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Discussions on civil liberties and information policy
Bitcoin, Innovation Of Governance; Lightning Rod Striking Balance Of Power

18 July 2016 21:00
Activism – Nozomi Hayase: In its seven years of existence, Bitcoin has gained wide mainstream
attention with its disruptive potential in finance. Yet, currency is just its first application. The
technology’s other potential lies in affecting governance and law. Democracy has weakened in
the existing systems of governance. With concentration of power created through hierarchy,
ordinary people are kept out of influencing policies or participating in vital decision-making. In
this lock down system, many politicians do not represent true interests of the people and those
who do are often blocked out. Can Bitcoin strike this balance of power? In this article, I argue
how Bitcoin is not just an innovation of banking and finance, but at its core concerns innovation
of governance systems, built upon a new security model that protects and empowers everyday
people.
For many decades, activists, workers and concerned citizens have been working hard and dedicating
their life to bring equality and justice. Unprecedented levels of government and corporate corruption in
recent years have signaled a breakdown of checks and balances, while an extreme trend toward
authoritarianism has discouraged popular dissent, often depriving people of hope.
Problems are not simply a lack of care or will for change. The fundamental issue seems to revolve
around our basic view of humanity. Many tend to think that people are inherently good and operate with
similar motives to themselves. The deep failure of democracy has shaken up these assumptions,
showing this to be a naive and overly idealistic view of man. The 2008 financial meltdown and crisis of
legitimacy exposed the existence of individuals who have a radically different makeup than the rest of
the population. These are psychopaths, whom psychopathy expert Robert Hare called “social predators
who charm, manipulate, and ruthlessly plow their way through life”.
Psychopaths exhibit total lack of conscience and empathy for others. They embody a dark side of
individuality, with aggressive and narrow selfish desires that often come in conflict with the public good.
Regulation has shown to be ineffective and laws often fail to offer protection because its very
mechanism has been gutted and used by those in power for their advantage. The question now is how
to account for this hidden vulture within humanity and build a system that is resilient to these adversarial
forces.
Security Holes Within Representative Democracy
In that seminal white paper, mysterious creator Satoshi Nakamoto described Bitcoin as a purely
peer-to-peer version of electronic cash that would allow “online payments to be sent directly from one
party to another without going through a financial institution”. The core invention is distributed trust and
Nakamoto stated that it was put forward as a solution to the “inherent weakness of the trust based
model”, where financial institutions act as trusted third parties.
What is this inherent weakness identified by the inventor of Bitcoin? Most people are bound by empathy
and naturally restrain actions in consideration of others’ needs. On the other hand, psychopaths are not
governed by these internal laws of empathy and therefore cannot regulate self-interests. Moreover, as
was articulated by psychiatrist Hervey M. Cleckley in Mask of Sanity, deception is at the core of
psychopathy. With superficial charm, these predators hide their claws and teeth and gleefully trespass
other’s boundaries, erasing their trails and even manipulating laws to get away with their crimes.
Trust is a vital foundation of human relationship and this has become psychopaths’ primary entry point
for predation. These ruthless individuals fake empathy to elicit trust and then exploit it. When a
governance model is structured in a manner that relies heavily on trust, such a system inevitably
becomes vulnerable to this unknown member of society who can cleverly mimic good attributes of
human nature and blend into society.
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Representative democracy that requires people to trust those who claim to represent them in the form
of elected officials has increasingly become a mask used by these ruthless individuals to hide and gain a
grip on the populace. Behind the veil of secrecy, psychopaths leverage our trusting nature and construct
promise-based governance. For instance, corporate masters behind the charade of electoral politics
sponsor political candidates, who with campaign promises keep people passive and manage down their
expectation levels. With future faking, which involves making plans that will never happen and
gas-lighting, a tactic known to challenge one’s memory, they deceive and gain power over others.
Money dependent on systems of representation requires trust to work. It has now largely been turned
into promissory notes and fabricated interest obligations, becoming a weapon for psychopathic control.
The hidden captains of this managed democracy direct the flow of currency through financial
engineering and have created incentive structures that are bent toward preserving their power. Radical
deregulation is enacted under the banner of a ‘free market’ to manipulate interest rates and fiscal policy,
creating never ending cycles of harsh austerity and usury.
Stimulated by toxic asset bubbles, derivatives and quantitative easing, these incentives work like
invisible hands of the market, promoting fraud and depravity. It suppresses democratic values by
controlling information, which is the currency of democracy, and constraining free speech with
economic censorship, as was seen in the case of the financial blockade against WikiLeaks. All of this
has resulted in the creation of a two-tiered justice system and derisked capitalism, where those in power
are never allowed to fail and are not held accountable either by markets or the legal system.
Bitcoin as a New Security Model
Bitcoin addresses this inherent weakness of third party trust that has been exploited to create systemic
parasitic rent-seeking structures. As asset-based digital cash, it offers an alternative to the promissory
system of value creation by decree from above. Bitcoin’s underlying technology, the blockchain is a
public asset ledger. This is a distributed database that records a history of transactions in the network
without anyone in charge. Once data is verified, no one can undo it. This immutable timestamp goes
beyond simple accounting of monetary transactions.
Bitcoin enables a new security model and it addresses the problem of security holes in the existing
trust-based model of governance. Author and security expert Andreas Antonopoulos called this “trust
by computation” that has “no central authority or trusted third party”. He explained this form of trust as
follows:
Trust does not depend on excluding bad actors, as they cannot ‘fake’ trust. They cannot
pretend to be the trusted party, as there is none. They cannot steal the central keys as
there are none. They cannot pull the levers of control at the core of the system, as there is
no core and no levers of control.
With this trust by computation, the need to trust institutions or central authorities is replaced with
mathematics. Human trust is easily exploited by those prone to act with little concern for others. In the
Bitcoin network where there is no point of control, attackers cannot fake trust. In order to gain control
over the network, they would have to compromise math.
Power corrupts, and the best way to check and balance power is to not have these points of control in
the first place. Thus, decentralization is a natural progression of security models. In a decentralized
system, there is no ladder of power that psychopaths can climb and exploit others. Through distributing
trust across a network and minimizing the necessity to trust a third party, the system removes
vulnerabilities that often lead to such concentration of power.
Honest Account of the Darkness Within
So, how does Bitcoin distribute trust and secure this peer-to-peer network? In traditional systems,
psychopaths rise to power, cheat and control the game. In these new cryptographic systems,
psychopathic deception and attempts to cheat the system could manifest in covert chip fabrication,
spam attacks and miners colluding in a mining pool to earn more than their fair share at the expense of
honest miners.
Yet, the genius of this protocol is in the ability for this math-based network to enforce rules of consensus
and fair play. At its foundation is Satoshi. The Japanese character of his name is translated as history of
philosophy. This philosophy is like wisdom gained through history; an understanding of the contradiction
inherent in man as both corruptible as well as perfectible. This is at the crux of Bitcoin’s game theory.
Instead of naively assuming good intentions in others, the creator of this technology expected that some
would try to cheat and attack the network. This is an acknowledgment that we live in a world where we
cannot just eliminate psychopaths out of the equation.
This assumption is shared by developers who are committed to Satoshi’s vision of this particular
security model. At the Hong Kong Scaling Bitcoin conference, developer Andrew Poelstra explained the
mindset that Bitcoin lives in an adversarial environment and that the possibility of individuals acting
selfishly and taking advantage of others’ good will needs to be factored into designing its governance.
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Bitcoin core developer Peter Todd also emphasized the necessity of adversarial thinking. In a Twitter
interaction on the topic of security, Todd noted, “security isn’t about people promising they won’t do
something, it’s about people being unable to do something”.
When greed and self-interests are condemned or denied, these aspects do not disappear, but are
simply pushed out of sight and kept hidden. Efforts through law enforcement to regulate and punish
selfish actors can just make them more cunning and deceitful. Bitcoin’s security model is based on
honest accounting of our selfishness within. Instead of trying to shun this darkness, it finds a way to
acknowledge and openly work with it.
Rule of Algorithmic Consensus
What governs Bitcoin is a consensus mechanism called proof-of work. By embodying Bitcoin’s
particular security assumption, it works like a lighting rod. It attracts potentially destructive forces and
diverts them in order to protect the network.
Through using bitcoins as tokens of value with a combination of cryptographic hash functions, game
theory and economic incentives, a whole new economy is now being created. Bitcoin mining is a
broadcast math competition engaged by a network of computers around the world with clear rules such
as the total number of bitcoin created, a predictable issuance rate and automatic adjustment of mining
difficulty. By using precious resources, miners work to solve difficult math problems. Each 10 minutes,
problems are solved and whoever solves the problem first wins a fixed number of bitcoins. This process
leads to both creation of money and clearing of transactions and it is designed to create economies of
scale, with rewards proactively incentivizing all to follow the network rules of consensus.
Miners play a crucial role in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Yet, what makes the system resilient is not just
miners and developers, but everyone’s participation in the network. This includes merchants, investors,
entrepreneurs and users. Journalist Aaron van Wirdum describes how full nodes that relay and validate
transactions within the network check and enforce Bitcoin’s consensus rules. He explains how “not all
full nodes are equal from a network perspective”. The full nodes that miners, companies and developers
run “all add weight to a set of consensus rules”. Yet, he emphasizes how all users play a crucial role in
governance, as they are what ultimately gives Bitcoin value.
By removing third parties, the inventor of this technology found a way to create a direct feedback loop
among all participants, aligning the balance of supply and demand with the force of consensus, which is
more democratic than the current oligarchic system that operates under a pretense of democracy. In the
current financially engineered markets, monetary supply does not correlate with the real needs of
people. Yet, with this new Bitcoin market, monetary supply is created through real demand with the
feature of infinite divisibility (bitcoin can be divided into 8 decimal points and more if consensus is
reached).
The only way miners and developers get paid for their work is to be on the side of consensus, so they
are incentivized to respond to the demands of users. This direct feedback loop created though
decentralization is a crucial wire that connects the lighting rod with the ground.
Law of Self-Regulation
In the current system of representation, activists and human right lawyers have been trying to regulate
greed and hold selfish actors accountable. ‘Power does not concede without demand’, yet in the
existing model of governance, people struggle to make real demands. Any plea for change does not
reach the merciless logic of this small section of society. While traditional efforts have shown to be
ineffective in enforcing rule of law upon the elites, Bitcoin brings a new form of accountability through
algorithmic regulation.
The Bitcoin incentive structure, designed as a lightning rod, captures and creatively engages the mind of
psychopaths. Hare pointed out how a psychopaths’ brain is wired differently and how they have
weakened moral force. Unlike most people, they cannot overcome temptations and restrain their actions
in the face of opportunities for short-term self-gratification. Hare described this as a lack of ability to
imagine the consequences of their own actions, noting that for psychopaths, “concrete rewards are
pitted against vague future consequences – with the rewards clearly the stronger contender”.
