Please note: in this text I use the term “subjectivity” in the meaning of the right to be recognised as an acting subject, as opposed to beaing treated as a mere object of actions of others.

Thanks to the hospitality of this year’s Citizen Congress I had the pleasure of co-hosting (with Katarzyna Szymielewicz of Panoptykon Foundation and Jarosław Lipszyc of Modern Poland Foundation) within its framework a workshop “How to be a subject in the cyberworld”.

An broad group of practitioners, technicians, lawyers, new media experts, pedagogues and philosophers pondered for almost 3 hours how one can defend oneself from being reduced to an object, product or data point in the Net (and outside of it).

Subjectivity - whatever that is?¶

In order to get us on the right track, prof. Paweł Łuków summarized what subjectivity is. For our needs we can assume that it means recognizing that each human being is an independent actor, decision making subject, who has their own aims and wants, and acts in a particular way.

In other words we’re talking about subject-object comparison. Our history has no shortage of instances of treating subjects as objects and we can all agree that subjectivity is a value well worth defending.

Subjectivity in the digital era¶

The digital era and new means and possibilities of communicating bear with them a wealth of consequences for subjectivity. First of all, we can purposefully evade the recognition of our subjectivity, and with it the responsibility for our actions: we can consciously rescind our subjectivity.

This alone allows for unsurpassed freedom of speech. Never in history could we so easily hide and voice our opinions anonymously. Paradoxically, giving subjectivity up, hiding our identity makes it easier to express oneself fully and freely. One does not have to fear repercussions and repression for an opinion when nobody knows that they are its author.

On the other hand, this creates an air of impunity. The fine line between freedom and waywardness is being crossed – trolling and hate speach are good examples here.

Regardless, however, of our conscious decision to keep or hide our subjectivity, we might become an unwilling object of actions of other actors. Actors that might not be interested in recognizing and respecting our subjectivity. That is where dangers to privacy arise; we are being treated as data points or assets that are to be monetised.

We expect to be protected from dangers from both of these directions – that of persons exploiting impunity behind the wall of anonimity; and that of actors purposefully not respectful of our subjectivity – by public administration. Yet another paradox arises here: even though the democratic system is built upon the respect for subjectivity of each and every citizen, systemic solutions very often ignore it (for example, in the name of being more effective). In other words, attempting to defend subjectivity by public administration might create dangers of its own to it.

Mode of work¶

The workshop has been divided into four parts. In the first we tried to identify problems that have to be faced when defending subjectivity in the digital era, and threats to it; in the next free we made an attempt to find solutions to these problems in areas of: education, infrastructure and law.

Each of these parts took much longer than we had predicted. This topic is much more complicated and vast that one would expect.

Please note: the term “media” is being used here broadly and means also social networks and social media, internet forums, blogs and other methods of electronic communication.

Problems and threats¶

Problems and threats to subjectivity, which we have identified together during the workshop, are:

• dangers to privacy;
• obsoleteness of law with regard to technology (i.e. copyright law);
• lack of citizen control over communication and information channels;
• centralisation (of infrastructure, of communication, of information);
• lack of effective guarantees of basic human rights;
• information assymetry (i.e. between clients and software companies, or users and social network operators);
• lacking education and lack of competence of citizens;
• lack of understanding of new media (by citizens, policymakers, courts… – i.e. fetishization of the Internet, the “virtual reality”);
• obstacles for empathy (due to rising proxyification of communication, impossibility of sending and receiving non-verbal signals; trolling is an effect of that);
• tempo of changes effectively surpassing our ability to learn and accomodate them;
• public infrastructure shortcomings (including lack of innovation within the infrastructure);
• censorship and self-censorship (including censorship that is completely unregulated – like terms of service in privately-owned social networks);
• marketization of education and information;
• language barriers.

While this eluded us on the workshop, I believe one more problem should be also indicated here:

• bundling, which is complicating or making it outright impossible to correctly compare services (e.g. of mobile plans, Internet access, etc).

Below are solution ideas and border conditions for protecting subjectivity, divided into three areas.

