nettime FW: [SummerSource-L] Jonathan Peizer on (FL)OSS and non-profits.
-Original Message- from: Volodymyr Vorobey sent: Sunday, September 14, 2003 10:01 PM to: Patrice Riemens; Akhundov, Emin A. cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] subject: RE: [SummerSource-L] Jonathan Peizer on (FL)OSS and non-profits. Dear Patrice and all, It was incredibly interesting to read article of Jonathan, thank you, Patrice for sharing it. I could not resist temptation to share my thoughts on it. Those of you who did not read the article, just ignore this mail. Many thoughts from Jonathan's article are absolutely the same I have been trying to verbalize during last 2 years of my life. Organisation I have been working for, AIESEC International www.aiesec.org, world's largest student organization, is deploying communities system www.aiesec.net based on Open Source software/platform OpenACS and I got the chance to start learning about ups and downs of F/OSS from scratch. We have been talking a lot at Vis camp and not only there about the cost effectiveness of F/OSS but what we have faced in AIESEC was lack of technology support that sometimes far outreached budgeting advantages of F/OSS deployment. It is one thing to learn how to install and use Linux distribution, open source graphic desctops and graphic applications (that I successfully learned at Vis Camp) and totally different thing when you need to utilize collaboration tools and applications based on F/OSS. Just a sample list of syndroms that were impeeding smooth implementation of our internal communities sysetm: Lack of training materials regadring F/OSS; Lack of expertise within NGO (basically no expertise to put it straight) in regards to specifications writing; Different terminology used by developers and NGO implementers (and a lot of confusion caused by this); Eternal problem of communication - Tell me what I need and I develop it vs. Tell me what you can and I will tell you if I need it; Different personal agendas of leaders within same NGO and accordingly different priorities in modules development; No undestanding by NGO leaders F/OSS systems/platforms development process and no insight into NGO Change Process by developers (no anticipation/forecast of future changes in technology and NGO needs/user requirements); No clarity on pricing on new code development (sometimes code is already there, sometimes it needs to be developed by pricing depends on what is already available and what needs to be developed - something extremely weird and complex for an average NGO staff member who need to know price and that's it) that causes frustration in NGO activities planning; Lack of insight by NGO into developers' community priorities and modules soon-to-be-released and problems from developers' side in communicating these developments in non-geek terms; Low level of understanding by NGO leaders mechanisms by which code is being developed in OpenACS that creates multiple puzzles for NGO staff members working with the system development; No support in regards to long-term budgeting and planning of NGO systems from developer's side and no knowledge within developers community in this respect to rely upon; User education as irritating factor in using and developing software (NGO des not have HR capacity of doing it while developing organization cannot physically do this - no direct interactioni with users), - floods of help requests from users who simply do not know how to use Internet; This list can go and on and it would be perhaps beneficial for the sake of further F/OSS community development to continue compiling this list based on case studies, but points are the same as Jonathan put it in his article - F/OSS has troubles in regards to technology support, NGOs have troubles in defining technology support they need, no capacity at NGO side and lack of service on developers side, no guarantee that there will be broad enough pool of developers supporting the technology over the time. Suprisingly, many NGOs does not know or care about this time bomb just because they do not know about its existance and/or they have other immidiate proirities in regards to their system (see list above). Quite often software development process resembles non-stop fire fighting with both NGO people and developers being totally exhausted at the end of the extinquishing process. I do not know where solution lies although I picked some ideas during the camp. In my opinion, it would take years and years of pain-staking collaboration between NGOs and developers until after the best mode of collaboration would be defnied. And this is extremely individual process. Many NGOs, especially big ones, have already created their systems or at least planned/thought about them, many of them opted for F/OSS. There is already choise made in favour of this or other platform/system/software NGOs are using. It would be extremely hard and, not least important, expensive, for NGOs to move from one
nettime ars electronica 2003
