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The factory-floor knowledge economyMeans of productionhttp://mondediplo.com/2013/03/10makersDigital manufacturing with 3D printers is for some enthusiasts ananti-consumer concept, promising a return to a craft ethos and an endto outsourcing. But this may not be the real future of the technique.by Johan SöderbergThe third industrial revolution might come with personal or digitalmanufacturing, when what used to be bought in a shop could be madeat home with such tools as laser cutters, 3D printers and computernumerical control (CNC) milling machines (1). They are all based onthe same principle, using software to help guide the movements of amachine tool, and the one that has attracted the most media attentionis a printer that prints three-dimensional objects, with a nozzle thatlays down a plastic material layer by layer. Designs for the printerof such objects as doorknobs or bicycles can be downloaded from thenet.The media articles featured one of the many commercial 3D printers,but the technology was developed by a loose network of hobbyists or“makers”, whose homemade 3D printer is called RepRap. They are rootedin the world of free software and strive to apply the same values andpractices to manufacturing; some aspire to democratise the means ofproduction and abolish consumer society. It is often predicted that 3Dprinting will reduce labour costs and lessen the incentive of firmsto outsource production to low-cost-labour countries (2). This idea,which is closer to a respectable business outlook, is endorsed by thepublisher of Make magazine, which also organises annual Maker Fairesin major US cities.At the New York 2011 Faire, I noticed a certain dissonance withthe revolutionary ideals. A corner of it was dedicated to “thePrint-Village”, with 20 booths devoted to the RepRap and its manyderivatives. Nearby was a much larger pavilion with many exhibitionsof sophisticated CNC machines, and one booth that stood out — it wasfor the “Alliance for American Manufacturing”, between American steelmanufacturers and United Steelworkers (USW), and had red, white andblue banners with the message “Keep it made in America”. A hostesshanded out badges with the same message; she confessed to me she foundit ironic to be doing that here, next to the machines descended from atechnology that contributed so much to the destruction of factory jobsin the US and elsewhere.The historian David Noble has shown that CNC machinery came out ofnumerical control (N/C) machinery — automated machine tools — whichoriginated in the context of the cold war (3), its development largelyfunded by military contracts. The technology was thought to be crucialto the arms race against the Communist enemy, and the fight againstunions; a major source of union strength was the workers’ knowledgemonopoly over the production process. Fooling the employersThis had been identified by Frederick W Taylor, in his principlesof scientific management: “The managers assume ... the burden ofgathering together all of the traditional knowledge which in the pasthas been possessed by the workmen and then of classifying, tabulating,and reducing this knowledge to rules, laws and formulae which areimmensely helpful to the workmen in doing their daily work.” The pagespreceding this quote describe the ways that workers can pretend thatthey are working at full speed to fool their employers. A benchmarkof average performance had to be established so that lazy, dishonestworkers could be detected, but when engineers were sent in to measureworker productivity, the workers learned how to fool them too.Compliance could be enforced through the design of the machinery. Inthe early 19th century, the British mathematician Charles Babbagetravelled to observe different branches of industry, and then produceda catalogue of ingenious mechanisms by which the honesty of servantsand workers could be ensured in the absence of their master. Hedeclared: “One great advantage which we may derive from machinery isfrom the check which it affords against the inattention, the idleness,or the dishonesty of human agents” (4). Babbage is chiefly rememberedas the “father of computers”, due to his pioneering experimentswith calculating machines; his Analytical Engine was programmedwith punched cards, “software” that was used a century later in N/Cmachines.Noble explained how software realised the dreams of control ofBabbage and Taylor: “Essentially, this was a problem of programmableautomation, of temporarily transforming a universal machine into aspecial-purpose machine through the use of variable ‘programs’, setsof instructions stored on a permanent medium and used to control themachine. With programmable automation, a change in product requiredonly a switch in programs rather than reliance upon machinists toretool or readjust the configuration of the machine itself.”The aim of reducing managers’ dependency on skilled machine operatorswas an incentive behind the development of N/C technology, as werethe need to manufacture parts that could not easily be constructedmanually, the imperative of increasing productivity and, as far asthe researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)were concerned, the joy of solving mathematical problems. Noble arguesthere were alternatives that would have had less adverse consequencesfor workers, but these were deliberately not pursued (5). A repressedmemory for makersThis puts the enthusiastic claims for 3D printers into perspective.One claim is that laid-off American workers can find a new sourceof income by selling printed goods over the Internet, which willbe an improvement, as degraded factory jobs are replaced with morecreative employment opportunities. But factory jobs were not alwaysmonotonous. They were deliberately made so, in no small part throughthe introduction of the same technology that is expected to restorecraftsmanship. “Makers” should be seen as the historical result ofthe negation of the workers’ movement. Many high-profile makersare students and teachers at MIT, which played such a decisiverole in the creation of N/C and CNC technology. This historyreturns as a repressed memory for makers, in their obsession withabandoned factories and scrapyards. Detroit, the global symbol ofdeindustrialisation, is repeatedly featured in Make magazine andassociated blogs (6).Catherine Fisk, a lawyer, has gone through old trials in the US inwhich employers and employees confronted each other over the ownershipof