Research from Vanderbilt University on the brain’s reward system in psychopathy further supports this
finding. Lead researcher Joshua W. Buckholtz described how in experiments, individuals with high
scores in psychopathy get heightened levels of dopamine responses in anticipated rewards compared
to non-psychopathic subjects, showing how the brain of a psychopath is more susceptible to rewards.
Buckholtz explained that this is because “once they focus on the chance to get a reward, psychopaths
are unable to alter their attention until they get what they’re after” and these rewards override any
concerns over threat or punishment.
With this ability to think like an attacker, market forces are used in the Bitcoin network to create a kind of
electric circuit that allows energy to move naturally and convert it for good use. This enables a new law
to regulate ruthless actions without relying on the moral strength of any individual or external authority.
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Robert Wolinsky, senior manager of blockchain research, explains how “Satoshi introduces a cost
equation to cheating/collusion via the proof-of-work protocol”, making it clear to parties what the cost of
attacking the network is and having them pay for it upfront. Furthermore, by making the rewards for
playing by the rules higher than the value of attacking the network, it can proactively protect the system
from the lack of impulse control of those who are instinctively programmed to strike with no remorse.
While the language of altruism and empathy doesn’t compute with those who have fallen from a
communal ground, Bitcoin is a source code that speaks the language of cold and calculating rationale
that can reach the selfish parts within ourselves and turn on the brain of the super computer of the
world. Bitcoin mining reintroduces risk into the market. Here, concrete rewards are used to channel
risk-taking and self-serving inclinations, making all compete for honesty and truth. The competitive drive
of survival of the fittest, fueled by this global math contest does not create ruthless bloodbaths or make
a killing on the back of someone’s misery, but instead is guided to serve the whole network. The fire of
this hashing power burns aggressive and violent parts of our humanity, transforming them into
generating global level security for all.
Power of Free Speech
Over the decades, many democratic governments have been taken over by cannibals within humanity
and become vehicles of control that have lost their fail-safe. Increasingly, people are held hostage by
corrupted political systems. While the flow of currency is controlled, free speech as a foundation of
democracy has increasingly become permissioned.
Satoshi’s act of publishing the white paper in 2008 unleashed the power of free speech. Progress and
true social change is only possible through each person freely sharing their ideas and associating with
fellow men and women to innovate better systems. Bitcoin is an open source project that brings
together diverse developers around the world who are inspired by Satoshi’s freeing of speech. By
writing codes, they too have begun exercising free speech.
While psychopaths deceive us and exploit our trust with promises that never match real actions, Bitcoin,
as a holy grail of the Cypherpunks is stewarded by those who speak with codes instead of making
promises. By making software open source, which allows anyone to read and modify the codes,
innovators of this system make themselves available to be held accountable by their equal peers. This
freely available code calls for voluntary association with this language of risk and reward, which then
builds the network demand for armory against any psychopathic attack.
Governance without central authority can at first seem inefficient. But it is more secure than the current
system of representation. The more the system reduces the need to trust a third party, replacing it with a
borderless network, the lower the security risk becomes. The Bitcoin blockchain opens a door into a
pluralistic society where all can participate in creating many governance models and currencies that
manifest our true values through the principles of mutual aid and voluntary association. Upon such a
secure foundation, progressive ideas of basic income, universal health-care, free tuition as well as
privacy and truly free markets can be built as an app.
As Bitcoin gains more value, the proof-of-work lightning rod attracts malicious attackers. Man is fallible
and each person alone can’t account for themselves. But, through our genuine efforts of working
together to keep the network decentralized, a spark is created that emanates light out of our own
darkness. Every 10 minutes, the heart of the Bitcoin network expands, time-stamping on greed and
antisocial impulses, so the beast inside does not grow too large. The networked consensus lights the
lamp of liberty, validating the universal truth that ordinary people are the source of all legitimacy.
Photo credit – Dr. Frankenstein’s dream II by Joaquin Casarini
Security Researcher Revealing “Secure” Advertising Claim By DigiExam As Utterly False

Threatened With Copyright Monopoly Lawsuit
25 May 2016 20:16
Repression: So it’s happened again – a security researcher showing a marketing claim to be atrociously
false has been threatened with a copyright monopoly lawsuit to take down the posted proof. The
company DigiExam claims that their examination software is “cheat proof”, which it can’t be by
definition when it’s running on somebody’s own computer: these are DRM fantasies. Security researcher
Hannes Aspåker developed a proof of concept to show the claim is false and posted it, and was
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promptly hit with a threat of copyright monopoly infringement lawsuit from DigiExam to take down the
proof: DigiExam is deliberately creating chilling effects on free speech in order to protect its false
marketing.
DigiExam is a company claiming to sell secure education examinations intended to run in an education
environment, but on the student’s own computer. To anybody with a shred of technical knowledge, the
security in this situation is utter nonsense, due to the simple fact that DigiExam doesn’t hold the key to
the student’s own computer, but the student does: the student can run and modify any code they like to
give whatever result they like, including modifying DigiExam’s code to not be cheat proof, which it
therefore isn’t to begin with. This is Security 101 for anybody even mildly technically competent.
This hasn’t prevented DigiExam from making bold (and false) claims about being “cheat-proof”. Security
researcher Hannes Aspåker decided to face the false marketing head on, and developed a proof of
concept showing the modified exam software from DigiExam failing to live up to any of its marketing
claims. This is what security researchers do: they puncture dangerous marketing made of nothing but
hot air. It didn’t sit well with DigiExam, though. Specifically, when seeing this GIF demonstrating how
DigiExam’s product security has been disabled, DigiExam considered it a good idea to threaten the
security researcher with a copyright monopoly infringement lawsuit over this particular demonstration
artwork, which was made by Aspåker and not them:
This kind of legal threat can cause a lot of people to back down in the face of unknown adversity. Most
people don’t know the laws and underlying treaties in detail, and outright fear the concept of facing a
courtroom. Thus, such a threat has a chilling effect on legitimate research, even when the threat is
utterly baseless, which makes it malicious and in bad faith.
However, this particular security researcher contacted me to ask for some advice, and without
technically providing legal advice, I could tell unusually quickly that DigiExam are unusually full of shit.
They have no legal clue whatsoever, they’re just angry that someone is pulling the pants down on an
obvious lie, and are resorting to anything they can come up with in order to save face. This is a
particularly nasty case of deliberately creating chilling effects on baseless takedown grounds just to
protect DigiExam’s marketing. (Disclaimer: Aspåker did not ask me to write this article, I’m doing that on
my own to call attention to the particularly nasty abuse of legal threats on DigiExam’s part.)
Here’s the (legally) recorded call of when this researcher calls DigiExam back and says he won’t take
down the security bulletin in response to the threat:
0:00
0:00
Call in Swedish where the threat from DigiExam is reiterated.
What’s said by DigiExam’s representative in this call is the following (at the one minute mark), after the
lawsuit threat has been reiterated:
— Aspåker: So I understand you’re claiming copyright [to the second GIF and demanding I’m taking it
down]?
— DigiExam: Yes. Our logotype and our interface is our brand, and we have trademark protected them.
It’s simply our property.
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Let’s review: they are claiming they hold a copyright monopoly to the GIF (which was created by
Aspåker, not them), and are saying that the logo and interfaces are their trademark, “simply our
property”. This is a stunning ignorance and conflation of wildly different exclusive rights – the copyright
monopoly and trademark rights – not to mention the utter clueless confusion with property rights, which
is something completely different again from exclusive monopolies.
First, the copyright monopoly goes to the creator of an artwork, end of story. The creator is Aspåker.
There can be some problems when other people’s artwork can be seen as part of the new work, and
they did claim something about the logotype, something that literally thousands of court cases have
determined is perfectly fine to portray in critical reports. Further, they move on to claim trademark rights
– where you register your name (or color or smell etc) in one of 45 classes of goods and services, to
prevent other actors in that class to use your trademark. It’s noteworthy here that if you don’t sell a good
or service, you can’t infringe on somebody’s trademark by definition. DigiExam aren’t even aware of
these most basic concepts of the threats they’re spewing.
To top it off, Aspåker’s advisory was posted on Medium, which doesn’t go by Swedish laws in the first
place but United States code, which has an extensive Fair Use defense against this type of bullshit.
Ohyeah, there’s also that rather important detail: Aspåker isn’t the legal publisher in the first place,
Medium is. DigiExam had no business giving a Cease and Desist to Aspåker to begin with: he’s the legal
equivalent of a reporter publishing at Medium.
(However, in republishing the GIF here on this blog, I am also taking on that role as publisher. And I’m
based in Sweden. As a constitutionally protected publisher. I also happen to be one of the world’s
leading experts on copyright monopoly law, unlike DigiExam, and would love to crush such assholes
under ten tons of bricks if they so much as whisper a threat to me.)
The Internet doesn’t take kindly to baseless takedown threats in order to save one’s own face – in
particular not copyright monopoly threats against security disclosures. This shit should be
criminal. This action from DigiExam was far more harmful than the security bulletin in the first
place, and they deserve to know what the Internet thinks of their shit. This kind of behavior, to
throw around force and legal threats to deliberately create chilling effects against researchers
who reveal your marketing claims as bullshit, is one of the least acceptable things conceivable to
free speech.
The full article by Hannes Aspåker is reproduced (and republished!) below for reference.
The Myth of the Cheat Proof Digital Exam

Why it is impossible to lock someone out of their own computer
The age-old tradition of pen-and-paper exams has barely changed at all over the last century, and it
carries with it a lot of burden. They are costly and environmentally unfriendly to print. Students complain
of hand cramps and teachers grumble over unreadable handwriting. And what to do when one of the
students’ exams is misplaced and then trashed by the janitor?
Of course, there is a reason exams have not yet experienced the digital revolution that most other parts
of our society have. If you let students write exams on their own computers, the technology not only
streamlines the process, but also inadvertently gifts the test takers with thousands of new and
imaginative ways to cheat the system — smuggling hand-written notes will seem like the stone age when
compared to Wikipedia. The alternative, schools supplying a trusted test device to each student in the
class, is an economical and administrative nightmare.
This has not stopped a handful of young startups from trying to tackle this problem. The most
successful one I have heard of, the Swedish company DigiExam, promises the best of both worlds:
Students can bring their own devices to the exam hall, and their system will ensure that they can not
use the computers to cheat while writing their answers.
The company has seen a fair bit of success. The application is used at more than 600 schools in over 40
countries, including more prestigious ones such as the Stockholm School of Economics and Columbia
University.