Potential solutions and border conditions¶

Education:

• media education (in kindergardens, schools, for adults, for teachers);
• open educational resources (used in education and actively developed);
• open educational tools (as above);
• teaching methods, instead of tools (change of the paradigm);
• getting education programmes up to speed;
• teaching critical thinking;
• fostering the sense of self-worth;
• teaching how to control the media;
• language competence development (with regard to both mothertongue and foreign languages);
• “open source” education, abandoning the XIX-century educational model (fostering student participation in the education process, instead of current model of “student-master relationship”);
• breaking down the barriers;
• educating on law, esp. on basic human rights.

Infrastructure:

• decentralisation of infrastructure (on several levels);
• broadly-adopted open standards (including within social networks, allowing for interoperability of different providers);
• privacy by default;
• privacy by design;
• public, freely available access to broadband Internet (including public WiFi in public libraries);
• open repositories (of data, open access, resources, publicly-financed source code, etc);
• transparency of information about services;
• civil involvement in infrastructure (designing, building, upkeep – including support for hackerspaces/fablabs).

Law:

• transparent and functional public consultation system;
• evidence-based policy and thorough regulatory impact analysis;
• copyright reform;
• easy-to-understand law interpretation and commentary available (created within the legislation creation process);
• government-mandated, unequivocal, binding law interpretation;
• law and regulation system analysis and review in order to remove inconsistencies;
• laws guaranteeing network neutrality;
• guarantees against disconnection of citizens (e.g. making n-strikes laws illegal);
• right to analogue interaction with public administration;
• right to move private data (e.g. between social networks);
• right to be forgotten (removing/deleting data);
• right to use any and all services and applications as long as they are not actively harming the network.

Above problem and potential solution catalogues should not be treated as final – rather, as a start of a discussion. A discussion that is sorely needed, and of which they can be a good base for.

I already wrote about a Diaspora-based comment system, but here’s a question that I have been pondering for some time now: why not ramp it up a notch?..

Why not make a whole blog on Diaspora or Friendica (or any other federated, decentralized social network)?

The functionality is all there - you have your:

• user accounts;
• comments;
• profile section;
• permalinks;
• media (videos/images) embeding.

Just change the theme to more bloggy and – hey, presto! – you have a full-featured blog. With a vengaence!

Added (social) value¶

Thing is, it’s not only a blog.

It works like one, it looks like one, it feels like one, but… it’s so much more! Other people, from other compatible services (i.e. other Diaspora pods and Friendica servers) can seamlessly connect to your blog, engage with it, comment on it and (if you allow it) re-share your posts.

Even more, you have the power of aspects at your disposal – you can publish some content only to certain, selected people you trust. Have you ever wanted to create a “private blog” that only a handful of friends can access? Well, now you can.

Suddenly, the whole libre, decentralized, federated social network is your audience. Everybody with an account on any of several pods or servers can be a first-class citizen on your blog or website. This, of course, works both ways: all of those that create accounts on your website to comment on the entries there are automagically first-class citizens on the whole distributed, federated social network.

Did you say: websites?¶

Yes. Indeed I have. Because in fact if you need any kind of website that is supposed to have comments, obviously you can take advantage of this idea, too! Instead of using WordPress or Drupal, why not use Friendica with a nice custom bloggy theme and have your content already present on the libre side of social networking?..

Just imagine the whole Internet of websites that can connect and engage with each other, a decentralized and federated web where discussion and cooperation strives and no single actor can cenzor, surveil nor shut it down!..

When you’re in the IT business, fragmentation is bad. Whether it’s your platform that gets fragmented (hullo there, Android), or you’re tha admin that has to support all different versions of popular browsers (hullo, Firefox and Chromium o’ver. 9000), fragmentation is bad news and more work.

Also for social and political movements or organisations (formal and informal, regardless) fragmentation is bad. Organisation loses people, hence also clout and political power to make the changes they want to make. The movement splinters into small, irrelevant groups that cannot take on the Big League…

Only, it’s not true anymore.

Packaging¶

Have you ever tried choosing a mobile plan? I have. It’s daunting – and I used to work in a mobile tech R&D lab!

It’s daunting not because of technology, though, and not because it’s hard to make it easier to make choices there. It’s daunting because telecom companies are working hard to package features and pricing in plans in a way that effectively makes it impossible to really compare and contrast plans between different operators.

