Archive for the ‘Civil Liberties’ Category

Open letter to the music industry

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Dear music industry, Thank you for inviting me to be the opening speaker at your conference In The City in Manchester, UK. I am inspired by your courage to bring what must be seen as a threat into the midst of your ranks. I must say it was an eye-opener to experience ...

Epic winnage

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

Friends, brothers and sisters all over the besieged free world: Today, we have won our first crucial battle for the future of civil liberties. The right to be a free citizen. The right to privacy as a concept. Indeed, the freedom to voice one's opinions at all. These are freedoms that our ...

The Night Before it Gets Serious

Saturday, June 6th, 2009

It’s half-past ten in the evening before election day. Ballot coverage on election day is a little over 97%. Everything is out there. Opinion polls are holding steady at over 8%. It’s now real. This is what we’ve worked for for three-and-a-half years. Several of us have worked far longer than that. I ...

2029, An Alternate View of Reality

Friday, June 5th, 2009

I wake up with the sun at 11. The alarm clock was needless today. I remember a time when everyone had to work simultaneously. So… unnecessary. But this was before the swarm work model. What a waste! How could people work so stifled? Without creativity and innovation? And so… limited by ...

A Sample from France

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

This close to the election, we're seeing a sample of what the copyright lobby wants. Today, the HADOPI Act passed in the French Parliament. HADOPI is intended to "protect artists against file sharing." It involves: People may have their Internet shut off without a court order for three allegations (!) by large ...

Question From SAMI

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

As an EU candidate, I have received a questionnaire, just like MMN-o did. Here are the answers I gave: 1. Do you think that copyright protections for artists, musicians, and performing arts should be extended so that these people get paid for the rest of their lives? No. The purpose of copyright ...

After wiretapping, a national DNA register

Saturday, June 21st, 2008

As reported in geek press everywhere, the administration bought out the few resisting legislators at the last minute, and the general wiretapping law was passed with a 143-to-138 vote. What made me proud, though, was that the normally shy and inhibited Swedes had taken their clenched fists out of their pockets. ...

Thank you, Ireland.

Friday, June 13th, 2008

Thank you, Ireland. From this day and as long as I can still walk, I will buy any Irishman I come across in my travels a pint of Guinness -- or a genuine Swedish schnapps, whichever they prefer.

Swedish Blogosphere and the Ubiquitous Wiretapping Bill

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008

In my last post, I said that the Swedish blogosphere has exploded about this story. I felt I had to qualify that a bit, so here's a screenshot from the Swedish blogosphere tracker knuff.se, which tracks practically all Swedish blogs. The format of the screenshot is that one header is one ...

More on the Ubiquitous Wiretapping Bill

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008

There is a lot of debate in Sweden right now. My exposing a very senior intelligence official this Saturday, who stated - on tape - that the Ubiquitous Wiretapping Bill legalized the agency's existing mission, caused the Swedish blogosphere to detonate like a barrel of overheated thermite. Print media, though, ...