ideas. In the early 19th century, courts tended to uphold thecustomary right of workers to freely make use of knowledge gainedat the workplace, and attempts by employers to claim the mentalfaculties of trained white workers were rejected by courts becausethis resembled slavery too closely. As the knowhow of workers becamecodified and the balance of power shifted, courts began to vindicatethe property claims of employers (7). This lends a different aspectto the makers’ ideas about alternatives to copyright, such as freesoftware licenses and Creative Commons. Some researchers have warnedthat these might end with workers exploiting themselves (8). There isa crowdsourcing platform owned by Amazon, where net users are invitedto solve simple tasks, such as identifying people in photographs. Theaverage income of an “employee” is $1.25 an hour (9).Plans are already being worked out for integrating home 3D printersinto a flexible production line; and it is easy to see how this couldlead to downward pressure on wages in the industry. When I suggestedthis to Adrian Bowyer, the instigator of the RepRap project, heagreed, but said: “It might not be such a bad thing for workers,because they would not have to buy as many things in stores.” So thestruggle is to be fought out at the point of consumption, involvingintellectual property legislation and the design of the tools madeavailable to the general public.While some hobbyists strive to develop a machine that corresponds totheir ideals about distributed production, entrepreneurs, investorsand intellectual property lawyers back a very different idea of whatthe 3D printer might become. The stakes were spelled out in theTechnology Bill of Rights, proposed in 1981 by the InternationalAssociation of Machinists (IAM), when CNC machines were makinginroads into manufacturing industry. The manifesto declared: “The newautomation technologies and the sciences that underlie them are theproduct of a world-wide, centuries-long accumulation of knowledge.Accordingly, working people and their communities have a right toshare in the decisions about, and the gains from, new technology.Johan Söderberg is a sociologist at the University of Paris East andthe Ifris and Latts institutes.(1) The Economist, London, 21 April 2012.(2) See Laurent Carroué, “Europe’s economic disarmament”, Le Mondediplomatique, English edition, April 2012.(3) David F Noble, Forces of Production: a Social History ofIndustrial Automation, Transaction Publishers, Piscataway (NewJersey), 2011.(4) Charles Babbage, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (4thed), Charles Knight, London, 1835.(5) Philip Scranton, “The shows and the flows: Materials, markets, andinnovation in the US machine tool industry, 1945-1965”, History andTechnology, vol 25, no 3, September 2009.(6) Sara Tocchetti, “DIYbiologists as ‘makers’ of personal biologies:How Make magazine and Maker Faires contribute in constituting biologyas a personal technology”, Journal of Peer Production, no 2, 2012.See also Steven C High and David W Lewis, Corporate Wasteland: theLandscape and Memory of Deindustrialization, ILR Press, Ithaca, 2007.(7) Catherine Fisk, Working Knowledge: Employee Innovation and theRise of Corporate Intellectual Property, 1800-1930, University ofNorth Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2009.(8) See Pierre Lazuly, “Artificial artificial intelligence”, Le Mondediplomatique, English edition, August 2006.(9) Lilly Irani, “Microworking the Crowd”, limn.it

(wrote the original around 1996, and I'm still talking about this stuff, most recently at SXSW Interactive this year.)==================AVATARS AND THEORY==================I started working with avatars in text-based applications such asnewsgroups, email lists, MOOs, LPMUDs, and IRC. Below is a list of whatI perceived as their common characters - and the relationship of thosecharacteristics to everyday, i.e. non-CMC, life. Current notes are inbrackets.==================JENNIFER, JULU, NIKUKO, ALAN==================1 system resonances - what entrances and exits available - sendmail forexample (from telnet 25 to configuration files), doctor for another [atthis point text-based avatars were attached to applications that were notavatar-based. on the other hand the Eliza program in emacs allowed for thedevelopment of personality and dialog, and might be one of the firstonline avatar environments.]2 explorations of self and fragmentations - discomforts, tremblings astotality is problematized [this tends towards issues of abjection,wounding, frisson, arousal, and death within the virtual - which mightcynically be seen as nothing more than a rearrangement of digital bits.]3 psychotic emanations - selves generating worlds, inability to return ormanipulate one in relation to another [the worlds such as IRC were widelydisparate and appeared autonomous; to carry Jennifer from one to anotherrequired reassertions. the same is true today, but mixed-reality worktends to blur all of this - in other wor(l)ds the environments exist inpotential wells that allow tunneling.]4 perturbations within systems - IRC or alt.jen-coolest for examples [itwas, and still is, possible to perturb systems, to work at the edges ofthe game space, to hack and infiltrate - annihilating a performanceplatform at the end of a performance in Second Life, or having humanperforms work at the edges of a mocap space are two examples.]5 theoretical turns - Jennifer's 'panties on the ground' - desire inrelation to metaphysical system building [sexual-theoretical turns, asboth male and female avatars operated within fetishization and abjection,two trends that have become commonplace in virtual sexuality. what happenswhen an avatar is 'in tatters,' falling apart, collapsing?]6 problematics of author and authoring - 'deaths of authors' [like theuncanny between real and virtual worlds, there is an uncanny betweenavatar creator/controller/human performer and avatar; through an analysisof projection and introjection, avatar and (presumably) human becomeinextricably entangled.]7 multiculturalisms (Nikuko), sexualities (Julu), Alan and the rhetoricof innocence [multiculturalisms extend to virtual cultures and theirethnographies, but what occurs in the virtual doesn't stay in thevirtual.]8 duals and dialogs, dialectic - talker or MOO explorations (wanderingsand fabrications of spaces) [these explorations have moved of course intoOpenSim and Second Life, but the concepts of historiography, brokenprojects, avatar