You want Feature X? Okay, you’ll get it within the plan at A and B, but at C you will have to pay additionally for that; but, C has lower rates overall and Feature Y, offered only by C and A (for an additional price)! Ah, but B has Feature Z, very similar to Y (but just-not-the-same)… and so it goes.

This is also how mainstream political parties work. I agree with Policy X of Party A, and Policy Y of Party B; but A has Anti-Y-policy and B has Anti-X-policy even though X and Y can be compatible. The effect? I cannot in clear conscience choose a party that actually fits me.

Why? Because it’s all pre-packaged. You cannot get your pick of the issues, features, policies. You have to pick from packages containing some you agree with, some you don’t.

Social movements often work this way, too. You want to support the Movement X because of Policy A? Well, that will mean you also support Movement X’s other policies that you might not be too fond of. And while with mobile plans and (less, but still) political parties you are bound to choose something, with social movements the effect is that most people choose not to choose. Packaging kills involvement.

Enter fragmentation.

Less is more¶

Suppose for a moment that we could choose to engage in furthering Policy A without having to support Policies B and C; and that Movement X that engages or coordinates efforts around Policy A does so inclusively, inviting any and all to join-in and help out, regardless of their support for other policies Movement X stands for.

Suddenly, John Doe (a stern opponent of Movement X’s other policies, yet a supporter of Policy A) can feel invited to just help with this particular policy or issue. Net effect – one more supporter of Policy A!

This is exactly how Anti-ACTA worked in Poland. There were NGOs that might not see eye-to-eye on most of things and people of all walks of life and political affiliations working towards a common goal. We embraced fragmentation and were able to bring in support of many times more people than we could have dreamt had we decided to exclude those we do not agree with on other issues.

Anarchists and right-wing activists protested hand in hand, just months after fighting each other on the streets of Warsaw.

The narrower the issue, the better defined the goal – the more people can feel invited and welcome to help out.

Smart fragmenting¶

This does not mean that organisations or movements should suddenly narrow their scope down, start focusing on single issues only. They should still be as comprehensive as they see fit. Some issues are not possible to fight for separated from the bigger picture.

But there certainly are issues that can be well-defined in a way that makes them at least partially self-contained. And then action can be organized around such an issue in an inclusive and welcoming way. This not only helps further the given issue, but also stimulates discussion between different people and different organisations.

Discussion that can lead to better mutual understanding, and better dialogue on the more general level.

Hosting multiple different services on the same server and under the same domain name used to be simple. Set-up the services, optionally add MX or SRV records to the DNS zone if they are being run under a different IP, and you’re done. Hosting XMPP, SMTP, POP, IMAP, SSH, HTTP on the same domain was trivial, because they all by default use different ports.

Thanks to web-2.0-isation of the Internet, however, everything now seems to be hell-bent on using HTTP/HTTPS as the transport layer. This means, basically, that you cannot (for example) have StatusNet and Diaspora on the same server – simply because they both use port 80 (or with SSL/TLS, port 443) and have similar API paths. In other words, there is no way do distinguish between an API request to one or the other if they are both set up under the same domain name.

Thus, in this glorious 21st century we have made a huge step backwards – we now can’t really host multiple services under the same domain anymore.

Let’s fix it!¶

Introducing services.txt. Just like robots.txt and humans.txt, this human-readable file sits in the root directory of the webserver under a given domain, and informs any and all interested parties (including other instances of a given service, and that’s the crux!), that when they are looking for service X under this domain, they should use a given path.

Proposed syntax (but hey, let’s talk about it!):

servicename/apiname:version:path

• servicename/apiname: a name of the service or api a given entry describes; in our example it would be ostatus (StatusNet implements the OStatus protocol) or diaspora,
• version: either a version number (i.e. 1.0), or an asterisk to denote that any version will do,
• path: this can either be a local path (i.e. /servicename), or a full URL if the service resides on a different server and/or port.

All lines starting with a hash (#) are considered comments and ignored.

