Thanks to Asimov Foundation and the great people from the Budapest Hackerspace I had the chance to participate – along with a small Polish copyright reform dream-team – in the V4 Paradigm Shift in Copyright workshop.

All in all, two days of heavy thinking on copyright reform with a group of people from all of the Visegrad Four countries.

In my humble opinion the most important result of the workshop was meeting all the people away from keyboard, in real life, and getting a birds-eye view on copyright situation in all the V4 countries. We did not dream of finding the perfect solution to copyright problems in digital era just yet; we did, however, verify and reality-check our respective ideas against situation in the rest of the countries, and the ideas of the rest of the activists.

One very important thing is that we all agreed we need to work on the language. Currently the discussion around copyright continues to use a language imposed by one of the sides. This does not bode well for the ability to find good solutions, as it slants the playing field in one direction.

Hence, we have started to create a very rudimentary dictionary.

The most crucial thing here is the fact that “intellectual property” term is completely unacceptable. Neither anything it supposedly describes is bona fide “property” (being in fact time-limited monopolies), nor does lumping them together make any sense. Simply put, copyright, trademark laws and patents are completely different and should be treated separately in discussions. Trying to talk about them together only complicates things and blurs the situation (no doubt, an effect welcomed by the proponents of the term).

An additional important positive result of taking part in the thing was for me the possibility to finally talk a bit with Amelia Andersdotter. Brain-scratching discussion on how privatisation of infrastructure creates new problems for those striving to uphold personal rights and freedoms in the Internet. I will probably get back to this topic.

The Internet is a very young invention – its precursor, ARPANET, was created in the early 70s. Most of Internet phenomena we partake in and tools we use are much younger. First social networks, for example, were created in the nineties, however the boom for the came only in the first decade of the 21st century.

That means, basically, that we do not know how to use them. Simply put, we had no time to learn.

People, naturally, are trying to work in the new reality, in new situations, with new technology by analogy to situations and technologies they know. Only after such practical attempts (often lasting for years) does the understanding of how the new tool differs from the old and well known ones arise. And with that – new regulations, new customs ordering up the use of such new technology.

Car Analogy¶

When first “automobiles” showed up, they were treated more or less as carriages, a technology known for ages. It soon, however, turned out that cars are much faster and hence much more dangerous; this lead to new customs and laws, and a whole new culture of using cars, that accounted for the “otherness” of this new tool and new reality.

At first, part of the regulations was absurd. For instance, red flag laws stating that each “mechanical carriage” should be preceded by a person with a flag or lantern, warning about machine’s approach. With time, though, people learned how to use cars, and how to regulate its use – and the new tool gradually stopped being new.

Finally, the tool became familiar, cars are now an ordinary part of everyday life; we all more or less know and understand the rules – like having to look around while crossing the street or using seatbelts while in a car. Some of such rules entered common knowledge and customs; some were made into laws. In general we all know how to behave in a world with cars – something our grandparents knew not.

Information Superhighway¶

With Internet, social media and the rest of the information technologies (called quite recently – unsurprisingly – “new technologies”), we are in a similar situation to our forefathers in the first years of motorisation. The technology changed, and it changed our reality. We do not know and are unable to foresee all consequences of our actions in the virtual space. Rules, the culture of using the Internet and laws pertaining to it – are only being created.

In many ways our situation is actually much worse. Technology changes much faster than these few decades ago; this means that it’s much harder to catch up with cultural changes, with customs and regulations. It gets even worse: possible ill effects of our inability to foresee all consequences of certain actions are significantly delayed and not as spectacular, as consequences of not noticing a car approaching (although not always).

Hence, it’s harder for us to notice such ill effects, take them into account and verify or change our customs, our internet hygiene. If consequences of my bad decision turn out only 5 years from now on some job interview I fail due to some pictures from a party, published 2 years ago – during these 7 years I am unaware of the fact that putting those pictures on-line was a mistake. And there is a huge chance I will make this mistake many, many times during this time.

Not only does the technology change faster than ever, we are reacting to those changes (through making changes to our customs, culture, laws) slower than before. This is extremely dangerous – but we will make notice of it 5 or 10 years from now, when today’s teens will be trying to get their first jobs, while their prospective employers will verify them with the help from Uncle Google and Big Brother Facebook.

Red flags¶

This is precisely the reason why some organisations and people (including myself) are warning about giving up privacy (of which citizens are not always aware), about giving our personal data and private communication away to corporations and centralized networks.