absences, debris, etc. remain the same.]9 stutterings, etc. - manipulated texts - the problematic of speaking,including breakdowns of first/second/third persons [textual stuttering canblur diegesis, tense, and person; it can play off inner speech, it canspeak among- or for-, it can reveal psychoanalytical debris.]10 ontic explorations - ghosts and other emanations (the videos) -elements of disappearances, sadomasochisms, bindings and controls - thenature of writing and inscription [again in this early outline, sexualitymakes an appearance. not only are ontologies blurred, but the very natureof control becomes messy and obscured in terms of agency. social mediaobscures and hides: think of Facebook for example as a sado-masochistictheater, with non-existent keywords and with hidden, unknown, powerdispersing and controlling your self-image, and your image of other'sselves.]11 sexualities - multiples, topologies, exchanges (Nikuko), dismemberings(Julu-function), affect (Alan) [selves split, bots are everywhere, avatarbots are wonders of control and one can imagine such control as looped andcontinuous, eventually becoming the real/virtual landscape itself. all ofthis relates to the _obscene,_ which has been shown to operate differentlyin the brain; 'primitive' processes are called up, and language becomesthreat, arousal, and other. sexualities operate everywhere in social mediaand virtual worlds, and the cartoon-like visuals in the latter play deeplyinto fantasy introjection and projection. humans are just at the beginningof understanding this, ignoring their animal and primate present.]12 dismemberments - part-objects, splays, ruptures, s/ms, emissions [thisties quickly into the world-theater of slaughter and corruption, plant andanimal extinctions, neo-liberalism and corporate enclaving: hiding theparts in relation to a simulacrum of the w/hole. in a sense this is theheart of an analysis that works with the engine of subterfuge and death.]13 language and performativities - javascript, julu-function, julu- orjennifer-pages [after this, a bit of Visual Basic. i've used Perl for textmanipulation, Emacs Lisp for reworking Eliza, scripting in Second Life,etc., but always with help; I'm not a programmer, just a kludger. but Isometimes start talks with the phenomenology of performative language; forexamplek2% dateMon Mar 18 12:40:35 EDT 2013where a command is qualitative transformed into an unforeseen result(unforeseen in the sense that it occupies a different epistemologicalregime) - and how this has utterly transformed our notion of thefundamental depth and obdurate nature of analogic reality.]14 constitutive realities - nature of the digital, Jennifer "having allthe time in the world," holarchic spaces and levels, fully-determinedworldings, towards - [this get complicated - the digital as cleansed,corporate, codec/corporate-driven, capable of infinite raster, problemat-izing the truth, capable of controlling everything. in the real world,digital and analog are entangled, holarchic (tangled hierarchically).digital worlds are less and less fully-determined - too complex, too manyglitches (which are seeds for other things), too leaky, too multiply-connected, too mixed with the real - they're part and parcel of everydaylife, at least for humans.]15 future seamless virtual realities, moving across cyberplains, fluidarchitectures and entities, etc. [this is still a goal, but instead of theanalog embedded in the digital, at least for the foreseeable future, thedigital is embedded in the analog - in other words, we are all avatars,and those who are relatively disconnected may well feel the wrath of ourslaughter.]==================

I've hardly ever read such a scathing editorial, but it's probablyapposite to the fact that we're now very well into the real begin of thebeginning of the end ...Enjoy!(difficult to xs the FT these days, pay-wall policy rulez. I retrieved itfrom this site: http://fortunascorner.wordpress.com------FINANCIAL TIMES17 Mar 2013 8:22pmEurope botches another rescueJust as the eurozone had begun to set the right course in its strugglewith an ever-mutating debt crisis, it relapsed into its old vice. Facedwith a drowning member state, instead of throwing Cyprus a lifebuoy,leaders put a millstone around its neck.Appearances notwithstanding, the Cyprus deal does not “bail-in” creditorsin an orderly resolution of bankrupt banks. Instead it imposes a tax onall depositors down to the smallest ones. However legal it may be, thisrank violation of the spirit of deposit insurance – small savers in the EUare guaranteed that deposits up to €100,000 are safe regardless howmoribund their bank – unforgiveably betrays those with the most to loseand the least to answer for.It is also contrary to a future European banking system in which taxpayersare shielded from the losses of banks; investors pay for the risks theytake in a predictable order of priority; and savers can trust thatdeposits up to the insurance limit are protected.The hope of righting the eurozone’s listing ship relies on divorcing thedebt problems of a sovereign from those of the country’s banks. Last June,the eurozone’s leaders finally acknowledged the nature of the problem.Cyprus seemed a possible salutary test for the more enlightened approach.With unsustainable public finances and a banking sector about seven timesthe island’s annual economic output, the stark choice was betweensovereign restructuring and forcing losses on bank creditors. Choosing thelatter course was correct. But instead of restructuring broken banks atthe unfortunately necessary price of creditor losses, this package paysthe price without the benefit.It will not take the banks into immediate restructuring. It willapparently not bail in unsecured senior bondholders. While Cypriot bankshave very little bonded debt outstanding – a mere €1.7bn, as against some€70bn of deposits – this is still significant compared to the €5.8bn thedeposit tax will raise. It also circumvents the legal status of claims onbankrupt debtors in a way that hurts ordinary depositors to benefitsophisticated investors. This is destabilising as well as morallyunconscionable.The structure of Cypriot banks’ balance sheet meant some deposits had tobe hit. But President Nicos Anastasiades’ claim that there is noalternative to the current plan is an insult to the small Cypriot saver orbusiness owner. Insured deposits could be protected in full by imposinglarger haircuts – Mr Anastasiades himself suggested 60 per cent – onaccounts