So, if I had a StatusNet (ver.1.0) instance and a Diaspora instance running under this domain name, with the former running under /statusnet and the latter actually running under a subdomain dias.rys.io and accessible only via HTTPS on non-standard port 9443, my status.txt file would look thus:

# example services.txt file
# for rys.io
ostatus:1.0:/statusnet
diaspora:*:https://diasp.rys.io:9443

Of course having a service entry in services.txt would be optional – that is, if another instance of a given service wants to try to contact my instance and can’t find the entry for it (or, indeed, there is no services.txt file available), it just proceeds in a default manner for a given service.

UPDATE: thanks to Carlos Solís we now have a Spanish translation! Thank you!

The following is a rant. You have been warned.

Everyone that knows me is familiar with my hate-hate relationship with Apple. I have been an anti-Apple evangelist for a while now, but – to be honest – it used to be a challenge. I mean, one has to admit their products had a look and feel that was on par with what (too) many clients expected for the money.

While I was opposed to them on philosophical grounds (for some reason or other, I loathe walled gardens), making a case against buying Apple to a non-freesoftie was not an easy endaevour (try explaining what a walled garden is to a random person on the street, see how that goes).

So what could I do? If somebody likes to be closed in an overpriced corporate-controlled bubble, and only being able to do with their (the corporation’s, not the user’s – the user is not the owner, as it would turn out) device what the corporation expressly allows for, it’s their own sovereign choice. A bad one, but hey, what do I care.

Heck, even technical people had some arguments to go Apple that were hard to argue against on pure technical grounds.

Well, that’s a thing of the past.

Quality¶

Ah yes, officially the main Apple selling point (“officially”, as the real main Apple selling point is and for a long time has been, well, fashion). Apple’s failure in this regard is the more funny, the harder Apple afficionados argue that there’s no problem and that there’s absolutely no change in the quality of Apple products.

Well, dang. At this point I can argue both ways, and actually win either way!

On one side of the table, I don’t remember Apple releasing a product that has both annoying hardware and crippling software issues. I mean, never have I seen or heard about an iPhone that automagically adds a violet flare to pictures; has ugly problems with bodypainting; and at the same time offers an “upgrade” of an important app that is so bad, even an Apple-hater like myself has to admit it’s not even funny anymore.

Of course, out of those three, the body painting problem is the biggie for Apple: can you imagine how hard it is to impress fellow hipsters in a Starbucks with a device that is shedding enamel? It’s like trying to impress downtown girls with a rusty VW Golf. It’s not gonna work, regardless of how overpriced it was.

On the other hand, I must admit that Apple’s real (vs. perceived) quality didn’t really deteriorate that much. Remember the AntennaGate? Or the Hot Macs problem? Or the MacBook WiFi fail? Yeah, see, at this point talking about quality problems in Apple offerings is a bit like flogging a dead horse.

Just a bit. The horse, you see, would have never been as condescending as Apple.

Complete contempt for clients¶

Ah yes, the stellar Apple customer care. Or, as Steve Jobs himself (currently violently spinning in his grave after hearing all the good news about iPhone5) put it, “You’re Holding It Wrong.”

Is there a problem with the antenna? Oh, and did Apple get clear warnings from their own engineer that such a problem will arise with such a design? Yeah, well, “you’re holding it wrong” (why yes, it is being held “wrong” also in Apple ads, but hush, peasant!).

Or maybe there is a response expected from Apple with regard to the nice violet flare added automagically (BTW, Instagram folks are surely not amused) to pictures taken with the newest iPhone? Guess what! “You’re pointing it wrong”.

Ah, but when the bodypaint problem came about, Apple surely must have admitted a mistake, right? Nope. “That’s normal.” Well, obviously “everybody knows” that coated aluminum shows these symptoms. Maybe this is why nobody else uses it in their design?.. Especially in gadgets that are supposedly “made with a level of precision you’d expect from a finely crafted watch”…

And what about The Amazing iOS6 Maps? Hey, at least Tim Cook had the guts to apologise. Kinda. “You get unusable maps because we want to give you the best experience”. Erm. Yeah, makes sense! Thanks, Tim! This is really appreciated especially in the light of the fact that this mess is a result of a purely political decision (“we will now stop using Google Maps”) that completely ignored users’ needs and only focused on Apple’s hate towards Android and Google.