Ars Electronica 2003 The Festival, History and Context To understand this years Ars Electronica it is important to look back at the history of the festival and also to consider the local context. In last years Issue of Mute Magazine I wrote: Ars Electronica is one of the, if not the oldest and biggest festivals for electronic art worldwide. It was launched in 1979 and led a relatively marginal existence until the late nineteen eighties. With the introduction of the Prix Ars Electronica (since 1987), organised by the local branch of the ORF (Austrian National Broadcast Corporation) and the building of the Ars Electronica Center (completed in 1996), it was given a permanent home and organisational base, and gained international influence and reputation through the relatively well endowed 'Prix'. The city of Linz where the festival is held on an annual basis has transformed itself since the launch of the festival from a center of steel and chemical production towards a digital service economy. Even so the festival was once much smaller it has never gone through an 'underground' phase. From the very beginning it has been conceived, prepared and implemented by a local triad of godfathers from the ORF, local politics and arts. It is now considered as an exemplary success story. This was illustrated by the opening speeches of the mayor of Linz and the governer of the region Upper Austria, who stressed the importance of the festival for the transformation of town and region, giving it, in their words a headstart in the global information economy. (Mute Magazine, Nov.2002) That said, the festival has of course also another function: providing a focus for a worldwide community of artists and theorists in the area of art and new media. Over time AE has acquired a certain taste, a mix of quite distinct directions and constituencies. Those directions that sometimes seem to contradict or even oppose each other are played out on different platforms within the festival. - high-tech: the organisers have always been keen to get the high- tech sectors of the technologically most developed nations involved, notably the USA and Japan; this is reflected in the fact that the Prix Ars Electronica's 'Golden Nicas' have often been given to mainstream Hollywood productions such as Toy Stories; three years ago the completely non-artistic product Linux won a Golden Nica in the category 'net'. While other categories have changed over time the category computer animation remains unchallenged. This year the Golden Nica went to the American animation company Blue Skyes Inc. This emphasis on high-tech secures the faithfulness of a certain constituency, represented by people such as the famous 'blogger' and entrepreneur Joichi Ito who comes every year and did so too this time. - high-end, high-tech art: AE pioneered the showcasing of the large scale interactive computer art installation. In the past this required the use of high-end machines such as the Silicon Graphics Onyx computer. Artists like Jeffrey Shaw used to work with whole teams of software engineers to realize their ideas. Similar work can now be realized with much cheaper hardware. Open Source software has enabled artists to gain the necessary programming skills themselves. But the genre itself has conceptually not changed that much. The Austrian artist couple Moswitzer/Jahrmann showed The Nibble Engine, an interactive 3D world that visualizes network commands; the whole work has been designed and programmed by the artists. similar in scale of installation and even more demanding in regard of necessary programming effort is George Legrady's Pockets Full of Memories. Three different computer science research departments were involved in programming this work. The artist works more like a movie director, organising the resources and managing teams of contributors. The exhibition that goes with the Prix Ars continues to be a forum for this type of work. Whereas Moswitzer/Jahrmann's and Legrady's work have a lot to be said for other works of that genre simply tend towards high-tech-kitsch, displaying a deep lack of taste and engagement with art history. Some of this work seems to be better placed on a high-tech fair ground than in an arts context. (The 'Play' Zone in the Millennium Dome exhibition in 2000 showed a number of works which had been premiered at AE.) - young, cutting edge and cheap: since Gerfried Stocker became the artistic director of AE in 1996 the so called 'electrolobby' has been the meeting place for a younger generation of artists which emerged together with the rise of the internet and is intricately involved with the languages, aesthetics and politics of code and the net. These artists often present the most cutting edge developments. Their works are sometimes difficult to be exhibited in any gallery- like situation. The electrolobby solves this problem by having an exhibition
nettime CyberINsecurity: The Cost of Monopoly
http://www.ccianet.org/papers/cyberinsecurity.pdf CyberINsecurity: The Cost of Monopoly How the Dominance of Microsoft's Products Poses a Risk to Security [From the introduction:] Computing is crucial to the infrastructure of advanced countries. Yet, as fast as the world's computing infrastructure is growing, security vulnerabilities within it are growing faster still. The security situation is deteriorating, and that deterioration compounds when nearly all computers in the hands of end users rely on a single operating system subject to the same vulnerabilities the world over. Most of the world's computers run Microsoft's operating systems, thus most of the world's computers are vulnerable to the same viruses and worms at the same time. The only way to stop this is to avoid monoculture in computer operating systems, and for reasons just as reasonable and obvious as avoiding monoculture in farming. Microsoft exacerbates this problem via a wide range of practices that lock users to its platform. The impact on security of this lock-in is real and endangers