Unsurprisingly, the cheat proof aspect plays an important role in their marketing: On the website they
boldly label themselves as “Easy to use — Cheat proof — Reliable”. A slogan that, unfortunately, falls flat
as soon as you realise it would take a competent student no more than 15 minutes to circumvent every
single safeguard they have put in place.
To be fair, it must be said that DigiExam has made admirable effort to prevent abuse. When the exam
has started the student can do nothing but answer the questions — no switching to Wikipedia to check
some quick facts. Full kiosk mode is enforced, and with it the menu bar, desktop switching, and all other
functions not strictly necessary for completing the exam are disabled. Scheduling a script to pause the
process at system level after the exam has started will just leave you with an unresponsive screen. You
might try to bypass all this by opening the app in a virtual machine, but you will find that DigiExam easily
detects the VM and shuts itself down.
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As said, it is an admirable effort, but ultimately futile. Because the challenge they are trying to solve is —
by definition — impossible.
When somebody owns a computer, that in all likelihood means they have root access to it. And when
they have root access, they are capable of changing the behaviour of any program that runs on it in any
way they’d like.
How To Disable Cheat Protection in Any Digital Exam
An application is essentially just a bunch of machine instructions: a collection of ones and zeroes that
tells the computer which commands to execute. If you want to change the behaviour of an application
you have been given, the most reliable and universal way of doing that is to directly edit these machine
instructions — changing the ones and zeroes–to do something else.
To do this you will need a disassembler (for OS X, I recommend Hopper) and/or a hex editor (such as
Hex Fiend).
digiexam-1
A screencast of me editing the binary of an open source program
Now, I will not show you how to break DigiExam specifically, as I would n0t want to make it entirely too
easy for an enterprising student to use this article in order to gain an unfair advantage. But I will tell you
the general process of how to disable certain parts of an application, a method which can be applied to
DigiExam as well as any other digital exam software.
The first step is to disassemble the application (convert it from machine code to a more readable format)
using a disassembler such as Hopper. Then follows some detective work were we search the
disassembled application for the method responsible for enabling cheat protection, either by following
its flow of execution or by searching directly among the names of its methods and variables.
When we have found the part of the program that we want to disable, we neuter it by modifying or
removing some of the machine instructions so that it no longer performs its intended function. We can
either do this in the disassembler and then reassemble the program, or we can edit the binary of the
application directly using a hex editor.
Generally, only small adjustments are necessary. Disabling an entire section of code often requires
nothing more than setting the value of global constant to 0 instead of 1, or changing a jump if equal (je)
instruction to its oppositejump if not equal (jne).
In fact, to disable every kind of cheat protection in DigiExam the student only needs to modify two
machine instructions at two specific places. This takes no more than 15 minutes — 10 minutes to find the
relevant sections and 5 minutes to make the changes.
A modified version of DigiExam with cheat protection disabled
I can not understate the inevitability of this exploit, as there is nothing DigiExam can do to prevent this.
Any safeguards they attempt to construct, no matter how complex, can (and will) ultimately be
dismantled by someone using this technique.
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The only sliver of protection available is to employ what is known as obfuscation and anti-tampering
techniques. These increase the time investment required by making it harder (but not impossible) for
malicious users to explore and understand the codebase.
Recently, advanced (and ghoulishly expensive) obfuscation software has miraculously increased the
time until cracked versions of AAA video games hit the internet from a few days to to a few weeks or
months. This works wonders in the video game industry, where the majority of units are sold
immediately after release, but is only a small comfort for an exam software that is meant to be used
indefinitely.
The Full Extent of the Problem
So digital exams on personal computers can never be trusted, but why should we care? It is a fair
question. After all, regular exams can be cheated as well. And if the student needs access special
technical knowledge to do so, that does not seem very problematic.
But in reality, it will require neither knowledge nor effort. The application needs only be cracked once by
a single individual, such as me, who can then upload and share the corrupted version with either their
friends or with all 600 schools.
As such, a widespread adoption of digital exams could enable a black market of cheating software. This
is especially true for DigiExam, whose exam interface is just a basic webview. With a compromised
version of the application you can easily write or download simple JavaScript extensions to help you in
various clever ways. Think Chrome App Store, but for cheating.
And while cheating on a regular exam is confined to concealed notes or peeking at your neighbours
desk, in the digital world only your imagination sets the limit. Automatic spelling and grammar
correction? Piece of cake. An extension that grabs and copies the answers from a friend writing the
same exam? Sure. It could even paste the answers letter for letter in sync to random tapping on the
keyboard, to make it appear as if typed out by hand. If you can dream it, you can do it.
In spite of this, the Swedish National Agency for Education has decided DigiExam fulfills its criteria for a
secure digital examination. With this official seal of approval the application was used by more than
twenty thousand Swedish students when writing the national subject exams this spring.
So maybe next year, upping your grade on the national exam could be as easy as finding your favourite
among a growing batch of cheating software. A digital revolution for sure — but is it in the right direction?
A note about responsible disclosure
Usually when I discover a security flaw in a piece of software or on a website I contact the authors in
private and give them time to fix the issue before going public, a process known as responsible
disclosure.
This, however, is not a fixable bug. This in an inherent and unfixable flaw with the entire concept of
digital exam software. Therefore, while I have contacted DigiExam ahead of time and notified them
about this article, I felt I was unable to offer them a timeframe in which to “fix” it. Furthermore,
responsible disclosure also entails disclosing vulnerabilities to the public as early as possible to allow
the users to make informed decisions as to the safety and security of the tools they employ.
Media files
DigiExam-return-call-Thu-May-19-13.12.04-GMT02.00-2016.mp3 (VLC.app Document)
The First Ten Years of the Pirate Party: Lessons Learned and Road Ahead
1 January 2016 21:30
Infopolicy: Exactly ten years ago, on January 1 2006 at 20:30 CET, the Swedish and first Pirate Party
was launched by me setting up an ugly website. Since then, we delivered on the proof of concept on
June 7, 2009, and the movement grew from there. We weren’t always successful, though, and it’s
important to be humble and do a little retrospection.
The choice of January 1 wasn’t so much chosen as a symbolic date as it was done then out of
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necessity. I had worked on the ugly site over the Yule holidays, and had an ordinary day of work the next
day, so I simply had to take online whatever was ready at the time. But once the word was out, it just
snowballed. No, scratch that. Avalanched.
From there, I led the Swedish Pirate Party for its first five years, delivering on the primary mission of
showing that activists can run for office and succeed when the party got elected to the European
Parliament on June 7, 2009 under my leadership. It was a huge victory showing that the net generation
didn’t have to take policymaking bullshit sitting down, but that we could run for office and kick
offline-borns out of their nonperforming jobs. Many other successes from other Pirate Parties followed. I
stepped down from the position of party leader exactly five years ago, five years after founding the
party, choosing to go full-time international liberty evangelist, something I still enjoy doing. At the time, I
also revamped this blog completely (and will revamp it yet again in the coming days to a new format
again).
The Mission
We’re at a crossroads with regard to information technology: who controls it? If the answer is “the
government”, we’re in for a Big Brother society so horrible that books trying to describe it in the 1950s
would have been discarded as too unrealistically dark. On the other hand, if the answer is “the citizens”,
we’re in for a more innovative, creative, and transparent society than has ever existed. There’s
enormous values at stake here.
Pretty much all of the incumbent powers are fighting to take control of the Net. While this is a problem
that may solve itself once the net generation gets into power on a large scale, we risk having a Big
Brother society by then that runs unquestioned by such future powerholders. Our mission was – and is –
therefore to build a bridge of liberty between today and the time when the net generation gets into
power on a large scale. It’s going to be some 30-40 years. Basically, the mission is and was to prevent a
dystopia that would take centuries to undo.
What We Have Learned
We’ve grown and gotten elected in Sweden and Germany, and also became victims of our own success
there (more on that later). We almost made it to the European Parliament from the Czech Republic in
2014. We’re currently polling at thirty-plus percent in Iceland, making it possible to hold the prime
ministry there after the spring 2017 elections (though that’s pure speculation on my part; I don’t know
the tactical game the Icelandic team has in mind and I only talk about the prime ministry based on the
raw numbers – the PPIS is the largest party by far). We can observe that teams in different countries
have consistently taken turns to pull the movement as a whole forward, making it overall viable.
We’ve learned how to get elected. Actually, scratch that. We’ve learned how to deserve getting elected.
There’s a strong difference. But we haven’t learned deserving a re-election yet. We need to be humble
on this point.
But the most important thing we’ve learned is that you don’t have to take repressive laws sitting down,
but that it’s completely possible to run for office and kick digital illiterates out.
What We Have Accomplished
There’s a lot to say about what we have accomplished in this decade. For starters, the party is ten years
old today, and we’re on our second term in the European Parliament. That kind of success borders on
ridiculously impossible.
We brought a radical copyright monopoly reform proposal into the mainstream – the Pirate Party
platform is now an integral part of the platform of the Green party group in the European Parliament.
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We stopped Three Strikes and made it illegal across Europe, thwarting the copyright industry’s plans of
shutting people off the net in the hundreds of thousands.
We were instrumental in stopping ACTA, working from inside Parliament while Anonymous and others
were staging rallies across European cities.
Finally, there’s the Reda report, where Julia Reda – Pirate Member of the European Parliament, elected
from Germany – was tasked with formally evaluating what works and what doesn’t work in the European
Union copyright monopoly legislation, and who wrote a report on the matter and managed to get the
Parliament as a whole to approve it. If somebody had told me a Pirate would be formally in charge of
evaluating the copyright monopoly at the European level less than a decade after the Pirate Party’s
founding, I’m not sure I would have believed them. But that’s what we’ve done.
What Has Changed in Ten Years
Depressingly little has changed in these ten years, actually.
Smartphones have arrived, so the tools have moved from desk to palm. Streaming has arrived (Pandora,
Spotify, Netflix) and somewhat displaced torrenting as the media delivery mechanism of choice. People
don’t torrent music any longer, but certainly torrent movies and TV shows.
Otherwise, the arguments from the copyright industry remain the same dumb arguments heard in 2003.
What we’ve managed to do in that time is stave of the worst stupidities (notably ACTA and Three
Strikes). It’s still illegal to use your own property, it’s still illegal to share interesting stuff with friends, it’s
still illegal to do the most obvious good things just because old obsolete industries don’t like it. That’s
Dumb.
I was joking the other day that I could probably re-run 90% of the articles on this blog, and they would
still be as applicable as they were the day I wrote them.
This doesn’t mean we failed. It means that the power struggle is at least at a standstill, whereas before
we came on stage, things were going the wrong way quickly.