Oh, and guess what – “shiny” new iPhone introduces a completely new connector, so unless you buy the adapter (for a mere $29.99), all your accessories will now be useless. Normally it would be called “extortion”, but for Apple that’s just business as usual – their several different, incompatible video adaptors are a constant cause for lulz anywhere a Mac owner tries to connect to a beamer…

I am sure, though, that it’s all worth it – after all, in Apple’s own words, iPhone5 is the biggest thing to happen to iPhone. Or maybe the tallest. As in tall tales.

Imaginary Property Wars¶

Apparently, though, Apple seems to be painfully aware of its own decline, and instead of fighting their competition via regular market mechanisms – oh, you know, being cheaper or better (or both) – they decided to try to stiffle competition with court orders.

How deluded and hipocritical must a company be to shout “Free Market! Globalization!” when somebody tries to hold them responsible for what the FoxConn workers have to go through, but cry “no fair” when this free market and globalization comes back and bites them in the arse in their own playground? Oh, right, it’s a corporation. Carry on.

Of course Apple claims that competition “stole” some imaginary property from them – but I have a very hard time understanding what’s so increadibly inventive in rounded corners, rubber-band scrolling, slide to unlock or any of the other things Apple “borrowed” from other companies.

Surprisingly, also the US Patent Office has its doubts lately. That, however, does not stop the jurors from diving into the reality distortion field (along with many Apple users themselves).

Of course all sides can play this game and Motorola decided to call Apple on it. While I do not support the idea of software patents, with this I prepare myself some pop-corn; this is going to be entertaining!

But that’s where it gets really funny – turns out Apple (to use their language) “stole intellectual property” of Swiss Railways. That’s right. They most definitely copied the design, and while “rounded corners”, one might argue, is a very general idea and maybe, just maybe, should not be patentable, the whole design of a clock is something more complex and license-worthy (maybe not of a patent, but that’s another story).

Just to add some more spice to the whole charade, a Chinese phone brand apparently patented the iPhone5 design in China. I am waiting impatiently for Apple’s response! Will they decry design patents? Will they just agree to pay the royalties? Or maybe Tim will find some even more lulz-worthy solutions? Only time will tell!

However, all laughing aside, this causes real problems for the rest of us. And I am not talking only about Apple’s frivolous attacks on any logo built on apple (the fruit) image, although this alone is a growing problem (although here also Apple’s karma is a bitch).

Stiffling innovation¶

It causes problems, as it stiffles innovation. Even if somebody finds a new great way of designing a smartphone they have to design around Apple’s absurd patents on obvious things.

The bottom line? We get fewer new smartphone designs, because big companies prefer to stick to what has already been tested in courts to hold against Apples litigation. Litigation that will also start happening as soon as third party companies start innovating around the new connector, as it is considered by Apple their own imaginary property, and guarded heavily so that Apple alone can reap the benefits off of their gullible yet apparently quite wealthy userbase.

I, for one, am not amused.

But wait, there’s more! Apple managed to stiffle innovation also on the software front! With their opaque and secret app-vetting process that lets in countless fart apps (this is not that surprising, providing that the man running the App Store sells several fart apps of his own) yet doesn’t allow for a web browser app (that would be immensely more useful than all the fart apps combined), with them rejecting an app that informs of real-life drone attacks yet having no problem whatsoever with brutal games – they only allow for a very limited sort of apps to reach the users. And the developers can only guess if their idea is to liking of the App Store overlords.

Oh, and those overlords really hate Free Software. Which comes as no surprise, of course.

Enablers¶

Up to a point I really couldn’t care less about what Apple customers let Apple do to themselves. It’s their money, their data, their lives. If somebody wants to act dumb, I can’t really stop them, can I?

At some point in time, though, Apple decided it’s a good idea to bully everybody everywhere, directly and indirectly, and try to coerce, extort, stiffle and litigate in all directions possible. This directly threatens my freedom to choose hardware and software that I use. And I shall not sit back and let them do that.

Apple would not be able to do all this if people stopped buying their crap. So you, my dear Apple customer, are the enabler. You personally enable them to not only rob you of your own money, but to rob others of their choices.