It is, of course, possible that we are overreacting – like the proponents of “red flag” laws. However, it is often better to be a bit overcautious – so that we’re not all engulfed in technocomplacency and blind fascination over new technologies.

Long story short, I have been invited by La Quadrature to Brussels in order to help performing a “lobbytomy” concerning ACTA in the Europarliament. A write-up on all the great hacktivism fun we are having will come later, now I want to document the srs bsns stuff.

There were several ACTA-related events planned for this week, hence the idea to come down here and try to influence the MEPs.

At this point we have already been to two of the events:

• the press conference by ACTA rapporteur and shadow rapporteur;
• ITRE Committee meeting, with ACTA in the agenda.

Here’s a short summary for both.

The Conference¶

It was fairly interesting and not bad at all. The rapporteurs said that:

• there will be an “interim report” on ACTA in a few months;
• Europarliament should refer ACTA to ECJ on its own terms, not jointly with the European Commission.

The “interim report” thing, while a good sign, is not as important as it sounds and as far as I understand will not be binding in any way to the EP. It’s not a part of any procedure, it’s more of a kind of an initiative by the rapporteur.

Referring ACTA to ECJ by Europarliament separately from the European Commission is an interesting move; however, we do not know if it is actually possible for two different referrals to be presented to the ECJ – and even if in fact it is, it might be so that there is only a single question possible to ask: “is ACTA compatible with the acquis and the treaties”. Hence, if the Commission asks it already (framing it in a way favourable to ACTA), it might not be possible to ask it again by the EP.

Either way, the right question to ask seems to be:

Can ACTA be interpreted and implemented in an abusive way that would be incompatible with the acquis and the treaties?

And the answer to this question is a resounding “yes”.

ITRE Committee meeting¶

ACTA was only a single part of the agenda, but visibly it was the most important one (many people left after it has been discussed).

This meeting has been summarized very well by La Quadrature, it’s definitely worth a read. I will just add a bit to it from my perspective.

First of all, the arguments against the treaty were multiple and much stronger in their substance than arguments for. Human rights and the threat of censorship (well described by our Polish MEP, Mr Gróbarczyk, with whom I had the pleasure of talking just 2 hours before on this very topic); threat to privacy and personal data; hinderance to businesses and stiffling innovation; finally – whether the treaty is useful at all, and the non-transparent, undemocratic process of the treaty’s creation.

There were, however, two voices defending ACTA: one, obviously, from a representative of the European Commission, invited to the meeting; the other from Daniel Caspary, a German MEP and a member of the ITRA Committee itself.

And, at least to me, they actually sounded a bit desperate. Their main strategy seemed to be spreading FUD.

Calm the discussion

The very first argument that was called upon was, in fact, the need to calm the discussion down, with a strong hint that it should be gentlemen and experts talking about it, not the general populace.

This is preposterous: for years ACTA process was not transparent and undemocratic, on closed meetings and private sessions of such “gentlemen and experts” that did not even have the common decency to invite representatives of people they were trying to legislate around.

Now, suddenly, when the streets and nations spoke their minds and completely disavowed this treaty, along with the secrecy of the process, ACTA proponents call for “calming down” of the discussion. As if any dissent, any opinions against it – in fact, any opinion of The People – were fearmongering and factiousness.

Nothing changes

As before, it has been claimed that ACTA does not change anything. This is not true – and even if it were, why sign it, then?

It’s all about access to justice

The second absolutely preposterous argument – ACTA is not about copyright, it’s about access to justice. As if huge media corporations that would be the main beneficiaries of ACTA, need better access to justice, or in fact understand what “justice” means.

Car parts and safety

Over 70% of car parts sold in one of the European countries are counterfeit, and that is a serious security concern – and ACTA is supposed to fight that.

First of all, there was no definition of a counterfeit car part. Secondly, while there was a survey on the amount of “counterfeit” parts sold cited, neither the year, country, title nor authors were given.

Not to mention that absolutely no proof on existence the supposed “security risks” associated by that (or the extent of those risks) was offered.

Balance

Yet again the argument of “balance” was brought forth:

We must strike a balance between fundamental rights: freedom of speech, freedom from censorship and intellectual property laws

Obviously, this is a sly and ill-meant purely rhetoric argument – because intellectual property laws, especially when not concerning people but business entities, are clearly and definitely not “fundamental rights”.