Hard Lessons: Overapplying Democracy
One of the most expensive lessons has been in understanding democracy, what it’s good for, and when
not to overdo it. The Swedish and German parties both fell on this point. I describe what happened in
the Swedish party in detail in chapter seven in Swarmwise, but long story short, we created a youth
section to get governmental grants, and had to structure it completely counter to net thinking. That was
the death knell, right then and there. Once it was there, the values of the counter-net-thinking gradually
took over the decentralized swarmthink of the main party, and the organization gradually bureaucratized,
drove off activists and people who lead tech-style by building, making, and leading by example, and lost
its delivery capacity. It went from being an organization that rewarded the best activism, to being an
organization that rewarded the best procedural trickery. Hard to recover from that point.
Germany had a similar story. It had to organize in a certain (old-fashioned) way in order to be eligible for
grants. Growing at a record pace, it was impossible to keep the original values when the member vote
tenfolded and everybody got their pet projects into the party line. Simply put, it was not possible to keep
a guiding star of a true free-information liberty ideology. Two factions – a liberal and a left-wing –
crystallized, and the German party fell from there, having enjoyed as much as 13% in national polls
(which is no small feat in a large country like Germany).
The lesson here is that democracy isn’t a solution that fits everywhere and on all levels. It’s constructed
as a safety valve at the nation-state level and its primary benefit is that it replaces a regime before a
violent revolution breaks out. But at the organization level, you have much easier means to escape the
rules of a leader you don’t agree with – you just walk somewhere else. Taking this reasoning to its
extreme, democracy is not how you run an organization where participation is voluntary in the first
place, for it creates losers by definition of its very process, and losers are unhappy people who
disengage. There are much better ways to run such organizations.
It’s hard to not look at the two most successful open projects here: Linux (the kernel) and Wikipedia.
Neither of them vote, ever. Linux discusses until a technical advantage is evident for either option, and if
agreement cannot be reached, Torvalds decides. Wikipedia discusses until it is determined what makes
the better encyclopedia. There’s something very important to learn here, mixed in with our own
experience: while democracy is preferable at the nation-state level, where the Law of Two Feet cannot
be applied, it was grossly overapplied in the early Pirate Parties in a way that disengaged people at a
huge cost.
So why did we overapply democracy in this way in the early Pirate Parties? Because we knew of no
other way to organize, basically. “All the others did it like this.” It was a very expensive lesson, but we
gradually learned to apply net organization to new political organizations. I wrote a book on that later.
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Staying True to the Ideology, Even When Inconvenient
We’re champions of free speech. This means allowing nudity in the United States and hate speech in
Germany, for example, despite being politically inconvenient and almost taboo. Actually, it goes beyond
just “allowing” such expressions, but ferociously defending them, calling out people who want to restrict
free speech as not having a single moral leg to stand on. Tearing such warriors of morality down from
the high horses they pretend to be riding on, and doing so in full view of the public. We’ve failed to do
this in some fear of public disapproval, and it’s come back to bite us pretty much every time. There are
many other examples. If you don’t have free speech, you have none of the other liberties, either. It’s just
because the thought is taboo that it must be challenged.
We’ve only just started. The average time for a new party to get one person elected is on the order of 25
years. We’ve got a lot ahead of us. But damn, what a ride it’s been these first ten years.
Bitcoin; Technology Beyond Ideology And A Call For Evolution

27 June 2015 16:18
Activism – Nozomi Hayase: Six years since the invention of the blockchain, more people are
beginning to see the powerful political implications that this technology brings. People from
diverse backgrounds have been weighing in on its disruptive potential. While libertarians embrace
the potential of cryptocurrencies to break up monopolies of the ‘too big to fail’ banking and
payment companies, the rise of this technology was met with skepticism by many socialists.
Activists who call for economic equality and oppose governments harsh austerity go further to
say Bitcoin will become another tool for neoliberalism. So what is the disruptive force inherent in
this technology? Is it tied to a specific political ideology?
Critics from the left primarily come from observations of particular events surrounding decentralized
digital currency. On the surface, the trend of speculators trading Bitcoin and manipulation of exchange
rates can resemble gambling, and some see Bitcoin as recapitulating the existing Wall Street
casino-style derivative economy. This investment friendly image is strengthened when economists
chime in to depict Bitcoin’s fixed monetary supply (a total of 21M bitcoin is created) as a currency
mimicking assets like gold and criticize it as having a deflationary monetary design that would
incentivize hoarding and increase wealth inequality.
Contrary to these perceptions, Bitcoin was never meant as a get-rich-quick scheme. While it possesses
gold-like characteristics, it is also radically different, as it is highly portable and divisible (Bitcoin can be
divided into 8 decimal points and more if consensus is reached). This is a new monetary design that has
never existed before.
Competition vs. Cooperation
Bitcoin creates a currency with unprecedented flow. It melts borders and artificial barriers of ideological
differences. It resists any stagnation of thought that tries to mold it to carry certain special interests.
Careful examination reveals how it is an architecture that embodies innate human nature and is
designed to uphold our internal governing structures.
From Socrates’ dictum of know thyself to the modern age of reason, throughout history people have
tried to understand the internal laws that constitute man. Naturalist Charles Darwin, upon observation of
biological phenomena, identified and defined this internal law as an evolutionary force that guides all
species.
In his first work, The Origin of Species, he brought the theory of natural selection and random variation.
The notion of survival of the fittest, first coined by English philosopher Herbert Spencer to describe his
economic theory and later taken up by Darwin, promoted a view of man as not much more than claws
and teeth. This became a prevailing ideology behind the rise of social Darwinism and was used to justify
European colonialism and modern predatory capitalism that was spawned in the late 19th century.
Yet, this narrative of fierce competition for life was only half the story. Russian philosopher Peter
Kropotkin wrote a response to the predominant Darwinian interpretation of natural hierarchy. In his book
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, he argued for the feeling of solidarity, empathy and cooperation as the
ground for human evolution.
This alternative view was held also by Darwin himself. Psychologist and system scientist David Loey in
Darwin’s Lost Theory of Love debunked the narrow reductionist interpretation of Neo-Darwinians that
emphasized the notion of the selfish genes. He argued how most had buried a major contribution
Darwin made when he moved beyond pre-human evolution to examine man’s moral sensibilities. Loey
pointed to how Darwin, in his second work The Descent of Man, had recognized that nurturing,
expressed as sympathy for the weak was a primary evolutionary force that drives humans to develop
higher agency with the principle of mutuality.
The seemingly unbridgeable ideological divide between socialism and capitalism can be looked at as an
expression of a contradiction that existed between Darwin’s earlier and later works. It is experienced as
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two forces constantly battling within us. On one hand, we have a drive for individual pursuits and
independence and on the other aspirations for altruism and a deeper connection with others.
In current civilization, the tendency toward personal gain and competitive drive has been overriding the
principles of cooperation. What has now become apparent is that the greed of a small minority in a ‘race
to the top’ has subverted a broader evolutionary force, holding people hostage in a brutal animal-like
kingdom of kleptocracy. The survival of the species in modern times has turned into a game of survival
of the crudest and most rapacious corporations and bankers. This has now escalated into an arms race
to the bottom, creating resource wars, economic apartheid and environmental catastrophe, likely
leading to planetary crisis.
Digital Scarcity
The imagination that infused the blockchain technology intervenes in the course of human evolution that
has been heading down this destructive path. Decentralized consensus at the core of this innovation
gives us a platform to reconcile seemingly opposing forces manifested as this ideological divide and
brings a creative solution to global problems outside of electoral politics.
Bitcoin is like one big organism that regulates itself through algorithm. With no company, CEO or
individuals in control, it maintains a ledger transparent to all. Its ecosystem evolves to manifest a vision
encoded in its DNA, through stimulus and active interaction with its environment.
The core of this technology is algorithmic consensus that enables digital scarcity; a way to make an
object in the digital world scarce without central control. This solves the problem of the double-spend.
Cryptographer Adam Back, whose invention of Hashcash contributed to the creation of Bitcoin’s digital
scarcity, noted how Bitcoin “constructs a computational irrevocability from proof-of-work and
consensus”. This makes permissionless transaction and innovation possible, as well as removing
monopolistic control of the production and transfer of money. But more fundamentally, this scarcity
offers a key to open society to move beyond the current oligarchical rule of the neo-Darwinian
dog-eat-dog world that has now turned into the lions eating the lambs.
The market logic that governs the existing extractive system is that of central control. As a hallmark of
the industrial era, capitalism bases its foundation on the idea of land ownership. This places production
and distribution into private hands. Scarcity was created through monopolistic control of resources and
energy (such as the oil spigot), which has mostly been done in secrecy.
What became the ‘owner class’ began setting rules for the rest of the population through their undue
influence on governments. This controlled market slowly destroyed healthy price discovery processes
by manipulating currency and creating monopolies. Government giveaways in the form of corporate
welfare stifles true entrepreneurship and innovation. Forces of privatization have been swallowing the
commons. With scarce access to resources and jobs, people are pitted against one another, engaging in
a rigged game that just keeps enriching the richest.
Unlike the managed scarcity of centrally controlled markets, Bitcoin’s digital scarcity is created through
voluntary agreement of its participants. Its open source protocol grants users power to choose what
kind of network they wish to create or be a part of, as codes can be modified by anyone. Combined with
game theory that enforces fairness, this scarcity creates a new form of capital, one that is open source
and distributed. This brings a radical departure from the current vulture capitalism that promotes
cheating and wealth without work by means of usury, rent-seeking and QE (taxation through inflation).
While central banks use fiat currency as a force of coercion, Bitcoin currency is a token of value that
provides an incentive to generate productivity and efficiency of the workers (miners). This pays for the
labor required to build a whole new global financial system. In a sense, each Bitcoin mining pool is like a
worker-owned cooperative that requires members to both work together and also compete within the
network to perform the issuing of monetary units and clearing of transactions. Solidarity generated
through collective hashing power maintains the ethos of decentralized consensus.
Perceived deflationary characteristics touted as Bitcoin’s flaw is actually a vital incentive structure that
bootstraps the whole venture to build a new infrastructure in this time of transition from a massive
teetering debt economy. This networked scarcity encourages the funding of start-ups and fueling of
innovation on the edges. All around, new projects are emerging, ones that could fulfill the aspirations
and needs of various communities, fostering a new network effect of altruism. Crowd-funding platforms
like StartJoin and Bitcoin Capital are good examples of this.
Distributed Accountability
Bitcoin’s self-organizing is not easily understood from outside looking in. It is like a caterpillar in the
cocoon before turning into a butterfly. Market manipulation and outright theft within exchanges like Mt.
Gox appear to confirm the view of man as selfishly driven. Yet, this is occurring in centralized offshoots
and simply a reflection of the greed rampant in the existing system.