And hence I shall from now on consider you, dear Apple customer, to be personally partially responsible for all evil Apple does. No buts. No ifs. You own an Apple device – you enable and support all of the above.

If you don’t, stop buying Apple. The sooner, the better – for you and for the rest of us.

UPDATED with Step 0 and FreedomBox reference; UPDATE 2: heartfelt thanks to Laura Arjona for the Spanish translation, now also featured here.

For some time now I have been pondering the best way to break people free from walled-gardens (like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, etc).

For all those services there are viable, free-as-in-freedom alternatives (Diaspora/Friendica, StatusNet, and many more). All those proprietary services are being heavily criticised (among others, for privacy violations, tricking or pushing their users, heavy-handed policies, censorship, nymwars).

And yet, people still overwhelmingly use them, instead of the libre, decentralised, federated alternatives. And yet, people still write software for them and base their business on them – and even when those closed services change their API policies and draw ire of developers, the developers themselves write petitions instead of simply diversifying.

There is a reason for that, and the reason is called Network Effect. In short – the more people use a given communication too, the more new people will use it.

Seems that there is no way out… However, I believe there is. But we have to subvert the network effect to do our bidding!

Step 0. Agreed protocols¶

We do have a problem with fragmentation. Fragmentation is not choice – it is a situation where you don’t know which of the incompatible service types to choose – in fact, it’s almost a kind of a walled-garden in and of itself.

Choice is what we have with e-mail: you can choose from a plethora of clients, servers, webmail providers, etc; however, regardless of whichever you choose, you are still able to seamlessly communicate with any other e-mail user, using any other combination.

Currently we have quite a few open, free, decentralised social media protocols that have similar functionality but not much interoperability. Before we can move on, we need to change that – and the only way to change that is to agree on one of those protocols and move from there.

I believe we should start a discussion on that and make the decision as soon as possible; and I call upon GNU Project, FSF, FSFE, and all other notable organisations promoting free/libre/open source software to partake in this discussion and throw their weight behind the protocols that would emerge as the agreed-upon solution.

Step 1. Awesome service¶

We need to build a service (and methods of creating new instances of it quickly and easily!) that integrates as many different service types as possible uder a single user@example.org identity. I’m thinking at the very least:

• e-mail with webmail access;
• Jabber/XMPP;
• Diaspora/Friendica;
• StatusNet;
• OpenID identity service;
• calendar, files, contacts web interface and synchronisation service (e.g. ownCloud);
• all of the above accessible via TOR hidden services.

Maybe a distro/remix, ready with everything one needs to just install it, enter some basic data and run? We need as many instances of that as possible, as fast as possible.

Of course, there already are valuable projects going in this direction, and we should support them. For example, FreedomBox, as pointed out by forteller; or SocialSwarm, as pointed out by march.

The problem with FreedomBox and SocialSwarm I see is that they are trying to make two hard transitions at once: from centralised to de-centralised, and from third-party-hosted to self-hosted. I believe this is a tad too an ambitious plan and it should be split into two separate steps. However, if we did Step 0 and Step 1 right, they both would have at least a part of their work done for them.

Step 2. Prison break¶

When we have where to send potential interested users, it’s time to start the campaing proper. For this we need a website, endorsed by as many privacy-advocating and FLOSS-evangelizing organisations and people as possible.

It would designate a single day each month, or each quarter, to be (e.g.) “Prison Break Day Q4 2012”. Users of walled-gardens could log-in on the website with their walled-garden accounts and pledge to (either, or both):

• create an account on an analogous libre, decentralised service (i.e. StatusNet for Twitter users; Friendica for Facebook users);
• close their walled-garden accounts;

…before or at the next “Prison Break Day”.

Info that they did pledge that would get automagically published on their walled-garden feeds for all their friends to see. As the “Prison Break Day” draws closer, at least one reminder would be sent to them – and to their feeds. Users then would be able to log-in with their libre OpenID to “claim” a given pledge and prove they made good on it. This would also get published on their walled-garden feeds.

To sweeten the deal, the libre services should be able to connect with walled-garden accounts and publish to them.