Climate package

Finally, an attempt to counter the “China and India did not sign, so ACTA will not work anyway” argument was made, in the form of a question why didn’t people bring this argument up against the Kyoto protocol.

Fact is that ACTA and Kyoto protocol are very different things, concerning completely different areas. While the latter can actually achieve its aims even with incomplete list of signatories (because even so, the emissions will be lower), the former cannot – as any party that is not bound by its provision will undermine the whole construct.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending an Open debate on ACTA, held at the University of Silesia in Katowice. Among many distinguished guests (including the Polish Ombudsman, representatives of NGOs and ZAiKS) a member of the Polish parliament, Mr Andrzej Gałażewski earned a special mention – and an award for the best quotes of the day, hands down.

I think all the participants were surprised with Mr Gałażewski’s defence of ACTA signing decision, taking the form of a claim that no negative signals about the treaty surfaced before the decision was made. After a quick reply to this misconception by Robert Partyka of the Polish Linux User Group, Mr Gałażewski commented:

Outside arguments that reach us impact our decisions only when they are suitably intellectually packaged

Apparently, substantial arguments submitted by NGOs against ACTA were not “suitably intellectually packaged”. As we all know, what had impact on the decision were the protests. We also know the slogans used during those protests – so we have some examples of what, in fact, is a “suitably intellectually packaged” argument. And thanks to a member of the Polish parliament, no less!

That, however, is not all! When talking about the future of ACTA, Mr Gałażewski remarked that at this point "this agreement is passé", and asked directly how is he planning to vote when (if?) the ratification vote comes to the Polish parliament, he replied:

We are not going to commit political suicide

Well, at least it’s all in the clear now! I mean, how the politicians make their decisions. That substantial, on-topic arguments are not the best way to influence such decisions (they are not “suitably intellectually packaged”), was public knowledge for a long time. That many politicians are political opportunists is also not that surprising.

It is, though, great to know that, besides opportunism, there are some additional criteria – even if it’s just fashion.

When, in Poland, new Internet filtering and censorship ideas came about, one of the arguments used against such schemes was that it violates the principle of secrecy of correspondence, guaranteed by the 12th Article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and 49th Article of the Polish Constitution.

While it was usually quite hard to convince the proponents of net censorship that this is precisely that – censorship and a violation of this important freedom – nobody questioned that in the regular, physical variety such actions are completely unacceptable, unheard of in a Free Country, and remind of the times rightfully gone by.

This, however, might change soon – European Union decided it’s more important to defend “intellectual property” than human rights and freedoms. According to new EU regulation being drafted, customs will gain powers to open small packages coming from outside the EU (but addressed to EU citizens) and destroy their contents once materials infringing IP rights have been found.

That was definitely not what I meant when I wrote that the same basic principles should be upheld in the Internet as in the AFK…

First, I must say I was totally flabbergasted by today’s statement by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, concerning the change of heart the Government had in the topic of ACTA. And I am not the only one. Nothing suggested that during the last weeks.

However, the more surprising, the more welcome it is.

From what I gather what has been said, and maybe more importantly HOW it has been said, is a clear indication that Poland will not, in fact, ratify ACTA and is clearly opposed to it on the EU-level. This is extremely important and a clear success in anti-ACTA fight.

The PM could send ACTA to ratification in Poland now in order to throw it out quickly here; but he already said a week ago they are “halting” the ratification process in Poland, so he’s in a tight spot with that and in some sense he cannot do that at this time, politically. I can understand and respect that, providing that other concrete actions (sending ACTA to CJEU?) will follow during the next few days.

No info on the retraction of the Polish signature. This is interesting, but I cannot comment on that, I am not a lawyer. Maybe the Government decided it’s more important to focus on Europarliament rejection of the treaty? This could make sense.

All in all, we (the NGOs) are very pleasantly surprised with that move and we are definitely supportive of it. However, that’s just a start of two long processes:

• throwing ACTA out in EU;
• global debate on (much needed) intellectual property rights reform.

Both of those themes were present in what Tusk said and it is a very positive and welcome sign of goodwill, and possibly a good start to rebuilding trust, lost on this fateful day of January the 19th.

Watching the situation with ACTA in Poland unfold during the last few weeks (and taking active part in it all, through my affiliations) got me thinking about Anonymous. Obviously, they played a huge part in what was happening, both positive and negative.