above the €100,000 threshold. Cyprus has had two years in whichto prepare legislation that could have ring-fenced small deposits (or evenall EU residents’ deposits) with a matching amount of assets in anemergency. Even now, a variant of Britain’s special resolution law couldbe adopted. This is a conscious choice to make poorer people pay to helpricher ones.The suspicion must be that Cypriot leaders are determined to salvage thepieces of their offshore banking model, even against eurozone pressure toshrink the sector. Like other European island states before them, thepeople of Cyprus are discovering who pays to keep a metastasised bankingsector alive.The risks for Europe are as significant. However haltingly, the eurozonehas been moving towards banking union. The European commission has alsomade plans for cross-border deposit insurance and resolution schemesincluding bail-in rules. The Cyprus “rescue” throws all this into doubt.If a deposit tax is the preferred solution, bank resilience is once againa function of sovereign strength.The biggest risk is political. The prescription of universal austeritycombined with kid-gloves treatment of big investors in banks isincreasingly toxic to European voters. Leaders have just added fuel to thefire.-----(u can also read more from the NYT, etc on the Fortuna blog)

Theseus' Ship Elements of the utopias written in Atlantis may be found in the present, but the understanding from shore of boats re-constructed on the high seas is exclusively genetic. (Johan Sjerpstra) The capitalist system (representative democracy based on a market economy) has become incapable of functioning in its present form. For one thing we have reached the natural limits of growth, and now produce predominantly trash and environmental damage. Furthermore we have developed technological avenues for manipulation that have evolved into a subtle, complex, and convergent system that has the capacity to take economies, finance, and social structures in entirely unrealistic directions. This has all happened in the name of specialization that arose in the scientific revolution of the 17th century and then the Enlightenment, discarding universal modes of thought perceived as clumsy and an obstacle to development. Secularized specialization naturally gave rise to tremendous scientific and technological development from the 19th century to our day, one that could never have been envisioned in an earlier era - but it has also brought catastrophe and a string of societal tragedies. With the rise of autonomous art in the 19th century after the wane of its religious/political function, gradually the expectation of realism and the grand narrative also fell away, concurrent with the proliferation of visual media. This was the beginning of a self-driving process, borrowing the accumulative and growth-oriented logic of capitalism, that built a system of institutions that, in addition to commercial activities, support art's own self-reflexive research. This clearly leads all the way from modernist concepts of freedom to contemporary art's notion of total competence. Now This institutional structure is being reshaped all the world over in a populist/demagogical vein, in the name of the so-called creative industry. During the Cold War the main message of the culture was demonstrating freedom, and art has taken this freedom, of course, in new directions, like medial/social/political/global awareness. The Cold War is over, the crisis is here, and the ideology of openness is getting to be replaced by control. In politics there is a change in general attitude toward art/culture: politicians realize its importance, but they misunderstand it at the very same time. They simply want more control over the influential creative class, and therefore envision a creative industry, which, like the other important sectors of a country's economy (like military, energy) has to be able to be governed, allowing play on its different registers. With the wane of institutions of overinterpretative mediation, the ability of the system to resolve problems is also weakened. Within the exceptionally subtle and effective distribution of labor, the function of art has come to represent the other who stirs us to think, and offering non-violent, thought-based approaches, and solutions based on creative, independent, lateral thinking. Art works through over-interpretation - the infrastructure (institutional framework) that aids understanding - and prepares us for the encounter with the other, and for solving problems we cannot yet know. With its new autonomy, art became a place for learning about the encounter with the new, a place where, in an environment that is simpler than reality, we may encounter something unknown and experience the road from non-understanding to understanding. During this journey we fortify ourselves with learned ways of understanding and interpretation, and this is inevitably critical process. The critical competence of art is questioned now by populists everywhere, in many local dialects. Art is the last refuge of free speech, which must be carefully guarded and preserved above all. Solutions for future problems can be found only if we keep watch over this freedom. Since modern art is also built on the principles of capitalism (accumulation and growth), what will happen if the underlying system - capitalism - is transformed? What other models can we imagine? János Sugár

I guess I ought to have taken Bruce Sterling's advice concerning MarkStahlman, but as my text on 3D printing is now circulating on thenettime-list and is being commented on, I feel obliged to make someclarifications. An original version of the text was published in Re-public(http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=5399), and is together with another text"Atoms want to be free too"(http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/288), a betterstarting point for whoever might want to raise objections against me, as Ithere get to develop my arguments at some length. The bottom-line is this:there are contradicting potentials in 3D printing (just as there were inN/C machines, though only the union-busting, labour-hostile designs wereinvested in, by MIT and others), hence it is meaningless to take a stand(for or against) 3D printing as such. What is needed is to support thosefringe groups who are trying to push the technology in a good (or, leastbad) direction. If labour is going to be made free (as in gratis), then soshould the atoms.

