, that people have come to protest this unjust regulation
this means that they can no longer impose injustice on internet users quietly
of course you are here because you understand why this law is unjust
it’s censorship, censorship is always evil
but even worse, it’s censorship without trial

the people doing this are prepared to attack the most basic idea of justice to get their way
but why are they doing this, what’s their purpose?
they are doing something evil because their purpose is evil
they want to stop people from sharing
the reason is, they and the state, do not work for the people, do not work for the citizens
they work for companies
they are governments of occupation in the empire of the mega-corporations
you can see this in every area of life
in this area the corporations that have the power are the movie companies, the record companies, the publishers
and they want to stop you from sharing
that’s why they use propaganda terms like ‘pirates’
what does it mean when they call the people who share pirates?
it means they are trying to equate helping other people with attacking ships
this is absurd and morally it’s as wrong as anything could be
because sharing is good
but attacking ships is very bad
so we shouldn’t call them by the same word

when they say there is a big problem of piracy we should say yes but it’s in Somalia
when people ask me, my opinion of piracy. I say: attacking ships is very bad.
when they ask what I think of music piracy
I say: from what I’ve read when pirates attack they don’t do it by playing instruments loud and badly
rather than use arms
so it’s not music piracy
that is, their piracy is not music piracy it’s just piracy
the point is, when they say there’s a big problem of piracy and if we don’t solve it with this injustice how else should we solve it
we should respond, there is no such problem, it’s not a problem, it’s good that people are sharing
but I didn’t say contents I don’t… [note: the speech was translated line-by-line to Italian. The translator used the Italian word  contenuti and Stallman didn't like this translation]we’re talking about works here not contenuti [Italian for 'contents']
because contenuti are important things that we admire. we shouldn’t pretend they are just there to fill up a box
the publishing companies don’t care about these works they only care about the money they are going to get from the works
so they call these things contents
they don’t care what’s in the box as long as the box is full
but if we care about music, if we care about books, if we care about these works of authorship then we shouldn’t call them continuity

and we should look for ways to support the artists
the existing copyright system does a very bad job of supporting artists
the publishers they say: we have to stop people from sharing because they are taking money from the artists
but really it’s the publishers that are taking the money from the artists
the existing system supports stars well, supports other artists very badly, but is really great for supporting publishers
so I’ve proposed other methods to support artists better

for instance, we could collect a fee from every internet subscriber and divide this money among artists
only artists
not the companies
and we could divide it based on the cube root of the popularity of each artist
why the cube root, because this way we shift the money from the stars to the many artists of middle-level popularity
this system would support artists much better using less money
and it’s compatible with sharing, with this system we can legalize sharing
another suggestion of mine is if each player has a button you can push
and it sends one euro anonymously to the artist
either of these systems would work better to support the artists than the current system which is mainly for support the publishers who impose unjust laws upon us

now the same companies that commanded this injustice will and have done other injustices
for instance they design software to restrict the user
they put in digital hand-cuffs
these are features designed to restrict the user
how can they do this, it’s because the software is not ‘libero’
with software either the users control the program, or the program controls the users
with free software, software libero, the users control the program
with proprietary software, software soggiogante [Italian for "subduing/subjugating/enslaving"], the software controls the users
so if we want our software not to be turned into our jailer we must insist on free software only
Windows has digital hand-cuffs
Macintosh has digital hand-cuffs
the iPhone and the iPad have digital hand-cuffs
Flash player has digital hand-cuffs
the Amazon Kindle has digital hand-cuffs
so you can see how widespread this form of evil has become, we must escape from non-free software
for more information look at gnu.org
and also Free Software Foundation Europe, that is fsfe.org
thank you very much

-Richard Stallman

 

Help with Errata in transcription: Francesco ORLANDO – ASSOPROVIDER
Sorry about the missed spaces between some punctuations, WordPress is not working with me right now…
Pic: CC-BY-NC-SA, isotype75

A visualization of the state of pirate parties in the world today. This is my representation of the ones I found active. The original pirate party was the Swedish one but now it has been “copied” to another 37 countries. Hungary is a bit special with their pirate party, working actively as a lobby organization inside the political party LMP who has some seats in the parliament already.