If we dig a little deeper into this ecosystem, what is happening within the mining process also appears
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to affirm the theory of natural selection, where those with powerful computer chips and hashing power
can increase the chance of winning the game. Indeed, mining equipment is now highly specialized and
is becoming more like a kind of survival of the fittest (where ordinary computers can no longer
participate in mining). This brings concern about the potential centralization of mining. Yet, just as
Darwin’s first work does not complete his full picture of evolution, the mining was also designed to be
subservient to the imagination that infused this innovation.
The fierce mining competition fosters efficiency, helping make the relative capacity of the Bitcoin
ecosystem significantly less energy intensive than the existing financial system and the most ecological
one when fully utilized at a global scale. This also helps create a solid foundation upon which a social
contract of a truly democratic society can be built.
The creator of this technology, Satoshi Nakamoto found a way to secure the system from the risks of
concentrated greed and destructive seeds within our ‘selfish genes’. This was done through
implementing a particular consensus algorithm that enforces people to show the proof of their work.
Rewards here function as a mechanism to keep everyone honest and the equilibrium of supply and
demand distributes accountability as a form of self-regulation taken up by those who participate in the
mining.
All this has become an engine to build a system that is impervious to internal or external attacks. The
mining rings that have now achieved global level security perform a kind of safeguard of real democracy,
through which spontaneous forces of We the People can be unleashed. With its feature of infinite
divisibility, value created through a peer-to-peer exchange of autonomy and reciprocity can become an
abundant flow that nurtures all people, especially those who are made weak and vulnerable by current
Western exploitation.
This even makes it possible for the other six billion, the unbanked and under-banked, especially in the
Global South to participate in the world economy on their own terms. This is already starting to happen
as investment and interest in transforming the massive remittance market is increasing, while charity
and tipping is the fastest growing usage of Bitcoin in the West.
Paving the Way for Altruism
Many of us wish to evolve; to act more freely and extend kindness and compassion to others, but our
actions are restricted and controlled by oppressive governments, religious fundamentalism and de-facto
corporate dictatorship. As commercial-led globalization expands, the entire globe is shackled to the
tyrannical logic of extreme capitalism and cowboy banksters’ autocratic control over the flow of money.
People with good hearts are forced to adapt to the harsh environment of austerity and rule by the rich.
They have to make hard decisions; either to be kind to others or suppress that innate nature of altruism
just to survive.
The blockchain removes these obstacles, allowing us to align ourselves with internal forces of evolution.
The built-in incentive structure of this game-changing innovation offers humanity a path to divest from
the military-industrial complex, war economies, sweat shops and debt slavery as well as Stasi-like
surveillance. Instead of supporting oligarchs that print money at will to buy missiles and tanks, people
can independently invest in mining gear and channel the selfish and aggressive parts of humanity to
serve the larger whole.
Artificial scarcity in centrally planned economies fuels destructive competition among people, dividing
all through fear into separated nations, religions and ideologies, and justifies wars and hatred. Now the
competitive drive that has been cut off and stagnated can be brought back to its origin of creative
power and transformed into one that encourages each to strive for their best in service to all.
With decentralized cryptocurrencies, we can move away from the deterministic future imposed by
central banks and divisive political ideologues and build a society that represents who we really are.
Those who are ready and want it will find a way to chart a new path. Those in power can choose not to
evolve, but they can no longer take the rest of us down with them.
Humans it seems are being degraded into killer apes. As the ideals of distributed consensus enshrined
in mathematics are fully developed, they become the killer apps that can help humanity redeem itself. In
this new world entered through the blockchain, we can now move beyond struggles for existence and
ascend as a species capable of love.
Photo credit – Silhouette of a fibreglass spinosaurus at Blackpool zoo in Lancashire, UK and a ‘con’ trail by Simon Harrod.
Launching New Reporting Service – 682 Writers, Editors, Managers Wanted For Part-Time.
Yes, You’ll Get Paid, And Paid Well. Launch Now, Operational In Q3.
15 June 2015 10:04
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Infopolicy: Today, I’m launching a news service in an entirely new format, designed to outcompete
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oldmedia. The new service publishes all news as shareable images, thereby bypassing a large number
of restrictions and limitations, not needing clickbait, and being immune to adblock – but also paying
people well, using bitcoin. Meanwhile, oldmedia continues to call people greedy and selfish for not
buying their printouts of yesterday’s internet.
It was on April 8, 2014, that the European Court of Justice declared mass surveillance in the form of
data retention unconstitutional, impermissible, null, and void. Oldmedia didn’t mention the ruling at all.
Instead, they wrote about surveillance activist pets. It was on that very day I decided that oldmedia no
longer reports anything relevant, and decided to outcompete them.
Oldmedia is complaining that the net generation isn’t buying their printouts of yesterday’s internet, and
say that the net generation is disinterested in civic society. They couldn’t be more wrong. There has
never been a generation more interested in the society we live in. However, oldmedia is mistaking a
disinterest in the last generation’s problems – and that generation’s solutions to their own problems – as
a disinterest in general. This is a complete misconception. The net generation has a new set of
problems, and they’re being discussed with more fervor and intensity than any set of civic issues before.
Oldmedia is not addressing this at all. Nor do they seem to have the capability to even see it, despite
being right in front of them. That effectively makes them obsolete. Not only that, but they have willingly
reduced themselves in a multi-decade process to mouthpieces for regimes plagued by corruption and
nepotism – not just in the poor parts of the world, but in all parts of the world. They happily accept a
poisoned newswell and declare it to be Truth – from campaigns against Iraq to recent campaigns
against Snowden. That’s not just dishonest, that’s sickening and destructive.
Fortunately, the numbers (see below) say that we can outcompete them on pure business grounds. It’s
high time to do so – to outcompete oldmedia’s entire concept, basically, and write about civic issues
relevant to the net generation instead of blindly complaining about spoiled kids. As a bonus, we get to
be paid well in the process – much better than oldmedia pays.
More details about our reason for being on the front page of the wiki.
Retweet the image below to see how easy and straightforward this concept is:
Falkvinge starts net-generation news service, hiring 682 people

pic.twitter.com/MGA9iffAV6
— Falconwing News (@FalconwingNews) June 15, 2015
To learn this game, we’re starting out in Europe before going global. For each of the 28 countries in the
EU, plus Switzerland, Iceland, and Norway, we need 21 writers and one country manager.
The job of a writer is to write a three-sentence story once a week. An estimated one-hour job per week,
for which writers will be paid approximately €125 per month*. Should be a nice addition on the margin to
anybody who’s doing writing anyway.
The job of a country manager is to edit those stories for further edge and to work with the writers to
actually get the stories out (read: remind writers to submit stories when they’re due), as well as recruit
new writers, for which country managers will be paid approximately €1,250 per month*. The workload is
expected to be about 10 hours per week. This means a country manager edits and clears three stories
per day for their country.
*see Q&A below. It’s a revenue sharing model – it may be some time before the revenue hits those
levels, and it obviously starts at zero. But given the low workload, this should be bearable. We need an
estimated 30,000 impressions per newspiece on average to reach those levels. (An “impression” is
when the newspiece and its ad was shown once to one person, in their Twitter, Facebook, etc.
timelines.)
We need 30,000 impressions per newspiece, on average, to reach breakeven.
To get a sense for how much 30,000 impressions are, look at these tweets – these are from my personal
account:
Relevant fact with a hint of sarcasm – 23,500 impressions:
Some are outraged about Saudi's nine executions so far this year, no trial. Meanwhile, US
Police have killed 44 so far this year, no trial.
— Rick Falkvinge (@Falkvinge) January 16, 2015
Relevant fact with a stronger hint of sarcasm – 45,600 impressions:
Fact: more than twice as many people die from contact with hot tap water in Europe per
year (90) than from terrorism (40).
14 of 24 06/11/2016 16:57
Outright sarcasm at stupidity – 125,086 impressions:
Bigot: "If this hispanicization continues, the city of Los Angeles may well soon have a
Spanish name" – um what, say that again?
Random fact coupled with biting sarcasm at abusive industry – 460,966 impressions:
165 years ago, UK Parliament legalized public libraries where people could read for free.
Just as publishers warned, no book written since.
So is 30,000 impressions – on average, per piece – doable? Yes. Yes it is, damn right it is. However, a
success also requires the advertising revenue to match. The 30,000 figure is measured on an average
CPM of €2.50, which was last year’s average. Since this is a new concept, we may reach less or more.
We honestly don’t know that yet.
For prospective advertisers, we’re offering €250 in sign-up credit toward advertising in a closed beta for
merely supplying a Twitter handle to use for login and an ad to run. No credit card or anything like that
required. This beta is limited to 100 clients. Contact sales if you’re interested in advertising – we’ll be
delighted to get you going.
For writers and editors/country managers, sign up here, or read more on the wiki!
Q&A
Will the €125-per-twelve-sentences or €1,250-per-ten-hours be effective immediately?
No, I estimate it will take some months until the necessary revenue is there. It’s a revenue sharing model
where writers get up to 40% of the gross revenue, straight off the top, to get to that number. Do
compare that model with your favorite oldmedia house, or any oldmedia house. (Hint: they rarely pay at
all.) But given the low workload, hanging in there for that time while the revenue scales up from the initial
zero shouldn’t be too much of a discouragement.
See this wiki page for more information about how compensation is calculated, see how it scales up
quickly in the beginning (but does start at zero), reaches the target plateau, and then starts increasing
again later (at about 150,000 impressions per piece – compare above examples).
Why are you aiming for such exorbitant wages? That’s far more than anything in oldmedia offers.
You just answered your own question.
I’m not located in an EU28 country or Norway or Switzerland or Iceland. Can I still be part of this?
Not initially, sorry. We’re learning to walk before we learn to run. You’re still welcome to apply, though,
and we’ll contact you when we expand to where you live.
Everybody’s running adblock today. You can’t possibly get advertising revenues?
This concept is immune to adblock.
What’s the target audience?
Intelligent people, of the net generation, who are independent, and share. That rules out any “news”
about Kim Kardashian, for example.
Wait, what do you mean you’re immune to adblock? You can’t be immune to adblock.
This concept is immune not just to Adblock Plus and the like, but to all known forms of adblocking.
Look at the story above and you’ll see that the ad is an integral part of the image shared.
I’m an advertiser. Can I be part of the closed beta?
Absolutely! We will need a Twitter handle for login, your company name, and one more way to reach you
(like a mail address), and an ad to run which is based on this template. Provide us with that and we’ll
respond with €250 in advertising credit, nothing else required. Mail here.
Do you require a degree for applications?
Are you joking? Of course not. However, excellent language and communications skills in English, as
well as excellent analytical skills and a great sense of humor are requirements. A Mensa membership
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would be a plus, for example. Not that we’d ever look it up, but just to illustrate.
For country managers, people skills and understanding of swarm management are also requirements.