This would have the effect that people would see how many of their friends in walled-gardens are actually willing to make the switch. For some the amount of those would be enough to make good on their pledges and create the accounts; for some it would even give the incentive to close their walled-garden accounts.

Anyway, we would have the network effect working for us.

Yes, there is a Diaspora thread and Identica one for your commenting pleasure!

For some reason Asher Wolf asked me to record a short video message for Melbourne CryptoParty.

You can watch the message on YouTube (sorry for the quality, this was my first self-recorded video message). I would strongly suggest to listen and watch messages from other great people. How I landed in such a cool bunch is a mystery to be solved…

Anyway, the text of what I was trying to say is below, for your enjoyment as you compare and contrast it with what I actually did say.

Hi there,

My name is Mike (also known as rysiek) from Warsaw Hackerspace in Poland. You might remember me from such hacktivist initiatives as Anti-ACTA campaign in Europe and the Telecomix jellyfish collective.

I was asked to share with you my view why crypto is important.

It’s important, because privacy is important.

It’s important, because being certain you know who can (and who cannot) read the message you sent is important.

For some reason we do put snail-mail letters in envelopes, hiding them from the eyes of good people working at post offices. And yet, we keep on sending our most private, most intimate, most important information in unencrypted e-mails and via unencrypted internet messaging services, putting them right in front of preying eyes of data-mining corporations, our beloved government officials and security agencies.

Had any government in the developed world announced that they are opening, reading and censoring snail-mail on post offices, people would riot.

And yet when Internet filtering schemes are pushed – in the name of fighting the dreaded paedonazis or saving our dear entertainment industry from themselves – general public often doesn’t seem to notice nor care, doesn’t seem to make the connect between the phrase “Internet filtering” and words “censorship” and “surveilance”.

One of the reasons ACTA was so explosive in Poland was because we remember. Most of Poles alive today had a taste of a totalitarian regime. Some faught hard against it. “Censorship” and “surveilance” are not just abstract terms for us. They are often part of family history.

So, here’s something from a Polish guy, 22 years after a totalitarian state was abolished here: if you want to know why crypto is important, just consider for a moment why you put your last snail-mail in an envelope.

Thanks and have a great CryptoParty!

Thee who never had the chance to marvel at night skies somewhere far from civilised world – and due to light pollution this is getting ever harder these days – will probably never undarstand Kant’s quote:

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: The starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

I have yet again spent a few days sailing the sea; nowhere can one find such a breathtaking sight of starry sky, as in the middle of the sea at night. Could anyone be impervious to it?..

Sea sailing is neither easy nor effortless pastime; and working as a sailor on a sailing ship of old was incomparably harder, severe and demanding. C. S. Forrester in his Horatio Hornblower series doesn’t leave much to the imagination: inhumane conditions; unrelenting weather; heartless commanders with indisputable power over life and death; never-ending missions lasting months or years… Sailors had to be hardened and tough – or their days at sea ended fast (often at the bottom, with a cannoball or two at their feet).

Still, hadn’t the the night sky at sea (as awe-inspiring then as now, no doubt) moved the sailors’ of times past sea-hardened hearts as it moves and inspires seagoers today? Wasn’t there often, under the hard outer shell, a (very peculiar, but nonetheless) sensitivity?

Listen to sea shanties and you will find both the hardiness and the sensitivity. Just like the Königsberg philosopher’s quote, however, these will be hard to find and grasp, and appreciate, if you’ve never been to sea at night.

Black PR campaign against e-textbooks in Poland that trundles through polish media is a premeditated attack against our right to education. For years now open education resources proponents have been fighting for resources available on permissive, or “libre”, licenses, allowing for copying, remixing and spreading them around – so that teachers are not afraid to make a copy of an application used in class or a textbook needed for their homework. This freedom is jeopardized by particular interests of a couple of publishing companies.*

Much has been said lately in Poland about (or rather, mainly against) the plan to bring electronic textbooks and open education resources to Polish public schools. What is worth noting: while the critique was usually aimed at financial, technical or procedural issues, the real source of ire for those behind this campaign are, in fact, the libre licenses themselves.