Positive – because they did help raise public awereness of ACTA (although saying there were no protests before Anons got involved just isn’t true). Negative – because through their “attacks” (which I would say were something between hacktivism and vandalism) on Polish Government websites they gave a perfect excuse for the Prime Minister to sign ACTA anyway, citing “not succombing to blackmail” as the reason. This played well with part of the public, and unfortunately helped push anti-ACTA activists towards the “pirates, terrorists” corner.

At this point I already started thinking about Anons as purely hedonistic bratty pricks, getting on the Anti ACTA bandwagon in an attempt to get a lame excuse for them having fun with vandalizing stuff on the Internet.

But then something increadibly curious happened. With the help from Anons from outside and from within Poland we were able to ask Anons to halt their attacks. And they did.

Ethical force of nature¶

Finally, it dawned on me – Anonymous may be hedonistic, impulsive, with small regard to effects of their actions, but they are still, for the most part, ethical in their own special way.

The closest description to how their actions feel from the outside is “a force of nature”, the unstoppable-antilope-herd-stampede kind, like the one that crushed Mufasa in “Lion King”.

However, even en-masse or in a herd, even with all the anonimity the Internet avails them, and even though they are (or at least, feel) virtually unpunishable for their actions (which could mean drifting towards the immoral), it is still extremely rare to actually see purely evil actions on their part! Or, using the “Lion King” analogy further, it doesn’t seem easy for the hyenas to start an Anonymous stampede against a cute little kitty.

Au contraire! Usually, it’s the hyenas that get stampeded because they already hurt some cute little kitty. Like the Police abusing their power.

Of course the actions undertaken by Anons may lead to both good and bad, but still – they are not usually undertaken with pure evil in mind. Attempts to rush Anons against some personal enemy usually end in the “not your personal army” category, sometimes even backfiring at the attemptee.

Without a doubt the single most important reason for Anons to do something is “Teh Lulz”, and how spectacular or notable it might become. But it seems there is an unwritten and unspoken rule that it can’t be pure evil (however defined).

The Corponymous¶

This is not how corporate people work. What they do is “serious business”, and it seems that the higher one ranks in a corporation, the more the term “evil” fits in their job description.

However, there are many similarities between those two groups of people. Like the Anonymous, corporate people are also virtually anonymous, almost completely anonimized by the behemoth they work for. Like the Anonymous, actions of a single corporate employee are almost completely irrelevant – it’s the herd, the sheer mass of the whole behemoth thrown in a single direction that makes a change. Anonymous are more-or-less indemnified for their actions by technology, corporate employees are indemnified by law. It’s extremely hard to change the direction of Anonymous stampede – and it’s close to impossible to change the direction of a corporate entity. Anonymous flock behind symbols, the Corponymous execute their actions under the aegis of corporate logos.

So, with all the similarities, how come the Corponymous do not exhibit the same level of morality in their day-to-day work the Anonymous seem to do in their actions?

Chaos vs Structure¶

There are some crucial differences that might help explain this, at least in some part.

First of all, while people can apparently join and leave both groups whenever they like, it’s much harder in the case of the Corponymous. This is a job. This is a serious commitment, and walking away from it would have huge repercussions. That’s not the case with Anonymous, where everybody can join-in and drop-out as they please, without any hassle. As soon as an Anon doesn’t like what he or she is doing, he or she stops.

Secondly, corporations are very hierarchical entities – something Anonymous (by design) is very definitely not.

This has many consequences, not the least of which is (apparent or factual) indemnification for actions done in the name of the whole. Anons are hard to track, but are not indemnified, and they are well aware of that. The Corponymous however can, on a court hearing, always say they were ordered to.

This is maybe the crucial point. Within the Anonymous, the responsibility for actions of every single person in the herd lies squarely with that particular person. The Corponymous, however, perceive that the responsibility for their actions is blurry. And thus, maybe even more importantly, they can rationalize any action they undertake, however atrocious, as not being their fault.

A New Hope¶

That speaks volumes about the human race in general. And it speaks well!

Even completely anonymous and seemingly untraceable (thus not threatened by any punishment), even when claiming to act completely hedonistically, sometimes even acting against the law, people tend to act according to some ethos, at least in groups, as long as they are not granted the leisure of off-loading the responsibility for their actions on somebody else.

That seems counter-intuitive, as most of us would feel that the inevitability of punishment is what keeps people from doing evil. Turns out that for a lot of people, even in such a shady group as Anonymous, the sheer fact of being the responsible party, is enough of a moral incentive.