To find out more about the movement take a look at Pirate Parties International or sign up to the global newsletter for pirate parties.

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Comments/feedback? Twitter: @collentine

update: Yesterday (Tuesday) there were a lot of people taking part in the peaceful demonstration. We formed a large circle and allowed one person at the time to speak through a megaphone. I’m bad at approximations but we might have been around 1000 persons at the square. Around 150 of them spent the night there, sleeping in the square, playing music and discussing. Several of the mayor newspaper had #spanishrevolution as one of their main news today.

A few words about the situation on Monday night from one of the persons taking part in the protests:

 

Hi there,

I was camping last night at Barcelona until 05:15AM, and then back home to write the act of the 4AM organization Assembly…

Last sunday we had protests for a true Democracy all across Spain (58 cities). More than 100.000 young people claimed for transparency, citizen participation, no more social cuts, etc.

After Sunday’s protest, 50 people camped in a square in the heart of Madrid. Yesterday, Monday 12 other cities were added to the camping protest.

The peak hour was 11:00PM, when there were 2.000 people in Madrid and other 200 in Barcelona.

In Barcelona there were 80 people camping in Plaça Catalunya (Barcelona’s central square) last night, and lots more are expected today. We have organized people in different teams to make this work smoothly.

There are Catalan pirates in all these social movements (from malestar.org,DemocraciaRealYA, #nolesvotes) and the camping protest itself. I could also see one ofPartido Pirata Madrid’s candidates, second on row, in one of the protest videos and looks like I appear in two out of the three biggest newspapers (I am the 2nd candidate in Barcelona as well  ).

We are using piratenpad teams (thanks to PiratenPartei!), Mumble, IRC, Facebook groups, Doodle, Twitter, a simple polling application but with advanced anti-fraud non-registered-user poll system (developed by Pirates de Catalunya’s CTO), etc. We use whatever tools necessary to deliver information and help in the organization and decision-making.

Catalan Pirates had been trying to engage IT usage in social movements, so we can take advantage of these resources to build flat organizations.

There was up to 50 policemen and a cleaning team at the square, but we could stop them pushing us away by showing our good faith, self-organization and with lots of legal stuff to bypass the law:

• we are not camping, we are sitting down
• we are not an illegal protest. We are just in groups of 19, so, below 20 this is not an illegal concentration.
• we aren’t sleeping on the street, we just lay around…
• and so on.

There are 3 informal shifts to keep the place full of people (80-90% not sleeping the whole night).

Madrid was pushed away around 5:30AM, however, they surely plan to camp somewhere else. They were 300 people staying and there’s protest running in front of the Spanish embassy in London.

Legal teams are working to bypass the laws in Spain and keep the protests running. We can’t use tents because it could be identified as “illegal camping”, you can’t make fire, you can’t drink alcohol on streets, you can’t stay in groups of more than 19…

This protest depends on good weather, luckily this is happening in Spain, and we have more than 225 sunny days a year 

Spread it away and keep #spanishrevolution as world wide trending topic  It’s really cool to be part of a R-evolution, who’s next?

Talk Soon!

–

Kenneth Peiruza

Pirates de Catalunya spokesman

http://pirata.cat

 

 

This is a blog post to support blogger Mark Makhoul that posted an honest review of his experience of the newly opened Benihana restaurant and was met with a legal threat. Once Benihana found out about the critical blog post they decided to sue Mark for it. There is a movement amongst Arabic bloggers to re-post this blog post in order to show support but maybe we can show that the support extends also beyond the Arabic blogosphere?

Mark Makhoul’s blog post: My Benihana experience

A few days back I posted about Benihana opening up at the Avenues and yesterday night I decided to pass by with Nat and try it out. The service wasn’t too bad for a restaurant that’s just been open for a few days and the staff were really friendly. The restaurant itself is made up of islands and bars with a grill in the middle of each one. You sit around the grill and the chef will come to your table and prepare the food right in front of you which makes things entertaining. It’s actually why I prefer sitting at the bar in Japanese restaurants in general, since you can talk to the chef and watch them put your dish together. The problem with my experience last night though was with the food, it was disappointing to say the least.