society. Because Microsoft's near-monopoly status itself magnifies security risk, it is essential that society become less dependent on a single operating system from a single vendor if our critical infrastructure is not to be disrupted in a single blow. The goal must be to break the monoculture. Efforts by Microsoft to improve security will fail if their side effect is to increase user-level lock-in. Microsoft must not be allowed to impose new restrictions on its customers - imposed in the way only a monopoly can do - and then claim that such exercise of monopoly power is somehow a solution to the security problems inherent in its products. The prevalence of security flaw in Microsoft's products is an effect of monopoly power; it must not be allowed to become a reinforcer. Governments must set an example with their own internal policies and with the regulations they impose on industries critical to their societies. They must confront the security effects of monopoly and acknowledge that competition policy is entangled with security policy from this point forward. [snip] -- Dave Mandl [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.wfmu.org/~davem # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: nettime Don't Call it Art: Ars Electronica 2003
[admin note: this message was caught in nettime's spamfilter and delayed. it shouldn't have happened, but it did. sorry.] Am Montag, 22. September 2003 um 23:25:41 Uhr (+0200) schrieb august: First of all, something that had been addressed many times at this years README festival, especially by the curators themselves, was that a certain kind of drive hides behind this push towards software art. Some may call it an agenda. Strangely enough the push is coming more from curators and writers (most of which have no or little programming experience) rather than from the practicing artists. Being one of the read_me/runme.org experts (and ae speakers) myself, I agree that the term software art is a coinage of curators and critics. But I don't think that's a bad thing at all; all the more since it was a reaction to a clear, observable trend towards working not only with, but on software in digital/net art. The earliest literal mention of software art I know of is in Alex Galloway's 1999 writeup Year in Review: State of net.art 99 http://switch.sjsu.edu/web/v5n3/D-1.html: Software art is not new. Ever since a collective of British outlaw artists wrote the code for I/O/D 4--a carnivorous browsing application known as the Webstalker--artists have been twisting and tweaking the very tools we use to surf the web. Yet with artist/programmer Maciej Wisniewski's Netomat (www.netomat.net), which premiered earlier this summer at New York's Postmasters Gallery, we see a new level of intensity, a new commitment to coding. Saul Albert's longer essay Artware http://twenteenthcentury.com/saul/artware.htm, which appeared in the same year, draws even more elaborate connections between early concept art, software by artists like John Simon and Mongrel, hacker culture and Free Software. In 2000, Andreas Broeckmann created a software category for the transmediale festival as a consequence of his own observations which were similar to the above. But, Judd was writing his own critiques, wasn't he? I didn't see a history of art-categorism in Manovich's text. Maybe that is part of the larger context to which he is alluding? What I don't understand in Lev's text is his argument that software art was not contemporary art just because contemporary art wouldn't support art that is bound to specific media (or material). My own perception of contemporary art as it can be seen in galleries, art fairs, museum exhibitions and art journals is quite different: It seems to roughly fall into two categories, which themselves are strongly bound to specific media: (a) large-size painting and photography for private collectors, (b) installation art (often involving video) by and for academics trained in cultural studies. No contemporary art system is agnostic to media/material for the simple reason that it needs artwork that fits its into particular exhibition architecture and economical framework (and that applies to an exhibition like Documenta just as to ars electronica). My personal reason to care for software art and other digital arts at all is not that it is software or digital, but that there is remarkable contemporary art being made in its realms. But, maybe the question is whether art is soft? By that, I mean after a slow and consistent breakdown over the last 100 years of paintings on walls and sculptures on pedistals down to installations in space and concepts at large, wouldn't it be relatively easy (and maybe naive) to construct softer borders between categories of art. 'New Media' was once called intermedia or integrated media, wasn't it? Besides that, Sol Lewitt was making software art long ago, nay? I see one important difference between early conceptual art and contemporary software art in that the former strived, as Lucy Lippard called it, for dematerialization and, where it actually used the term software (such in Jack Burnhams 1970s exhibition of the same name or in the Radical Software magazine), understood it as a puristic intellectual laboratory construct. In contrast, contemporary software art treats software as an unclean material (involving bugs, crashes, incompatibities) which is not purely syntactical, but loaded with cultural semantics, aesthetic associations and even politics; experimental web browsers and and game modifications are cheap, but still good examples. Another understanding at README seemed to be that software is becoming more and more entrenched in our daily lives, and that it is quite 'natural' that this mixture of art and software should come about. Yes, and I see this viewpoint embedded into the contemporary software art itself. really aiming at situating both software and art in larger contexts. With CODE as its title, it _appears_ as if the Ars wanted to address art and software and culture and societyand on and on., which would be a positive step away from a software art label. The problem, as it also turned out at the ars electronica