What are libre licenses¶

In almost every textbook on one of the first or last pages you will find the text “all rights reserved”. It’s a reminder that they are also covered by copyright laws, and that rightsowners’ (publishers’, authors’) express consent is required to copy, redistribute or modify it.

Libre licenses invert this situation, by expressly and unequivocally giving such consent to anybody interested in doing so, as long as they retain proper attribution of authorship. No need to ponder if it is legal to share libre licensed music (e.g. downloaded from Jamendo) nor if we can re-use a Wikipedia article – libre licenses these sites sport for the content are a loud and clear “sure thing, go ahead!”

This, for reasons that should be pretty obvious, has a lot of sense in education. Open education resources allow teachers and students to use, re-use, modify, improve, supplement and share – or even publish their own versions of them! – without the fear of running afoul of complicated copyright laws. It is the proven model behind, for example, free software and Wikipedia – however, when used in in education, apart from providing for better, more complete and upt-to-date learning materials, it also helps foster deeper student and teacher involvement in the process.

And of course, parents (especially of more than one child) could also feel the purely financial advantage such model offers them, as instead of buying, year by year, new textbooks, they could just download the updated version. All this is possible with libre licensing of education resources.

Almost everybody engaged in education – students, parents, teachers – libre licenses are a huge step forward. They allow creativity to thrive, save money, enable updating of the resources by third parties (instead of writing them anew from scratch each time) and fight the digital exclusion (anybody can prepare a braille version without even having to ask for permission), while at the same time giving students practical idea on how copyright law works.

However, such culture of sharing is (at least seemingly) incompatible with business models of large publishing companies, hence the current black PR campaign against e-textbooks. The question remains: should such a purely business issue be a problem of students, parents and teachers?

Libre business¶

Regardless of what the publishers would like you to think, there are several examples of business models perfectly compatible with libre licensing and open education resources.

It is because they are libre-licensed, open education resources can (and should!) be used and improved upon by the publishers, regardless of who was the original author. There is not a single reason why the publishers cannot prepare professional printed versions, after all many parents will prefer them to printing at home! Textbooks will need appropriate exercise books, tests, other materials – and thanks to the libre license of the textbook any publisher will have the ability of preparing those.

Publishers could even prepare specially adapted versions for certain class profiles – removing unneeded material and extending upon certain relevant sections. Not only can they do that – this possibility is in and of itself one of the reasons for creating open education resources.

Conjuration of reality¶

Publishing business does not want to acknowledge all that, because it spells changes. Instead of trying to find new business models, new ways of operating, compatible with libre licenses (and the future of education in Poland) – publishers prefer to treat open education resources as a “problem” that needs “solving”, using lawyers and PR agencies.

Changes will inevitably come, regardless of how those opposed to them try to conjure the reality. Respected education centres around the world also see that: Harvard University asked its staff to publish their work on libre licenses, instead of in science periodicals sporting proprietary licensing schemes. This will supposedly allow it to save 3.5 million dollars each year, at the same time rising availability of scientific research within the scientific community and well beyond it.

Polish education has a chance to not only follow this example, but go further. Polish libre-licensed e-textbooks is already commented broadly in education communities around the world. As far as open education goes, Poland can become a true leader.

Should, then, profits of a few publishing businesses stand in the way of better, more affordable and modern education?

Australian Christian Lobby, in a tweet already deleted (wonder why, don’t they stand behind their convictions?), likened gay marriage and gay love to zoophilia and paedophilia. I like how this particular argument pops up here and there from the “Christian” side.

I like how such religious groups compare sex between two willing adult humans to sex with animals, implying that at least one party to it is no better than an animal – while still vehemently opposing the theory of evolution, saying that suggesting that humans come from monkeys somehow “strips humans of their dignity”. Because obviously calling people “animals” doesn’t.

I like how they compare homosexuality to paedophilia, regardless that homosexual sex (just as heterosexual sex) is sex between consenting adults, while paedophilia seems to be more often then not sex between a clergyman and a non-consenting child.

And I like how Catholic clergy claims this is a “family issue”, and that same-sex marriage is a danger to “family values”, while having absolutely no experience in building marriages and families of their own at all.

Finally, I like how they do that while “spreading the Christian message of Love”. I can admire a good troll.