We ordered beef negimayaki for starters followed by an Orange Blossom maki and a Hibachi Chicken. The negimaki arrived looking good and was probably the best thing we had there even though I prefer Maki’s negimaki which has a richer teriyaki sauce. The Orange Blossom was very ordinary, wouldn’t order it again. Now the Hibachi chicken which is basically grilled chicken, that was the worst. The chicken was very chewy (I could swear it was undercooked if not raw) and tasted terrible. Even after I had the chef add some more teriyaki sauce in hopes of improving the taste it didn’t work. I tried to dip it into the sauces that came with the chicken but it was hard to figure out if they were actually making things worse or not. Nat only ate one piece of chicken and left the rest while I needed my protein since I’m on a strict diet and forced myself to eat my whole plate (I can do that) but the after taste was really bad. Even the rice and the veggies that came with it tasted bad AND were under cooked. Once we left I considered picking up a frozen yogurt from Pinkberry even though I hate frozen yogurts but I just needed something to get rid of the aftertaste. A few moments later we ended up at Chocolate Bar ordering the gooey chocolate cake (bye bye diet).

I shot the two videos above of the chef preparing our meal. Benihana are known for the live shows they perform when preparing your dish so I was expecting to see [This] but ended up with the above . Would I go back to Benihana? No I wouldn’t. Their sashimi and maki’s are pretty cheap (KD1.5 for 5 pieces of Salmon sashimi for example) but there are two other Japanese restaurants at the Avenues, Wasabi and Maki, and I would prefer either one of those to Benihana.

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Update: Comments have been closed.

Update2: If you read the comments below you will see that the Benihana GM Mike Servo threatened to sue me. Well, Benihana have actually gone ahead with the lawsuit, I got served my papers and my court date is in March. I have been receiving a lot of support from people via twitter, email and blogs. For now my lawyer has advised me not to discuss the case or talk about Benihana, but as soon as he gives me the go ahead I will be sharing all the details.

Update3: I’ve been given the go ahead by my lawyer to talk about the case, here is the court order and more details regarding the lawsuit [Link]

Update4: The amount of support I have been receiving is phenomenal, here is a link to the full media coverage the subject has received so far [Link]

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The response from the general manager at the restaurant:

Dear Mr. Mark,

We are from Benihana management of Kuwait; my name is Mike Servo the GM of the Company .

Thank You for visiting us in our restaurant and dining in with your wife .I had found your comments and in your web site on Benihana. I also found it out that our rights and name is being used in a wrong way and broadcasting the video without a proper consent from us is really annoying specially Benihana is just opened up its doors to the public.

We are seeking and consulting our legal dept. on how we can form a type of law suit against your website to be brought up to the Kuwait authorities.

We respect opinion, but we see it in a way that Benihana name have been destroyed and abused on your website. We are eager to know your name and meet you personally if you don’t have anything to hide.

You mentioned clearly on a detour way on not to go to Benihana and go to Maki or Wasabi or Chocolate Bar and we believe that this is against the law of Kuwait, We respect our rights on not to advertise in your website and if we don’t, this will not mean that we will be hurt by your side and if this done, the court in Kuwait will be in our side to give us our rights. to make this conversation short . We want you to give us your information, your name, your number and your address so our lawyer will take it from there and be sure that you in Kuwait were the jury is
100 % clean and fair.

We also expect that you might be sending people to Benihana to make a play and that is why we have informed the CID about that, In the past we encountered your add in Subway and it is one of our companies franchise, we really didn’t give it any attention, and it very clear now that Subway is an elephant while other competitors are closing down, however this time we will not let it go and we will follow you legally.

This is the last comment from my side and LPRC side; we wish that you will be free to give us your info. BTW are you Lebanese? Thank for your concern and we have that you are brave to give us your info and we will meet in court soon.

Salute, Mike Servo

–End of mail

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If you want to support Mark Makhoul and bloggers right for free speech then re-post his blog-post on your own blog.