Folks: Based on the categories that have become widespread over the past 40years, I guess that I am a "technological determinist" -- perhaps theworst sort of "thought criminal" possible in social science. So, as you might (not) be surprised to hear, I have been frustratedtrying to figure out what that means and, indeed, what "crime" I havecommitted. I've spoken with quite a few social scientists who have used the termin their work -- typically declaring that *they* (and everyone theyadmire) must definitely can't imagine committing this crime themselves

Dear all,my PhD "Networked Disruption" is finally published and I would like to share this news with you. Below are some additional information, plus the link for free download.For the people living in Berlin, the launch is on Tuesday 26 at c-base, 8pm.More info are on the website:http://disruptiv.bizAbout the launch:http://www.transmediale.de/content/resource-004-networked-disruptionAll the best,Tatiana-----------------Networked DisruptionRethinking Oppositions in Art, Hacktivism and the Business of Social NetworkingBy Tatiana BazzichelliPublished by Digital Aesthetics Research Center Press.Download free PDF:http://disruptiv.biz/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Networked-Disruption-web-version-15.03.2013.pdf(licensed under the Peer Production License)The current techno-economic paradigm of Web 2.0 has challenged notions of art and hacktivism within digital culture. The book "Networked Disruption" takes up this challenge and discusses a new perspective on political and social criticism. It simultaneously asks what are the conditions for hacker and artistic practices under Web 2.0 and how can social networking be seen to build on and incorporate artistic practices from the earlier decades of digital and network culture.Through its theoretical discussion of contemporary art and hacktivism, the book maps out a new contradictory space for art and criticism: Networked disruption.---------------------------------------------------------##What is the book about?After the emergence of Web 2.0, the critical framework of art and hacktivism has shifted from developing strategies of opposition to embarking on the art of disruption. By identifying the emerging contradictions within the current economical and political framework of Web 2.0, the aim is to reflect on the status of activist and hacker practices as well as those of artists in the new generation of social media (or so called Web 2.0 technologies), analysing the interferences between networking participation and disruptive business innovation. Connecting together disruptive practices of networked art and hacking in California and Europe, Tatiana Bazzichelli proposes a constellation of social networking projects that challenge the notion of power and hegemony, such as mail art, Neoism, The Church of the SubGenius, Luther Blissett, Anonymous, Anna Adamolo, Les Liens Invisibles, the Telekommunisten collective, The San Francisco Suicide Club, The Cacophony Society, the early Burning Man Festival, the NoiseBridge hackerspace, and many others.##Main objective and themesThe objective of this book is to rethink the meaning of critical and oppositional practices in art, hacktivism and the business of social networking. The aim is to analyse hacker and artistic practices through business instead of in opposition to it. Shedding light on the mutual interferences between networking participation and disruptive business innovation, this book explores the current transformation in political and technological criticism. The analysis poses the following questions: Is the business of social media co-opting DIY culture? How can hackers and artists be critical in the business context of social media? Is it possible to respond critically to business without either being co-opted by it or refusing it? Is criticism only possible through opposition?Disruption becomes a two-way strategy in networking contexts, a practice to generate criticism, and a methodology to create business innovation. Connecting together disruptive practices of networked art and hacking in California and in Europe, and comparing North American and European political traditions, Tatiana Bazzichelli proposes a constellation of social networking projects that challenge the notion of power and hegemony.##A new perspective for social and political criticismBy describing the concept of "disruptive business" as an art practice, Tatiana Bazzichelli's analysis becomes an opportunity, both for academics and practitioners, to imagine new possible routes of social and political action. Distributed, autonomous and decentralised networking practices of disruption become a means for rethinking oppositional hacktivist and artistic strategies within the framework of art and business.Bazzichelli's hypothesis is that mutual interferences between art, hacktivism and the business of social networking have changed the meaning and contexts of political and technological criticism. Hackers and artists have been active agents in business innovation, while at the same time also undermining business. Artists and hackers use disruptive techniques of networking within the framework of social media, opening up a critical perspective towards business to generate unpredictable feedback and unexpected reactions; business enterprises apply disruption as a form of innovation to create new markets and network values, which are often just as unpredictable. Bazzichelli proposes the concept of the art of disruptive business as a form of artistic intervention within the business field of Web 2.0. The notion of disruptive business becomes a means for describing immanent practices of hackers, artists, networkers and entrepreneurs, which are analysed through specific case studies.##What does this book add to the field?This book analyses artistic practices through business disruption instead of in opposition to it. The concept of business, which has become so common in Anglo-Saxon daily life and language is far from obvious, and deserves a deeper critique. An analysis of how business ("being busy", in the context of Protestant culture) relates to political and aesthetic disruption is needed in the field. Many activists usually prefer not to deal with the notion of "business", confining it to the domain of commercial market logic. The book demonstrates how artists-critics use business logic knowingly, how they "co-opt the co-optation". Tatiana Bazzichelli's proposal offers some ways to overcome the apparent dialectical deadlock that currently characterizes the dichotomical process of invention/subsumption. Connecting disruptive practices of networked art and hacking in California and Europe, it offers unique insights into the techno-social and material processes that constitute the art and activist projects under scrutiny. The projects are positioned within a rich context, both on theoretical and practical levels, and across historical and contemporary modes. The concept of "The Art of Disruptive Business" includes suggestions for future effective critical strategies that recombine critical art practices and disruptive business.