The idea is that a country manager should be able to fund their living while getting a university degree,
and fund it well, on those 10-or-so hours of work per week – and thus, it doesn’t make sense to require
people to already have a degree.
Do you provide a union?
You’re kidding, right? …No.
Will this be a clickbait trap?
Absolutely not. We’re not even going to provide links. There won’t be anything to click on. We’re going
to be providing quality reporting and have no incentive whatsoever to post clickbait, because we’re not
posting links in the first place.
I’m not located in the EU or NO or CH, but would love to be part of this anyway. Can I?
Not at launch, sorry. However, the service is only starting out in Europe, with the intention of gradually
going global. Do submit your application anyway, and we’ll get back when we’re expanding to your
area?
Do I get paid in euros/zloty/skräppisar?
No. Payments are in bitcoin, only. No exceptions. This is for the low transaction costs and
programmability involved. This entire enterprise will be unbanked by design and choice. Amount
denomination may vary, but the actual payments are in bitcoin.
Blah blah taxes blah blah?
You’re responsible for paying your own taxes, and doing all paperwork required to allow you to pay your
own taxes, if any. Everything’s on contractor basis to simplify operations. As payments are in bitcoin, do
remember to include them in your tax reporting as appropriate – it’s probably not automatic.
A Year Ago, The European Supreme Court Appears To Have Ruled The Whole Web To Be In
The Public Domain, And Nobody Noticed
5 May 2015 16:46
Copyright Monopoly: On February 13, 2014, the European Court of Justice – the Supreme Court of the
European Union – appears to have ruled that anything published on the web may be re-published freely
by anybody else. The case concerned linking, but the court went beyond linking in its ruling. This case
has not really been noticed, nor have its effects been absorbed by the community at large.
It was a little-known ruling about hyperlinking. But beneath the surface lay a bombshell that will have
repercussions for how the entire world exercises the copyright monopoly: a Supreme Court ruling that
every single item posted on every single webpage without access control is permanently and irrevocably
in the public domain, free for anybody else to copy and rebroadcast without restrictions – without
restrictability.
The case was Svensson et al v Retriever Sverige AB. It concerned whether a news aggregator is
allowed to link to news articles. The court found that linking is allowed, but elaborated quite a bit on why
in the process, and that ruling has the net effect that the entire web is now in the public domain,
republishable by anybody on web pages of their own.
The background is that the copyright monopoly in the European Union is governed by the European
Union Copyright Directive (EUCD), which is the European equivalent of federal law. The EUCD goes well
beyond ambiguous and vague concepts like “copying”, and lists exactly which exclusive rights are
contained in the fuzzy umbrella concept of the copyright monopoly.
Basically, that umbrella contains two different rights. The copyright monopoly holder has the exclusive
right to produce physical copies of their works (article 2), and the same holder has the exclusive right to
communicate the work to the public, or authorize or prohibit others do to so (article 3).
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Publishing on web pages falls in the latter category, “communicating to the public”. We can read in the
EUCD, article 3:
Member States shall provide authors with the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit any
communication to the public of their works, by wire or wireless means, including the
making available to the public of their works in such a way that members of the public
may access them from a place and at a time individually chosen by them.
This paragraph lists exactly what is contained in the exclusive right, and it is key for the ECJ ruling.
The people who wanted to ban linking had argued that hyperlinking was such an act of communication
to the public, and the ECJ explains in quite a bit of detail why it is not. Quoting from the full ruling, with
my highlights:
24. None the less, according to settled case-law, in order to be covered by the concept
of ‘communication to the public’, within the meaning of Article 3(1) of Directive
2001/29, a communication, such as that at issue in the main proceedings, concerning the
same works as those covered by the initial communication and made, as in the case of
the initial communication, on the Internet, and therefore by the same technical means,
must also be directed at a new public, that is to say, at a public that was not taken into
account by the copyright holders when they authorised the initial communication to the
public (see, by analogy, SGAE, paragraphs 40 and 42; order of 18 March 2010 in Case
C‑136/09 Organismos Sillogikis Diacheirisis Dimiourgon Theatrikon kai Optikoakoustikon
Ergon, paragraph 38; and ITV Broadcasting and Others, paragraph 39).
25. In the circumstances of this case, it must be observed that making available the works
concerned by means of a clickable link, such as that in the main proceedings, does not
lead to the works in question being communicated to a new public.
26. The public targeted by the initial communication consisted of all potential
visitors to the site concerned, since, given that access to the works on that site was
not subject to any restrictive measures, all Internet users could therefore have free
access to them.
27. In those circumstances, it must be held that, where all the users of another site to
whom the works at issue have been communicated by means of a clickable link could
access those works directly on the site on which they were initially communicated,
without the involvement of the manager of that other site, the users of the site managed
by the latter must be deemed to be potential recipients of the initial communication and,
therefore, as being part of the public taken into account by the copyright holders when
they authorised the initial communication.
28. Therefore, since there is no new public, the authorisation of the copyright
holders is not required for a communication to the public such as that in the main
proceedings.
Do you understand how this changes the copyright monopoly game completely?
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) goes well beyond linking here, and rules in a broader sense on
what constitutes an “act of communication to the public”, which is the exclusive right enjoyed by the
copyright monopoly holder according to the EUCD. It rules quite specifically what falls inside and
outside the scope of that monopoly, in order to apply that ruling to hyperlinking specifically. (Actually, it
doesn’t so much rule as it refers to previously settled case law – and this is a crucial nuance, as it would
not be legally binding otherwise: see the comments below. Technically, that case law is the binding
ruling, not this one.)
The ECJ makes it clear that the copyright monopoly holder, once having granted an audience
permission to access the work, that holder has no further right to authorize or prohibit other
transmissions of the same work to the same public or audience.
Specifically, the ECJ says that for an exclusive right to exist, the “communication to the public” must
concern “communication to a new public”, that is, one not previously granted access.
It therefore follows, as the ECJ writes in its ruling, that once something is published openly on the
web, the entire world has been granted access to it, deliberately, by the copyright monopoly
holder. Therefore, the ECJ continues in driving down the hammer on this crucial point, there are
no further exclusive rights to authorize or withhold. This effectively puts the work in the public
domain.
(The text “effectively put in the public domain” is not in the ruling, as that is not a legal concept.
However, that is still the net effect – at least as far as the Internet is concerned; you still wouldn’t be
allowed to produce physical copies of the work as per article 2 of the EUCD.)
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Does this mean that photos, that are published on one website without a paywall (such as a news site),
may be freely published on any other website? Yes, that’s exactly what it means. Among many other
things. And this is the Supreme Court of the European Union – unappealable and the final say.
Actually, the ruling goes even further and says that you may also embed content from another web page
into your own, without that being a “communication to the public” (and therefore subject to copyright
monopoly controls), as long as that content was freely available to the world – i.e. the same audience as
you’re presenting to – from the original webpage.
I find it strange that this ruling didn’t get more attention at the time. Fortunately, the ruling is also quite in
line with common sense.
So what happens when national state laws go above and beyond this? The European Court of Justice
has that case covered too:
Lastly, the Court states that the Member States do not have the right to give wider
protection to copyright holders by broadening the concept of ‘communication to the
public’. That would have the effect of creating legislative differences and, accordingly,
legal uncertainty, when the directive at issue is specifically intended to remedy those
problems.
Most interesting. This case had been assumed to be about linking and linking only. It goes way beyond
linking.
So let’s hear it from all other paralegals in the community – shoot this down? If this holds, we’re dealing
with a new legal landscape, one that was common sense all the time.
Swarmwise Released In Czech!

30 March 2015 20:51
Swarmwise in Czech
Swarm Management: The first translation of Swarmwise is officially here – and it’s in Czech! As of 20:00
on March 30, the electronic format of the book is downloadable in a multitude of formats. This is the first
translation of Swarmwise to hit the release bar; there are several more in the pipeline.
Swarmwise is a leadership handbook about how to accomplish real change in the world on a shoestring
budget (or more commonly, no budget at all). It gives the reader guidance and feet-on-ground
leadership lessons from the point of launching a movement or community-based startup right up until
the point where it goes international.
Today, as of right now, the Czech translation is available as PDF, EPUB, and XHTML. Creative
Commons, just like the original.
There’s an enormous work that has gone into this translation. I’m particularly impressed by how the
Czech translators — Martin Doucha, Adam Zábranský, and Pavel Císař — have gone to great lengths to
replicate the look and feel of the original book in English, while still adapting it to Czech publishing
standards.
The printed version of the Czech Swarmwise is scheduled for release at a conference mid-May.
Coding Freedom; Can Blockchain Technology Help Build A Foundation For Real
Democracy?
22 March 2015 20:56
Earth view taken by US Astronaut Terry Virts, Flight Engineer for Expedition 42 on the International
Space Station Jan. 30, 2015 by NASA/Terry Virts.
Civil Liberties – Nozomi Hayase: The 2008 financial meltdown and disclosures of secret documents in
recent years exposed widespread government overreach and corporate fraud and abuse. As trust in
traditional institutions began to sag, global uprisings were spawned to find solutions outside of electoral
politics. In the midst of these deep systemic breakdowns of governance, a decentralized solution
emerged with a breakthrough in computer science. As the revolutions on the streets began to wind
down, perhaps nobody expected the rise of the blockchain. Bitcoin’s enormous potential for disruption
is beginning to be felt in the realm of finance. Yet, currency is just its first application. The core of this
invention is distributed trust that enables a platform for decentralized consensus at a large scale. Can
this technology help lift us out of the crumbling old world and build a foundation for real democracy?
The ongoing global crisis of legitimacy signals a significant decay of Western liberal democracy. The
seeds of this corruption go way back to the very founding of the United States. Political philosopher
Sheldon S. Wolin (2008) identified “the framers of the Constitution” as “the first founders of modern
managed democracy” and described how the Founding Fathers created a system that favored elite rule,
giving exclusive rights to white male property owners. He pointed out how in drafting a new constitution,
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“they treated as axiomatic that a modern political system had to make concessions to democratic
sentiments without conceding governance to ‘the people’ ” (p. 155).
Despite the founders’ success in helping throw off the yoke of royalty, this was a closed system that
operated with its own inherent bias to protect privilege and power. The economic imbalance prevalent
then was not addressed and was directly used to recreate age-old lever points of control. This
translated into unequal political power, creating a wide gap between the Constitutional mandate as
governing structure and the aspirations for rule by the people that was indicated in the preamble; “We
the People”.