The Pirate Party UK

The Pirate Party UK was officially registered on 30 July 2009. In the UK they have no formal requirements of signatures but each political party requires a person that is legally responsible for what the political party does and prints. In the political arena they are considered to be a single-issue party despite having three main issues they focus on (just like in Sweden). Their main focus lies on the three areas of “reforming copyright and patent law”, “ending the excessive surveillance” and “ensuring real freedom of speech”.

Organization

The Pirate Party UK consists of an elected National Executive Committee which handles the administrative aspects as well as legal requirements and general guidance. Below them they have a Board of Governors consisting of 12 persons responsible for “proposing amendments to the Party’s constitution”. There is also a Press Office to get more media attention for the party. On a more local level they have Regional Administrative Officers (RAOs) that are responsible for local activity of the party. They have some international relations (mainly through the Pirate Parties International secretary who is Brittish) but Daniel stresses that each country is very different with their own political system.

At it’s peak the party consisted of about 900 members but currently they are around 450 members according to Daniel. Currently there is a membership fee of £12 (£3 for under 21) that is used for covering the £500 required to participate in national elections and other administrative costs. The communication within the party happens on skype, irc, forums, the official blog and they also have a blog that aggregates blog posts called The Pirate Ship (similar to Swedish live.piratpartiet.se). The Pirate Party UK is currently preparing for the regional and local elections of 2011.

London

Daniel Hertz was elected RAO for London only last Monday and have yet to hold a meeting in his new position (one coming up on Feb 12th). Despite London being such a large media capital the membership in London is meager and this is something Daniel aims to change. Currently the core group in London only consists of about 15 persons (with more people behind supporting but not as actively). After the national elections the activity went down a bit and there hasn’t been a RAO in London for a few months before Daniel was elected. Daniel says he mainly wants to focus on “small things to get things going” (e.g. beer mats, billboards and of course activity). Another thing he finds very important is watching the parliament bills closer since they often seem to “hide away bills”. Daniel can be reached on Twitter by @monkeyjelly if you want to wish him good luck with his new position as RAO for London!

[pic: CC-BY-NC, andy broomfield]

Today the free WiFi spots are few and far between. Most frequently found in coffee houses behind a password accessible only to guests. With the cost of broadband decreasing and the speed quickly increasing we most of the time have much more than needed. The only time we use our connection fully is when downloading something big, the rest of the time we have a lot of unused capacity on our WiFi.

Whilst I was living in Jönköping I chose to share my WiFi by leaving it open to whomever wanted to connect. I planned to put a password on it if I noticed the connection slowing too much but that never happened. Sharing my WiFi probably helped someone that needed it and made me feel better since I was helping out.

The main disadvantage with sharing your WiFi freely would be if too many connected or someone started downloading something big slowing your internet down too much. An easy fix to this problem would be to create a program monitoring who connects and how much traffic they use on your WiFi. This probably exists today but needs to get simpler so even amateurs can manage it. With this program the WiFi owner would be able to disconnect or limit people from using too much of their WiFi. Having these “unstable” WiFi’s where you risked being disconnected by the owner at any given time would create a good incentive to get your own WiFi that you controlled. [Guess there are some more disadvantages relating to scammers and hackers related to leaving a WiFi open but I don't know the technical implications of this...]

Their has been a few bigger or smaller projects on providing city-wide access to WiFi. Seattle did a project for part of their city and found that business transactions increased. San Francisco tried to get a citywide WiFi with the help of Earthlink and Google but the funds were not there to make it happen. Afterwards the private company Meraki (who sells routers and wireless equipment) started “Free the Net” which was a grassroot campaign to sell and help citizens build up a wireless mesh over SF. They report that they planned to have most of the city covered at the end of 2010

Wireless Cities
A city that had it’s citizens distribute wireless internet over the entire city would benefit greatly. It would be easier to move around and still be able to work wherever you wanted. This would increase the number of people with mobile offices and also make people move around more freely. For tourists and temporary visitors it would also be a lot easier since it would be easy for them to connect and look up information through their phones or laptop when needed. Getting people more flexible and productive would increase consumption in cities. This would thereby lead to an increased revenue and effectiveness in many places.

[pic: CC-BY-NC-SA, xiaming]