##Theory and PracticeThis book adopts a comparative approach not only conceptually (researching the mutual interferences between business and disruption), but also by shedding light simultaneously on heterogeneous practices of hackers, artists, networkers, activists and entrepreneurs, who engage deeply with network activity. This practice-based research also becomes a methodological challenge. The theoretical viewpoint of this research is closely connected with the act of being a direct part of the research subject, creating a mutual exchange with the actors of the analysis through conversations and interviews as well as participating in some of the projects described in the book. The method is based on the reformulation of a research approach, which functions within the subject of research, rather than on the subject of research. The result is a methodological constellation of networking practices, which aims to actualise – and to question – the notion of "fieldwork" itself.More info: http://disruptiv.biz/networked-disruption-the-book/

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/16/opinion/schneier-internet-surveillance/The Internet is a surveillance state By Bruce Schneier, Special to CNN March 16, 2013 -- Updated 1804 GMT (0204 HKT) I'm going to start with three data points. One: Some of the Chinese military hackers who were implicated in a broad set of attacks against the U.S. government and corporations were identified because they accessed Facebook from the same network infrastructure they used to carry out their attacks. Two: Hector Monsegur, one of the leaders of the LulzSac hacker movement, was identified and arrested last year by the FBI. Although he practiced good computer security and used an anonymous relay service to protect his identity, he slipped up. And three: Paula Broadwell,who had an affair with CIA director David Petraeus, similarly took extensive precautions to hide her identity. She never logged in to her anonymous e-mail service from her home network. Instead, she used hotel and other public networks when she e-mailed him. The FBI correlated hotel registration data from several different hotels -- and hers was the common name. The Internet is a surveillance state. Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, and whether we like it or not, we're being tracked all the time. Google tracks us, both on its pages and on other pages it has access to. Facebook does the same; it even tracks non-Facebook users. Apple tracks us on our iPhones and iPads. One reporter used a tool called Collusion to track who was tracking him; 105 companies tracked his Internet use during one 36-hour period. Become a fan of CNNOpinion Stay up to date on the latest opinion, analysis and conversations through social media. Join us at Facebook/CNNOpinion and follow us < at >CNNOpinion on Twitter. We welcome your ideas and comments. Increasingly, what we do on the Internet is being combined with other data about us. Unmasking Broadwell's identity involved correlating her Internet activity with her hotel stays. Everything we do now involves computers, and computers produce data as a natural by-product. Everything is now being saved and correlated, and many big-data companies make money by building up intimate profiles of our lives from a variety of sources. News: Cyberthreats getting worse, House intelligence officials warn Facebook, for example, correlates your online behavior with your purchasing habits offline. And there's more. There's location data from your cell phone, there's a record of your movements from closed-circuit TVs. This is ubiquitous surveillance: All of us being watched, all the time, and that data being stored forever. This is what a surveillance state looks like, and it's efficient beyond the wildest dreams of George Orwell. Sure, we can take measures to prevent this. We can limit what we search on Google from our iPhones, and instead use computer web browsers that allow us to delete cookies. We can use an alias on Facebook. We can turn our cell phones off and spend cash. But increasingly, none of it matters. There are simply too many ways to be tracked. The Internet, e-mail, cell phones, web browsers, social networking sites, search engines: these have become necessities, and it's fanciful to expect people to simply refuse to use them just because they don't like the spying, especially since the full extent of such spying is deliberately hidden from us and there are few alternatives being marketed by companies that don't spy. This isn't something the free market can fix. We consumers have no choice in the matter. All the major companies that provide us with Internet services are interested in tracking us. Visit a website and it will almost certainly know who you are; there are lots of ways to be tracked without cookies. Cellphone companies routinely undo the web's privacy protection. One experiment at Carnegie Mellon took real-time videos of students on campus and was able to identify one-third of them by comparing their photos with publicly available tagged Facebook photos. Maintaining privacy on the Internet is nearly impossible. If you forget even once to enable your protections, or click on the wrong link, or type the wrong thing, and you've permanently attached your name to whatever anonymous service you're using. Monsegur slipped up once, and the FBI got him. If the director of the CIA can't maintain his privacy on the Internet, we've got no hope. In today's world, governments and corporations are working together to keep things that way. Governments are happy to use the data corporations collect -- occasionally demanding that they collect more and save it longer -- to spy on us. And corporations are happy to buy data from governments. Together the powerful spy on the powerless, and they're not going to give up their positions of power, despite what the people want. Fixing this requires strong government will, but they're just as punch-drunk on data as the corporations. Slap-on-the-wrist fines notwithstanding, no one is agitating for better privacy laws. So, we're done. Welcome to a world where Google knows exactly what sort of porn you all like, and more about your interests than your spouse does. Welcome to a world where your cell phone company knows exactly where you are all the time. Welcome to the end of private conversations, because increasingly your conversations are conducted by e-mail, text, or social networking sites. And welcome to a world where all of this, and everything else that you do or is done on a computer, is saved, correlated, studied, passed around from company to company without your knowledge or consent; and where the government accesses it at will without a warrant. Welcome to an Internet without privacy, and we've ended up here with hardly a fight.