The highest law of the land in the U.S. was said to free the source of legitimacy from the authority of the
church and the British Crown, placing it instead in the common man, with the principle of equality under
the law. Yet, this attempt to embody the spirit of equality enshrined in the ideals of the Declaration of
Independence faltered right from the beginning. In the often unacknowledged hypocrisy manifested in
the founders’ denial of rights to Africans, indigenous people and women, this unredeemed colonial
domination carried on. Contrary to the idea of consent of the governed, the reality was subjugation of
blacks through slavery and natives through violence. With any sovereignty achieved through conquest,
governments don’t require the consent of the conquered.
This unchallenged economic power as the engine behind the experiment of American democracy was
exercised to manufacture consent of those afforded rights to participate in the political process.
Although the First Amendment asserted the separation of church and state, this declaration of rights
didn’t acknowledge the necessity to check and balance state control over money and thus failed to
explicitly indicate the people’s right to freely express themselves financially with the currency of their
choice. People didn’t have power to restrict Congress in money creation. Whether one was a
descendent of slaves or of the owner class, individual liberty remained tied to this newly constituted
governance.
Tyranny of Central Banks
What really lurks behind central command in this supposed land of the free? In tracing the history of
money creation in the United States, attorney and author Ellen Brown (2007) revealed that the real
trigger for the Revolutionary War was King George’s ban on the printing of local money in the American
colonies. She described how after independence was won, the King’s economic subservience was not
achieved by force but instead by the British bankers persuading the American people to take their paper
money. Brown noted how the founder’s subsequent disillusionment with paper money led them to leave
it out of the Constitution and that as a result “Congress was given the power only to ‘coin money,
regulate the value thereof,’ and ‘to borrow money on the credit of the United States” (p. 48).
The founding father’s failure to define exactly what money was along with the lack of healthy parameters
around its creation and control left a loophole within this system of representation for the shadowy
forces to penetrate and later subvert the Constitution and further betray the ideals in the Declaration.
The amorphous centralized creation of money has become a single point of failure that makes the entire
system vulnerable to counter-party risk. This was seen especially in the Wall Street hijack of the
monetary system with the passing of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913.
Former Goldman Sachs banker and author of the book All the President’s Bankers Nomi Prins described
how the creation of the Federal Reserve was initiated at the turn of the 20th century to preserve
American corporate supremacy, while creating stability and hegemony of major banks with deep ties to
Washington. Ironically, in the home of the brave, the tyranny of the old world continued with central
banks as the new Kings. Since then, every time new money was created, the people were now being
charged with leverageable debt and interest. Fiat as legal tender by government decree created a kind
of hidden rent-seeking royalty to maintain this throne of power.
Financialization of Everyday Life
As the authority of the church weakened over time, the merger of the state with private banks created a
new state sponsored religion of market fundamentalism. This market theology, based on worshiping the
gods of capital and wealth accumulation became the dominant logic dictating human interaction and
expression. The financialization of everyday life has stifled the First Amendment; the flow of information
as the currency of democracy. Corporate consolidation of the media created a monopoly of content
production and distribution. With commercial interests hijacking electoral politics, the idea of unlimited
growth bypassed democratic consensus and a doctrine of profit at any cost came to shape incentive
structures for mainstream society.
In Democracy, Inc. Professor of journalism, David S. Allen (2005) astutely pointed to this conflation of
corporate and civic values that undermines the public sphere. Professionals have become a new class
that guards access to patronage networks of single-minded corporate power. Corporatist incentive
structures have become an invisible force of governance to regulate people’s actions through enforcing
self-censorship, making acts of dissent more difficult. One’s rights under the First Amendment in the
U.S. have increasingly come to require implicit permission from what has now become a corporate
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state, exercised only on their terms.
The unruly cowboy economy has then morphed into rabid corporatism in its crusade for the ‘New
American Century’. First it was railroads and oil companies. Then came drug cartels, arms
manufacturers and investment banks like Goldman Sachs. Now in the digital age, companies like IBM,
Apple and Google have gained significant political power. This insidious growth of corporate mergers
with nation-state apparatus has reached a tipping point, expanding out into the world in the form of
corporate led globalization.
The Creation of a Perfect Market
What can check this seemingly unaccountable power? Bitcoin as the countenance of the blockchain
has entered the belly of the beast of predatory capital and is beginning to break the bond of the
interlocking power of corporations and state. With its essence of digital scarcity and distributed
computing, this innovative technology performs the production of money and clearing of transactions
that traditionally have been handled by central banks.
With unprecedented currency crises and BRICS countries moving away from dollar hegemony, the
illusory world of the fiat house of cards now teeters on the verge of collapse. The world’s most powerful
computing system corrects the erroneous math of inflated Proof-of-Government Decree and can
increasingly become a safe haven for those in places like Argentina whose currency is subject to
rampant hyperinflation. The frictionless flow of this stateless currency offers a way out of the oligarchic
incentive structures paved by the parasitic rent-seeking petrodollar.
What is this disruptive force that challenges the monopolized markets? Bitcoin’s unprecedented
autonomous flow is enabled through its algorithmic consensus. This was put into practice through a
spontaneously emerging computer network around the world, harnessing massive hashing power.
What instigated this swarm of miners? Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur and author Andreas
Antonopoulos acknowledged how the creator of this technology Satoshi Nakamoto not only invented
new currency, but gave us the world’s first perfect market. Antonopoulos described how Bitcoin mining
is built around a valuable currency and the basic economic principle of risk and reward. He also
explained how it is designed with an incentive to work honestly. Based on the principle of game theory
to create fairness, miners engage in a broadcast math competition known as ‘proof of work’. Each 10
minutes, problems are solved by chance and whoever solves the problem wins a fixed number of
bitcoins. Difficulty is adjusted according to demand with a tight feedback loop every 2 weeks, keeping
the mining always profitable.
No one entity controls this Satoshi market and what governs it is the underlying operating system of
mining software that generates unpredictable, unrepeatable random numbers. It is through the chaos
created in the hashing that each new bitcoin is conceived and the life of the ecosystem is sustained.
The protocol of algorithmic consensus is enabled through the miners’ willingness to let go of the urge to
control and place the outcome at the mercy of the Satoshi dice. Through each player’s commitment to
subordinate their will to this spontaneous force of the market, the underlying core of the technology
becomes operational and the blockchain’s distributed trust provides a new foundation for equality that
is fundamentally different than existing models of representation.
The Descent and Ascent of Man
The founders of American democracy conceived the idea of governance based on a particular vision of
man. Philosopher Jacob Needleman (2003) described how in the underlying creation of law and the
American Constitution, “the meaning of democracy was rooted in a vision of human nature as both
fallen and inwardly perfectible” (p. 9). This was true to the conception of man’s nature put forward by
naturalist Charles Darwin. Most are familiar with Darwin’s theory of genetic mutation, natural selection
and the survival of the fittest from his work, The Origin of Species. But his second work, The Descent of
Man was largely ignored, in which he argued for the higher nature of man based on innate altruism and
love.
With this understanding, they installed their own security code of checks and balance of power. Through
distributing power among the three branches of government, the creators of constitutional government
aimed to safeguard the system from potential tyranny of man’s fallen nature; unbridled greed, personal
bias and interests of select groups. Yet history has shown that from the beginning, this system of
governance was launched on a fragile foundation.
The major bug within this form of representative government that caused a fatal system error was
basing systemic accountability on trust in select individuals. To a large extent, this made the promise of
the Declaration of “All men are created equal” hollow words not able to match up with reality. With
government secrecy in the form of over-classification and corporate propaganda, those in power can
conceal not only motives but also their actions, making the system of checks and balances virtually
ineffective. Here Bitcoin’s distributed trust offers a new form of accountability and a better way to secure
the system.
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Accountability through Distributed Trust
The core invention of the blockchain addresses the inherent weakness of this trust model by making
corruptible human nature accountable through cryptographic proof. All men are inherently corruptible
and instead of trusting a handful of elected officials and particular institutions, Bitcoin’s trust by
computation places accountability within the rule of consensus and guarantees the integrity of the
system by removing the necessity of trusting any one group or individual.
The algorithmic rules that bind the bitcoin miners are built and maintained through incentive structures
based on a realistic assessment of man’s potential to act non-altruistically. Pursuit for self-interest is not
itself a bad thing. It only becomes destructive when it loses relationship to the whole and individual
actions are carried out without consideration of others and society at large.
In the mining competition, all players can act out of self-interest. Yet, the reward for playing by the rules
is higher than potential gains one may achieve by attacking the network, so each one learns to
self-regulate their personal desires and work so to not unduly benefit from the altruism of everyone else.
Whenever the system begins to centralize and people act with a narrow sighted pursuit without
consideration of the whole ecosystem, they quickly come to realize they might kill the goose that lays
the golden eggs. So far, each time miners get close to a concentration of a mining pool known as 51%
attack, they voluntarily move away to keep the system healthy and decentralized.
This distributed trust provides a better system of accountability where there is no need for any one
person or group to hold another accountable. All who choose to join simply commit to the rule of
consensus and through each playing honestly, undue self-interests are naturally regulated.
Taming the Beast
In the kleptocracy of the current global empire, naked greed seems to have dragged much of the world
into a rogue state of despotism. Man’s unaccounted fallen nature that creates and grabs for levers of
power has crystallized into a dragon of the world. With never-ending military intervention in the Middle
East, cheap sweatshop labor exploitation in Southeastern Asia, and corporate government hijack bills
like TPP and TISA trade agreements, unredeemed Anglo-American imperial power continues its legacy
of colonization. The genius of the blockchain’s distributed accountability offers a creative solution to the
growing problem of this voracious beast.
In a decentralized organism, one’s self-interests cannot easily remain isolated. With the distributed
ledger, they are placed in an interdependent context where individual’s actions tend to bring benefits to
the whole network. What appears at first glance as self-serving acts of investors and speculators
actually contribute to the development of the system at its early stages. Contrary to criticism, the
perceived expensive mining is providing crucial checks and balances for transactions and the global
level security of the system.
Honest account and acknowledgment of individual pursuit for personal gain within this system mitigates
potentially destructive forces such as greed and desire that tend to careen out of control and
compromise entire systems. Instead of trying to deny or eradicate man’s lower attributes, by maintaining
a conscious relationship to the potentially dark side of human nature, those wild unruly beasts that are
socially destructive can be tamed. Characteristics that are often considered negative in society such as
risk taking, calculated selfish acts and profit motives are guided to serve a shared vision of larger
society.
Through individuals freely choosing to work honestly in the Bitcoin ecosystem, the beast within each
one of us can be placed inside the cage of the mining ring and accounted for in each transaction. The
global mind of the world’s largest supercomputer network takes charge of the drive for competition with
complex abstract calculation, digesting many ruthless and callous aspects of human nature. This in
return can free humanity from forces of aggression and the logic of conquest and creates a space for
people to work altruistically. Out of the torrents created through globally spread computers, the torus of
the new heart grows and with every beat helps expand the collective good will of the people throughout
the entire network.