The bad part is that a lot of the society building blocks today are strongly hierarchical, and thus allow responsibility off-loading. Major religions also tend to create conditions for it, either with a distant deity that “has a plan”; with vague and ambiguous, obsolete rules; or with instructions to unconditionally follow the judgement of a select few individuals.

There’s a reason why some of the most heinous acts in human history had been done under the banner of a government or a religion.

The great part, however, is that we all seem to have a built-in moral compass, and we do actually use it, even when there is nothing that can make us. And that is something I am very grateful Anonymous shows.

Hipocrisy of the media corporations and other entities engaged in the War on Fun is indeed fascinating.

On one hand they hold firmly that copyright infringement (as downloading and making files available on the Internet without proper license should be called) is “theft” or “piracy”, as if those files were a physical thing one can deprive somebody of. So, they talk about files on the Internet as if they still were physical media, with all the (handy) consequences.

However, on the other hand the physical media are more and more often encumbered with so called “protection mechanisms”, because of which I – a paying customer – am unable to access the content I paid for, as soon as I go to, say, the United States. There is even a hard push against the second-hand market for physical media – yes, the media business is trying to kill the first-sale doctrine, something we all take for granted for decades.

That hipocrisy can be spectacular at times. For example, in case of selling content via iTunes. Long story short, a band has an agreement which stipulates that from sales (e.g. of a physical medium with their content) they get much less than from licensing. The argument here is that to “sell”, the physical media must be first produced, which creates additional costs.

Obviously, those costs are not present in “digital sales”, e.g. via iTunes – but that doesn’t prevent Warner Music Group from claiming these are (a’la physical) “sales”, not “licensing” (which of course means they can pay artists much less). I am curious what would WMG do if the consumers that bought those files via iTunes decided to go with such “physical” interpretation and would want to re-sell their files as per the first-sale doctrine?

The rule of thumb that Big Media seems to follow is that if something is on Teh Intertubes, they try to use convenient for them “physical media” interpretation; however, when talking about real physical media, they choose to ignore some rules regarding those. It’s nice to be able to choose what rules one abides and when, isn’t it?..

By the way, maybe it’s time to start playing the same game, and also start calling the copyright term law extentions – “grand theft”? In fact, it would be much more justified in this case – while the Big Media do not lose access to files that are made available on the Internet, the society indeed does lose access to culture – recently to music and songs in the EU, for another 20 years.

Today at the Chancellery of the Polish Prime Minister a meeting between Polish NGOs, businesses and government officials (Ministry of Culture and National Heritage; Ministry of Economy; Ministry of Justice) has been held, under the aegis of the newly established Ministry of Administration and Digitalization (unfortunately, Minister Michał Boni was not present). Main topic was ACTA – it was obviously nicely aligned with the anti-SOPA and anti-PIPA blackout that was in fact still going on at 11AM CET when the meeting started.

It was tense, it turned out that in just a week, on Jan 26, ACTA will be signed by the European Union; after that the treaty has to be ratified, first by the European Parliament, then by member states. In Poland, the decision about the upcoming ACTA signing has been made on Nov 25, 2011 in a so-called “circulatory mode”, i.e. not on an actuall government meeting. Documents have been sent to all the Ministries, and when none voiced comments nor concerns (which would prompt a meeting), it was deemed accepted.

Interesting part is that the request for just such a mode of acceptance went out on the last day of the previous cabinet, and it was signed in the first days of the new cabinet. The M inistry of Culture of course holds that it was a coincidence and was caused by pure date collision, waiting for the Polish translation of the treaty, etc.

Such a mode of making this decision – non-transparent, behind closed doors, without any way of faciliating a discussion on the merits – is in stark contrast with what the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk promised during one of the high-profile meetings with “the Internauts” in May 2011, namely that no further steps will be undertaken as long as a full and open discussion about the treaty is conducted.

Not the least surprised with such revelations on the advanced status of ACTA adoption was the representative of our host, the Ministry of Administration and Digitalization. We might hear much more interesting facts on the matter during the enxt few days – the ministry promised to publish information pertaining to the negotiations, expert opinions on the legality of ACTA and how, if at all, would it change local laws, and other materials.

Representative of the Ministry of Culture, which faciliated ACTA negotiation/acceptance process in the name of the Polish Government, was only able to report the history of the acceptance process and sketch the next needed steps. All questions, doubts and arguments against ACTA were met with standard phrases (“The priority for this Government is the effective enforcement of IP laws”), and when asked about the official stance of the Ministry on ACTA he basically quoted, word-by-word, the official position of the European Commission (argued against many times through the last few months). For example, we never received an answer to the simple question if the Ministry is able to name a single Polish company that will benefit from ACTA.