I’m always curious – as any decent news-hound should be – regarding certainaspects of controversial tech-related dramas. I’m especially curious aboutthose dramas that play out very publicly and create substantialcharacter/brand damage.So this morning I’ve been intent on writing a long-form post regarding thefiring of a PlayHaven<http://blog.playhaven.com/addressing-pycon/>employee for makingalleged offensivecomments <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681> at the PythonDeveloper Conference (PyCon2013<http://pycon.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/pycon-response-to-inappropriate.html>)while in earshot of Adria Richards, a SendGrid Employee. Richardstweeted<https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/313417655879102464>aboutthe incident and complained to PyCon organisers, resulting in AlexReid <http://www.linkedin.com/in/microwavedboy> and“mr-hank”<https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mr-hank>(the firedPlayHaven employee) being knuckle-rapped over the incident.Subsequently, Richards herself has beenfired<http://blog.sendgrid.com/sendgrid-statement/>and althoughinitially there was ample conjecture that this “news” may havebeen the output of some elaborate DDoS hack, it now seems more likely to beaccurate <http://blog.sendgrid.com/a-difficult-situation/>.Fortunately, my intentions have now jumped up and poked me firmly in mycommon-sense gland, and in lieu of finishing and posting that traditionallycrafted article complete with the oily title of “If it doesn’t add value tothe conversation, then it gets deleted” (a direct quote from Richardsherself<http://butyoureagirl.com/14015/forking-and-dongle-jokes-dont-belong-at-tech-conferences/>regardingwhy she’s currently deleting blog comments), I’ve instead startedcrafting the following list of questions as ponder-fodder. The list isn’tespecially comprehensive and, in the effort of full disclosure, it’sundoubtedly laced with my own complicated bias.Then why do it? Because I’d rather offer readers something that may justbreak those horrible and vitrolic “win-lose” mentality loops that plaguecertain social media/blog commentators regarding such controversial issues.I’d also prefer to present an alternative to the multitude of closed-endedand exclusionary “facts” and “answers” such as those being offered by alland sundry regarding the fallout post-PyCon 2013: 1. Were the comments observed by Richards at PyCon 2013 actively (or even latently) sexist, or simply incidences of thoughtless comedic material that peppers (and may even attempt to parody) aspects of sexist geek culture? Could they also conceivably have been a mixture of both? 2. Were these comments misinterpreted – deliberately or unconsciously – in order to create an incident that would create ongoing controversy and accelerated pageviews? 3. If the comments under question had been voiced by two women developers mentioning “big dongles” or “forking” (or shoving socks down their pants <https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/312265091791847425>), would Richards have complained? 4. If the actions Richards undertook regarding the alleged sexist comments were performed by a man instead of a woman, might the outcome, and corresponding furore, be different? 5. Is the malegaze<http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/08/26/faq-what-is-the-%E2%80%9Cmale-gaze%E2%80%9D/>inconstant operation during events like PyCon, and if yes, how do we create a workable solution for its removal? Should we also acknowledge and discuss other types of “gazes” (or other power loaded stereotypical behaviours embedded within unconscious neurotypical agendas) that might be present at such institutionalised events, with associated bias and layered prejudice (involving privilege and status) also in play? 6. When faced with what they think is offensive or hate-based commentary that makes an individual “feel uncomfortable”, how should they react? In today’s constantly “on” world where reports of any action may be instantaneously broadcast, should an individual’s ability to magnify an incident (to the extent where no reasonable or concluding course of action can result) be considered *prior* to any action taken? 7. Is the right to refuse to openly engage – or directly communicate with – an individual who *you think* is displaying offensive behaviour acceptable, especially when this refusal is based on entrenched bias or inequality? 8. If you choose to expose those you think are “in the wrong”, should you be prepared for a certain level of backlash from those who do not view the behaviours as you do? If this level of backlash becomes threatening or vitriolic, how should you respond? How should society at large respond? 9. How do we ensure that well-meaning discourse isn’t hijacked for the sake of attention grabbing “netbytes”? 10. Would decent journalistic input regarding all of these questions actually help?*[Originally posted at GeekGirlOz<http://geekgirl.com.au/blog/2013/03/22/questions-answers-post-pycon-2013-fallout/>]*

(the se/pre-quel...In Defense of Multistakeholder Processesby Michael Gurstein gurstein-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org(with links)http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/in-defense-of-multistakeholder-processes/http://tinyurl.com/c8tuld6I believe in multistakeholder processes.I think along with my community informatics colleagues, that decisionsshould be made as close to those impacted as possible. I think thatthose impacted by decisions should be involved in those decisions. Ithink that multistakeholder processes potentially provide a means forthe otherwise voiceless to have a voice in broader policy and programmedecisions.What I don't believe in are multistakeholder processes that aresurrogates for transferring additional power to self-appointed elites orinsiders. What I don't believe in are processes of decision making whichare done without transparency, accountability, explicit procedures, oreven-handedness in governance. What I don't believe in is the transferof otherwise democratic processes of decision making to multistakeholderprocesses because it seems easier to talk with a small group than with alarger one, to deal with one's friends rather than with outsiders, tomake decisions among those with explicit private interests rather thanbasing decisions on due and inclusive considerations that recognize andincorporate the public interest and the general good.I'm currently, with others, working on behalf of the e-AfricaDirectorate of the African Union to find ways of further enabling thebroadest