Rule of Democracy
The pure flow unleashed through Bitcoin’s perfect market begins to free the will of individuals from the
rule of a small minority who claim authority over entire populations. As a result, it could release the First
Amendment right that was locked by corporate proprietary. This technology beyond borders can
empower individuals by placing the source of legitimacy with the common people. With Bitcoin as the
new First Amendment app, people can freely exchange, transact and financially associate with one
another without asking permission from anyone. This helps revitalize values and ideas that have been
devoured by corporatism.
A spontaneous swarm is created through aligning self-interests with the principle of consensus. Out of
the creative chaos of this autonomous movement of individuals, new social forms are organically
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emerging, based on voluntary consent of all participants in the system. This creates the rule of true
democracy, where the lines between those who govern and the governed flatten, and to represent
comes to mean to serve. In the blockchain’s decentralized world, miners and developers who take their
place in traditionally understood positions of representation are directly tied to the interests of users, as
their satisfaction is manifested in wider adoption that creates more value. By taking an oath to
algorithmic consensus, they hold themselves accountable to the demands of a more humanized market.
The Declaration of Independence was a promise and the Constitution was meant to be its fulfillment.
Now, as the shredding of the Bill of Rights continues, there is an urgent need to create a better system.
Necessity is the mother of invention and builders of the new world are rising to the occasion, striving to
meet the challenge by coding freedom. The Founding Mothers of this breakthrough innovation were the
accumulated efforts of the many embodied in the anonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi
represents the wisdom of the common people. Upon an open source code that can be checked and
modified, transparency of governance is ensured, while lack of ownership allows the system to stay
open with equal access to apps for all end users.
With objective laws of mathematics that can be applied and amended through peer-to-peer review and
decentralized consensus, this system can be perfected to realize the ideal of the Declaration; that all
nodes are created equal. Upon this robust decentralized platform, new apps are built and seemingly
insurmountable problems can be solved through people around the world working together.
The blockchain revolution has already begun changing the world as we know it. A tsunami of
innovations from Silicon Valley are creating new jobs and resuscitating the dying economy of a fiat
world. Creative non-violent acts of a growing global network can redeem true enlightenment ideals of
freedom, equality, and fraternity, which are at the same time universal democratic virtues.
The founders of the Constitution conceived it as a system that allows individuals to struggle with two
opposing impulses working within. In the eyes of Thomas Jefferson, government was to be “a shell, an
armor, a protective structure that would allow and perhaps, in subtle ways, even support the growth of
moral power within the individual members of the society” (Needleman, 2003, p. 166).
A piece of mathematics enshrined in computer code can become the foundation stone for real
democracy. This creates a sanctuary for individual liberty against the tyranny of states, of corporations
or any other third party that tries to break the circle of distributed trust. This liberty is not understood
simply as free markets, but as the freedom of each person to choose their own path of
self-determination and let their inner conscience guide their lives.
Bitcoin flows, splitting into ever more divisible bits across borders wherever there is a thirst for freedom,
becoming the electric cord that links all liberty-loving men and women around the world. Wider adoption
furthers decentralization and can lead to creation of a free society where each strives toward higher
ideals of altruism and self-fulfillment.
Earth view taken by US Astronaut Terry Virts, Flight Engineer for Expedition 42 on the International Space Station Jan. 30, 2015 by
NASA/Terry Virts.
Why I’ve Chosen To Go With Private Internet Access

3 March 2015 09:04
Image of padlock
Civil Liberties: Some people have noticed I’m writing for a VPN service, and having my regular
commentary on liberties presented by that VPN service: by Private Internet Access VPN. Seeing my
previous stance on advertising, I think it merits some explanation why I’m choosing to associate with a
service brand.
When I was posting once a day, this blog had one million visits a month. If you monetize that on
advertising, it becomes quite a decent income – on the order of $3,000 a month, or frankly, enough to
pay food and board for anywhere outside of San Francisco, Tokyo, or Hong Kong. And yet I didn’t.
Why?
Because I posted from insight into high-level politics in Brussels, and my reasons were always political; I
could not afford to have those motives questioned. Having even a little small advertising would make it
possible to interpret my motives for outrage and frustration as simple clickbait – especially so when I
was speculating on something or reporting on more subtle developments that might never materialize.
Putting it in real terms, keeping my motives straight came with a price tag of several thousand US
dollars a month, money that I chose to leave on the table.
Therefore, I would not agree to sponsoring lightly – not given the name I’ve worked hard to build.
Especially given my very early investment in bitcoin (2011); I’m not starving, even if Gox ate a lot of my
coin. However, it’s also the case that there are few people who both do things right on the net, and do
things right for the right reasons, and I think these people deserve to be called out as good examples to
be followed.
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Bahnhof is one such actor, the Swedish ISP. They have consistently and tenaciously defended liberty
online against governmental overreach and tabloid-fueled moral panic alike. When the Security Police
came to visit their offices, to convince and pressure them to rat out their users in realtime bulk wiretaps,
they famously recorded and published that conversation instead, causing huge headlines in Swedish
media and rightfully shaming the Security Police into submission. That wasn’t a one-off, either – they
keep doing things like that. However, their scope and offering is limited to Scandinavia, which is why I
don’t write about them much on an English blog.
(Yes, my 100-megabit fiber, the one you’re reading this from and the one I’m writing this at, is indeed
served by Bahnhof.)
So when the idea of sponsorship appeared, I was reluctant and cautious at first until I had looked at
Private Internet Access VPN more in depth. A VPN company does provide a valuable service for liberty
today, but do they also do things the right way and for the right reasons?
One such divider is whether a VPN provider accepts bitcoin. Another whether they save logs for “lawful
use”, which can mean getting people killed in jurisdictions where it’s illegal to protest against the regime.
Accepting bitcoin would mean that they honestly had no way of identifying a user, even if they wanted;
there would be nothing to link to. Saving logs “for lawful use”, in contrast, would be an indicator that a
VPN company didn’t have their head screwed on straight: the whole point is to defend liberty at a much
more fundamental level than the laws on the books just right now. The perspective is centuries, not
years or months.
It turns out that Private Internet Access not only satisfies criteria like these, but have walked an extra
mile to run operations in jurisdictions that maximize liberty. From where I stand, they seem to operate
under the principle that a successful business always follows passion for a good cause, and not the
other way around.
Now, a VPN service – all of them, even – isn’t enough to save the net and liberty from kleptocratic
politicians. But a liberty attitude combined with a service attitude is. Courage is contagious. And a VPN
service is a good part of your overall security portfolio, even if it should never be the only one.
You’ll notice that TorrentFreak ran an article on which VPN services to trust in a “2015 edition” review
yesterday. Private Internet Access is the first service listed. While I’d recommend reading all of it, I’m
choosing a few highlights:
We do not log, period. This includes, but is not limited to, any traffic data, DNS data or
meta (session) data. Privacy IS our policy. … We do not log and therefore are unable to
provide information about any users of our service. We have not, to date, been served
with a valid court order that has required us to provide something we do not have. … We
do not attempt to filter, monitor, censor or interfere in our users’ activity in any way, shape
or form. BitTorrent is, by definition, allowed.
Feel free to compare this stance to your current ISP. Do read it again if you like.
So to answer the initial question, why do I associate with a service brand? Because I think good people
deserve recognition, and they deserve to be the measuring stick for the industry as a whole. This is the
kind of attitude – both Bahnhof’s and Private Internet Access’s – that the rest of the Internet industry
should aspire to, and needs to aspire to. (If other players need a nudge in that direction, it’s also
enormously good business sense to put the interests of your customers before the invasive whims of
your governments and authorities.)
As a final note for the sake of transparency, just to overcommunicate that point, I do get sponsorship
funds from Private Internet Access for writing and talking about liberty in general – though not for writing
this specific article; I’m doing that because I want to explain my motives. But as a sponsoree, I do have
affiliate links for signing up, and if you want to use such a link, mine is here. They’re also reachable from
TorrentFreak, presumably with TF’s affiliate program if you’re thinking of signing up and would rather
send a little affiliate portion to TorrentFreak’s good reporting.
Copyright Monopolist Claims Legal, Non-Infringing “Fair Use” Is Like AGGRAVATED RAPE
12 February 2015 00:52
941938_76589276
Copyright Monopoly: In a fuming blog article, David Newhoff claims that non-infringing, legal uses of
copyrighted works – that is, of people’s own property – are like “aggravated rape” when made without
unneeded consent of the monopoly holder. Newhoff tries to scold the crucial concept of “fair use” in
copyright monopoly doctrine, the concept which explicitly says that some usages are not covered by
the monopoly and therefore not up to the monopoly holder, and ends saying that if you don’t grant
permission and can’t set limits, it’s “aggravated rape”. Just when you think copyright monopoly zealots
can’t sink any lower, they surprise you with one of the few creativities they’ve ever shown.
The copyright monopoly, which is not property but a form of Industrial Protectionism (IP) and therefore a
23 of 24 06/11/2016 16:57
limitation on property rights, is subject to a constant barrage of attempted re-branding to “property” by

monopolists who want to strengthen their monopoly. In many regards, copyright monopoly punditry are
like religious fanatics in this regard – the idea that their monopoly is just harmful is so hard to digest, that
facts and empirical observations just be damned.
But in this article, which is about “fair use”, meaning exceptions to the copyright monopoly where it just
doesn’t apply – and therefore about when the copyright monopoly holder can’t set limits and doesn’t get
to grant or deny permission over non-infringing uses of a creative work, Newhoff really sets a new limbo
bar:
David Newhoff: If the copyright monopoly holder doesn’t get to grant or deny permission, and doesn’t
get to set limits, like with a fully-legal fair-use case, it’s like aggravated rape against the copyright
monopoly holder
Do note here that Newhoff is not saying that copyright monopoly infringement is like aggravated rape.
That would be bad enough. Newhoff is saying that taking actions that fall outside of the scope of the
monopoly, without treating them as though they were monopolized and restricted anyway, i.e. doing
something fully legal with your own property, is like aggravated rape.
This goes far, far beyond the usual silliness of claiming that copyright monopoly infringement “is
stealing” (which, as a reminder, the U.S. Supreme Court has handed down a firm judgment saying it isn’t
in any way, shape, or form).
Civil liberties activists have sometimes been poking fun at the excessive rhetoric from copyright
monopolists, saying it’s not stealing but rather arson, or maybe kidnapping. In a brilliant application of
Poe’s Law, which says good satire can’t be reliably distinguished from zealot fundamentalism, it seems
liberties activists just can’t possibly keep up with the increasingly ridiculous – and audacious, not to
mention outright revolting – things asserted by copyright monopolists.
24 of 24 06/11/2016 16:57

Falkvinge On Infopolicy

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