Hence, we await the promised materials and some merits-based arguments and answers to our questions.

Signing of ACTA by EU next week is not the end of the line! It’s actually a beginning of the adoption process. It still needs to be ratified by the European Parliament, and then individually by member states.

The Europarliament ratification is extremely important here, as it’s an “all or nothing” vote. ACTA either passes and is ratified, or is rejected in full. This is where we need to focus our actions.

Ratification by member states only concerns parts of the treaty (albeit parts important for free speech on the Internet); if ACTA sails through the Europarliament, member states will only be able to cripple ACTA, not reject it entirely. There is much work ahead of us!

Europarliament ratification vote date is still unknown.

Update¶

Igor Ostrowski, a Minister in the Ministry of Administration and Digitization and our host today at the meeting, tweeted afterwards:

Minister Boni will ask the Prime Minister to hold the signing of ACTA until questions that arised on the meeting are cleared

More information¶

You can find a more thorough description of the meeting and a fuller analysis (albeit in Polish) on websites of Piotr “VaGla” Waglowski and Panoptykon Foundation.

Contact¶

If you have any questions, please contact me! I might not be very responsive during the next week, but I will check my inboxes at least once a day. You can also send an e-mail to stop-acta@brama.elka.pw.edu.pl

Free as in Freedom is not enough anymore. Free Culture is not enough anymore. Accessibility is not enough anymore. Open Education and Open Access, Open Data, Open Government and Transparency are not enough anymore. They are all not, by themselves, enough – even to achieve their own goals. If we are all to succeed, we have to move beyond our particular pet peeves and projects and become Free as in United.

You might have already heard or seen Cory Doctorow’s “The Coming War on General Computation” 28C3 talk. If not, please do. And when you do, you will perhaps come to the same realisation as I did – that each of our vibrant and fascinating freedom- and access-loving communities alone is weak and vulnerable to being marginalized. How? Through attacks on freedoms our particular community is not concerned with.

Free Culture enthusiasts, defending the Public Domain, convincing artists to publish on one of the great Creative Commons licenses – how will you access such “freely-available” content if it’s locked down? Not locked down by the copyright law, a lock-in which you have been fighting against, but by technical means, i.e. it’s only available in some format inaccessible to you as long as you don’t buy expensive, proprietary software. Even when such proprietary software is free of charge, what if suddenly the vendor decides otherwise and cuts your access unless you pay up?

Accessibility advocates, what will you be accessing if all content is paywalled, and available through proprietary, vendor-locked software?

Free Software and Open Source developers and users, what of your great platforms and access to code, if you are not able to use them to enjoy and participate, even if only as spectators, in the locked-down culture? What of it all, if you cannot enjoy it because it’s not accessible?

Open Data and Transparency activists, how will you be able to build truly Open Government without full control over tools such Government uses? How can you access the data if it’s encoded in yet another proprietary, closed data format, not supported by software available to you?

And how, finally, can we be open in education and academia, if we are not using free and open tools to tackle free and open content that we can share with our pupils and peers in a way that’s accessible to all interested parties?

We are all connected, our goals are intertwined, and we desperately need each other in order to achieve them. Why are we still doing all this separately?

I call upon you all – Free/Libre/Open-Source Software, Free Culture, Accessibility, Open Education and Open Access, Open Data, Open Government, Transparency along with all other freedom loving communities, unite! Let’s try to understand each other, let’s try to support each other. Let’s try to promote ideas of our respective projects, together.

When advocating accessibility, advocate open formats, free software and free culture licenses. When discussing software freedom, remember about the needs of the handicapped, and keep in mind that you need open content for software to be really useful. When opening the data or the government, please open it all the way, right down to open formats so that it is being usable with free software. When educating, educate using free and open tools, and free content. Finally, when fighting for the Public Domain and getting cultural works published on Creative Commons licenses, remember to propose file formats that enable even more people to enjoy them in an unrestricted manner.

I am not advocating centralisation, mind you! In fact, that would be counter-productive – we still need to be a diverse, de-centralised and diffused global community of independent initiatives. But we need to communicate a bit better, co-operate a bit better, and be aware of all other agents of this fantastic Gift Culture revolution. And act upon it when possible.