Re: nettime Threat Matrix: Early Snapshot of the Propaganda War
Cutting edge chutzpah! This one jumped the shark while coming out of the starting gate. It's even been vaccinated against accusations of racism, by having a couple of Arab-Americans on the good guys's side. I'm waiting for the secret plot by Old Europeans, assisted by our old friends the Bilderbergers and the Gnomes of Zurich, to drive down the dollar in favor of the Euro. Soon America will fall into our hands like an overripe fruit! Everybody will be forced to drive little girly cars and pay $0.50 to use public bathroom. Muhuhahaha! On the other hand, you Americans can smoke again! Early returns show they managed to make nuclear terror and freelance biowarfare boring. HSA agents teleporting around the globe like Sydney Bristow in Alias is the least of its improbabilities. Like Cain's Hundred, it'll be lucky to bag a dozen baddies before the axe falls. Too boring even to download for a cheap laugh. Threat Matrix defeats Ebola but succumbs to Friends and Survivor: http://www.suntimes.com/output/rosenthal/cst-ftr-phil18.html Most newspapers say it's crap. As does disinformation: http://www.disinfo.com/site/displayarticle602.html Here's a funny review I lifted from http://www.numskullery.com/: THREAT MATRIX: RELOADED Well, I tried to watch Threat Matrix, but sadly I didn't make it through 30 minutes of the thing. It's just lame. For a bunch of national security experts they sure do spend a lot of time explaining all the gear and procedures to each other. People, people, they are better ways to explain stuff to the audience. This show could really take some pointers from Alias, CSI, Law Order, and 24. Threat Matrix handles threats to national security with all the urgency of swinging in a hammock while drinking a beer. These guys looked downright bored sometimes. Ugh. After watching just 30 minutes of this lame-ass yawnfest, I have to consider the TV Guide my own personal Threat Matrix brief. But here's something I bet you didn't know: The terror alert advisory is actually based on the General Mill's cereal Trix. Whichever piece is left in the President's cereal bowl after breakfast is what color the threat advisory is for the day. Posted by chris at 09:50 PM | Comments (4) ments (4) For a non-PC equivalent, rent Wanted: Dead Or Alive, the mid-80s movie with Rutgar Hauer as bounty hunter Josh Randall III. The Arab villain Malik Shah is played by the non-Arab Gene Simmons, former lead singer of '70s mega-rock group KISS, and he plans to gas Los Angeles, Bhopal-style, infiltrating the chemical plant like Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. The plan is foiled, pretty much like it was for the Forty Thieves. Carl I spell *my* name DANGER -- Games are very educational. Scrabble teaches us vocabulary, Monopoly teaches us cash-flow management, and DD teaches us to loot the bodies. -- Steve Jackson # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
nettime European Parliament Decision against Software Patentability
The discussion on software patents in the EU parliament in Strasbourg has triggered one of the most substantive political manifestations of the Open Source / Free Software communities in Europe to date. In Vienna, for example, there was a demonstration in front of the patent office, with a surprisingly large turnout, 300 people [1] (very few software artists, though). In other cities the story was similar [2]. These, and many other, initiatives had some success and positive last-minute admendments were introduced. Apparently, most members of parliament were rather surprised by the level of public response, as they thought this to be an uncontroversial technicality, which was how it was presented to them by the industry. Below is an evaluation of the new patent directive in Europe. As usual, there is quite a bit of uncertainty as to how it is going to be implemented. Felix [1] http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/InfoStandVienna [2] http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/InfoStands -- Forwarded Message -- Subject: [ffii] EP Decision against Software Patentability Date: Thursday 25 September 2003 09:05 From: Hartmut Pilch [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] FFII News -- For Immediate Release -- Please Redistribute +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ EU Parliament Votes for Real Limits on Patentability Strasburg 2003/09/24 For immediate Release In its plenary vote on the 24th of September, the European Parliament approved the proposed directive on patentability of computer-implemented inventions with amendments that clearly restate the non-patentability of programming and business logic, and uphold freedom of publication and interoperation. * [9]Backgrounds * [10]Media Contacts * [11]About the FFII -- www.ffii.org * [12]About the Eurolinux Alliance -- www.eurolinux.org * [13]Permanent URL of this Press Release * [14]Annotated Links Backgrounds The day before the vote, CEC Commissioner Bolkestein had [15]threatened that the Commission and the Council would withdraw the directive proposal and hand the questions back to the national patent administrators on the board of the European Patent Office (EPO), should the Parliament vote for the amendments which it supported today. It remains to be seen, whether the European Commission is committed to harmonisation and clarification or only to patent owner interests, says Hartmut Pilch, president of FFII. This is now our directive too. We must help the European Parliament defend it. The directive text as amended by the European Parliament is unbelievably good! I couldn't believe it as I was posting it article by article to the Slashdot story. It just gets better and better, and it hangs together incredibly cohesively. I think we have done something amazing this week exclaimed James Heald, a member of the FFII/Eurolinux software patent working group, as he put together the voted amendments into a [16]consolidated version. With the new provisions of article 2, a computer-implemented invention is no longer a trojan horse, but a washing machine, explains Erik Josefsson from SSLUG and FFII, who has been advising Swedish MEPs on the directive in recent weeks. That the majorities for the voted amendments had support from very different political groups - this reflects the arduous political discussion that had led to two postponements before. However, when 78 amendments are voted in 40 minutes some glitches are bound to happen: The recitals were not amended thouroughly. One of them still claims algorithms to be patentable when they solve a technical problem., says Jonas Maebe, Belgian FFII representative currently working in the European Parliament. But we have all the ingredients for a good directive. We've been able to do the rough sculpting work. Now the patching work can begin. The spirit of the European Patent Convention is 80% reaffirmed, and the Parliament is in a good position to remove the remaining inconsistencies in the second reading. The directive will have to withstand further consultation with the Council of Ministers that is more informal and hence less public than Parliamentary Procedures. In the past, the Council of Ministers has left patent policy decisions to its patent policy working party, which consists of patent law experts who are also sitting on the administrative council of the European Patent Office (EPO). This group has been one of the most determined promoters of unlimited patentability, including program claims, in Europe. Says Laura Creighton, software entrepreneur and venture capitalist, who has supported the FFII/Eurolinux campaign with donations and travelled from Sweden to Brussels several times to attend conferences and meetings with MEPs: Now those
nettime Request to Nettime to be part of DISTRIBUTED CREATIVITY online forum with Eyebeam
I'm writing to you from Eyebeam, NYC's not-for-profit art and technology center located in Chelsea at 540 West 21 Street. I hope you know about our work with artists, curators, academics, etc. since 1997 bringing technology and access to new audiences. Please check out our website at www.eyebeam.org for further information about Eyebeam's programs in education, moving image, exhibitions, publications, etc. The reason I'm writing to Nettime today is to ask whether this community would be interested in cross-pollinating with Eyebeam's next online forum, DISTRIBUTED CREATIVITY from November 12-December 19. Below is the blurb. For the past six years Eyebeam has done an annual online forum on technology, art and popular culture and invited the public, artists, curators, academics, technologists to have an open discourse online about a specific topic. Our online forums are then published a year later into books with commissioned essays and art projects. For the upcoming forum we are working with the following online communities--Creative Commons, Rhizome, D.A.T.A. and Fibreculture to hold a discussion across five places on the web concerning artistic collaborations. I would like to invite Nettime to be a community on this online forum. Each week there will be a different topic to discuss and the discussion will take place on the communinity with special moderators, guest participants and artists. All dialogue will be archived on the eyebeam website. Our technical team consisting of Richard Chung Vivian Selbo will be working on cross-pollination technical issues with each community organization. _ Distributed Creativity An Online Forum Sponsored by Eyebeam in partnership with the Still Water program @ The University of Maine Www.eyebeam.org/distributedcreativity November 12-December 19, 2003 As our media become increasingly fast, mobile, and sociable, artistic practice has abandoned the center and dispersed across creative networks. Artists are organizing impromptu street actions by mobile phone, musicians are repurposing peer-to-peer networks for artistic ends, and programmers are distributing electronic toolkits to help artists leap from code to creativity. DISTRIBUTED CREATIVITY, Eyebeam's sixth annual online forum in partnership with the University of Maine's Still Water program, investigates new paradigms for artmaking that take advantage of mobile and distributed technologies such as WiFi, Weblogs, rich Internet applications, voice over IP, and social software. Co-hosts, panelists and public participants from around the world, including Rhizome, DATA, Sarai.net and Creative Commons, will discuss the artistic, legal, technical and social dynamics of creative networks small and large. So, please tell me if Nettime is interested in this for one week in November/December. Many thanks! Beth Rosenberg Eyebeam-Publications OnLine Forums # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
nettime STUDY FOREWARNS ESCALATION OF INTERNET RESTRICTIONS
(usual outcome but shoking anyway. did anyone in geneva go to that presentation of this report? geert) PRIVACY INTERNATIONAL MEDIA RELEASE INTERNATIONAL CENSORSHIP STUDY FOREWARNS ESCALATION OF INTERNET RESTRICTIONS Corporations are now vying with governments to gag free speech and impede Internet access 19th September 2003 For immediate release A new global study of Internet censorship in over fifty countries and regions has found that Internet restrictions, government secrecy and communications surveillance have reached an unprecedented level across the world. The twelve-month study has found that a sharp escalation in control of the Internet since September 2001 may have outstripped the traditional ability of the medium to repel attempts at restriction. The report fires a broadside at the United States and the United Kingdom for creating initiatives hostile to Internet freedom. Those countries have led a global attack on free speech on the Internet. They have set a technological and regulatory standard for mass surveillance and control of the Internet. The report, Silenced, will be launched today (Friday) at the preparatory meeting of the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva. The 70,000 word report - the largest and most comprehensive of its kind ever produced - was compiled and edited by the London-based Privacy International and the GreenNet Educational Trust. This study has found that censorship of the Internet is commonplace in most regions of the world. The report warns: It is clear that in most countries over the past two years there has been an acceleration of efforts to either close down or inhibit the Internet. In some countries, for example in China and Burma, the level of control is such that the Internet has relatively little value as a medium for organised free speech, and its used could well create additional dangers at a personal level for activists. The September 11, 2001 attacks have given numerous governments the opportunity to promulgate restrictive policies that their citizens had previously opposed. There has been an acceleration of legal authority for additional snooping, from increased email monitoring to the retention of Web logs and communications data. Simultaneously, governments have become more secretive about their own activities, reducing information that was previously available and refusing to adhere to policies on freedom of information. In finding a substantial level of censorship in many countries, the report condemns the complicity of Western nations. Governments of developing nations rely on Western countries to supply them with the necessary technologies of surveillance and control, such as digital wiretapping equipment, deciphering equipment, scanners, bugs, tracking equipment and computer intercept systems. The transfer of surveillance technology from first to third world is now a lucrative sideline for the arms industry. Without the aid of this technology transfer, it is unlikely that non-democratic regimes could impose the current levels of control over Internet activity. One of the most important trends in recent years is the growth of multinational corporate censors. The report says: It is arguable that in the first decade of the 21st century, corporations will rival governments in threatening Internet freedoms. Aggressive protection of corporate intellectual property has resulted in substantial legal action against users, and a corresponding deterioration in trust across the Internet. The report notes numerous instances where Internet users have been jailed by authorities for posting or hosting political material. Such countries include Egypt, China and a number of Middle Eastern countries. The Internet is tightly controlled and heavily monitored in regions such as these. The Internet is a fragile and easily controlled medium. In Africa, governments in such countries as Kenya and Zimbabwe have at times literally shut it down. The Saudi government over a period of just three months blocked access to more than 400,000 websites that were regarded as immoral. A wide variety of methods are used to restrict and/or regulate Internet access. These include: applying draconian laws and licenses, content filtering, tapping and surveillance, pricing and taxation policies, telecommunication markets manipulation, hardware and software manipulation and self censorship The study does however report that there are some positive developments. Countries have established protections, companies have fought for the rights of privacy of individuals, technologies have sustained the ability of dissident groups to speak freely and access content privately. Differences in national laws have sheltered the speech of the oppressed. Technological developments are being implemented to protect a free Internet, but the knowledge gap between radical innovators and restrictive institutions appears to be closing. One of the report's editors, Simon Davies,
nettime RE: reverse engineered freedom...
from B. Holmes: I'd say that politics is all about the relation between markets, governments and voluntary associations (or civil society but the term's gotten too heavily freighted). These three poles can be found to varying degrees in all modern social activity... i'm just wondering what it means to break politics down into 3 categories that distinguish between markets, governments and voluntary associations, and saying they are representative of all modern social activity. for example, how are the politicies of market entities (WTO, BIO, etc) to be seperated from the activities of nation-states when, for many, their policies are caried out and enforces through state-subsidized means (sanctions, law enforcement, food aid, etc). i understand the usefulness of categorization, i'm just not sure about how useful, or to what ends, thikning about politics in poles is. This seems to follow the system of logic that currently allows for the myths of the free market, while also using voluntary associations to describe, what could be argued as hardly merely voluntary, but rather ideological in a highly ordered sense that reproduces the state and market. maybe i'm missing something (very possible), but maybe the argument shouldn't be whether markets are self-regulating or not (how would we ever know - how do they become non-social), but what their impact is. i think this is what we're really talking about (except for foundationalists) - how we can become more inclusive/less oppressive. and David's concerns about the freedoms of mobility (for whom) seem appropriate here and in the spirit of lovink/schneider's text which he questions. i just read an essay from Jackie Stevens from a year or so ago about the materiality of language (Symbolic Matter) which for some reason seems relevant here http://jacquelinestevens.org/articlesessays.htm . at any rate, i don't mean these comments to be critical statements, but more invested questions. best, ryan __ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: nettime Request to Nettime to be part of DISTRIBUTED CREATIVITY online forum with Eyebeam
I wasn't under the impression that Nettime was a community in even the most self-conscious uses of the word. It does strike me as somewhat humorous to see a word that is only vexed amongst the shipwrecked, weary survivors of net ascii discourse used to address a purported group that carries the name, nettime. I fail to see a group at all here; there's not even an inner circle. There are certainly heroic levels of filtering and moderating going on, absurd hours dedicated to the chance of teasing out some understanding of what's up with the political economy, or even if a political economy is possible. But where is the group, let alone the community? A mailing list as long running and wide ranging as this does not even resemble a community in even the limited sense that a group of free software developers working on a project or living in and around a piece of software might be called a community. That's no loss for nettime. Something as open ended as this, a place where the very foregrounding of the term community itself in contemporary discourse is up for conversation, benefits from the lack. It is a place where I'd make the observation that community ought to only be used in the most limited sense for example to describe a group of free software developers or any concerted group of actors involved in collaborative acts in an advanced money economy. I think Howard Rheingold's term smart mobs is a little closer. How would you address a mob? On Thu, Sep 25, 2003 at 02:02:13PM -0400, Beth R. wrote: I'm writing to you from Eyebeam, Nags not-for-profit art and technology center located in Chelsea at 540 West 21 Street. I hope you know about our work with artists, curators, academics, etc. since 1997 bringing technology and access to new audiences. Please check out our website at www.eyebeam.org for further information about Eyebeam's programs in education, moving image, exhibitions, publications, etc. ... LocalWords: Eyebeam's # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