base of participation in a series of multistakeholder processeswhich I consider to be very successful in their domain. I consider theseto be successful because they are locally anchored and arere-nationalizing planning processes which had, to a considerable degree,been taken over by external donors; they have clear and transparentprocesses of internal operation and inclusion; they work to berepresentative and broadly based within contexts where this is extremelydifficult do achieve. These processes aren't perfect by any means butthey are striving towards improvement and are willing to engage inself-examination.I think these processes are consistent with Anita Gurumurthy's commentsto the WSIS +10 where she said:Multistakeholderism is a framework and means of engagement, it is not ameans of legitimization. Legitimization comes from people, from workwith and among people. We need to use this occasion of the WSIS plus 10review to go back to the the touchstone of legitimacy ¯- engagewith people and communities to find out the conditions of their materialreality and what seems to lie ahead in the information society. Fromhere we need to build our perspectives and then come to multistakeholderspaces and fight and fight hard for those who cannot be present here.Multistakeholder processes could and should enhance democracy byincreasing opportunities for effective participation by those mostdirectly impacted by decisions and particularly those at the grassrootswho so often are voiceless in these processes. It should enhancedemocracy by ensuring that decisions made are reflective of andresponsive to local concerns and to the broadest range of those who mustbear the consequences. It should enhance democracy by making democraticprocesses more flexible and responsive, able to adjust to changingcontexts circumstances, technologies, impacted populations.To do this means shifting away from multistakeholderism as a "means oflegitimation" to being one among many strategies for making democracymore workable in this era of enhanced communications, enhancedinteractivity and accelerated change. But in order to do this theseprocesses must be even more vigilant about ensuring that they operatewithin all of the requirements for effective democracy. They must berepresentative and inclusive, they must be transparent to a fault, theymust accept the highest standards of accountability. With sufficientcreativity and imagination, digital and Internet based technologies Ibelieve can provide additional means for achieving all of this even inever larger contexts and ever more complex domains. It will take timeand immense good will, but the outcome should be strengthened structuresof democratic governance rather than hollowed out shells replaced bygovernance by self-perpetuating special interests.http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/in-defense-of-multistakeholder-processes/

Aakash is the - even cheaper - Indian clone of MIT's Negroponte babyOne-Laptop-per-Child (OLPC), struggling, not to say failing (just likeOLPC), because of 'technological overreach' - we keep it polite - since2011. Same causes = same effects.Aakash 101 on WKP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aakash_%28tablet%29Original to:http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/aakash-is-no-silver-bullet/article4558989.ece(bwo Bytes4All list/ Sasi Kumar)Aakash is no silver bulletAkshat RathiPROMISE AND HYPE: When officials are themselves confused over the tablet?sfuture, it would be a good idea to step back and analyse the reasons forgoing ahead with the project.The government needs to open its eyes and realise that the technologicalutopia it envisions in the low-cost tablet is no cure for poor education,poverty or inequality.The last few days have brought the Aakash tablet back into the medialimelight. Last Friday, Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister M.M.Pallam Raju said that troubles with the manufacturer could doom theproject. But the next day, former HRD Minister Kapil Sibal, who startedthe project, denied Mr. Raju?s comments. He further added: ?I want publicservices to be delivered through Aakash. I want Aakash to be a platformfor 1.2 billion people.?Before Mr. Sibal sets more ridiculous targets and spends taxpayers? moneyon them, he needs to be stopped. His fanciful ideas are wrong. First,there is no evidence that a tablet can solve any of the problems that heclaims it can. Second, it is not clear how it will ever be able to producea laptop that costs less than $35.Root of the ideaThe idea for the Aakash tablet and troubles that the project brings withit have both been inherited from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) projectlaunched in 2005 by Nicholas Negroponte of Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology. OLPC?s hope was that empowering children in the developingworld with computers connected to the internet will help them learnfaster, develop better skills and reach their full potential.But there were problems with the idea right from the start. First, ithadn?t been tested on a large enough population to make a reasonablecost-benefit analysis. Second, the project claimed that scaling upproduction will reduce the cost of each laptop below Rs.5,400 ($100),though they weren?t sure how. Third, OLPC thought better education was thepanacea to all problems irrespective of a country?s needs.Despite these issues, OLPC received backing from the United NationsDevelopment Programme in 2006. With this stamp of approval, itslarge-scale implementation began. About eight years after its launch, theresults are in and OLPC hasn?t done so well.Tested in PeruPeru was the site of the largest experiment. More than 850,000 laptopswere given out at a cost of Rs.108 crore ($200 million). In treatmentschools where the number of laptops per child was increased from 0.12 to1.18, a report by the Inter-American Development Bank found that OLPCfailed in its goals. Test scores in languages and maths remain dismal.Enrolment isn?t higher than what it was before.A 2010 study in Romania, another middle-income country, found that thosechildren who were given laptops were, not surprisingly, more proficient inits use. But they did not score anymore in exams than those who didn?thave computers. Even in a low-income country like Nepal, a small-scalestudy produced the same results. Furthermore, the price of each laptop, upuntil 2010, remained at more than Rs.10,000 ($200).More than 20 lakh laptops have been handed out so far. Berk Ozler, senioreconomist at the World Bank, argues that OLPC is a mess. A report by MarkWarschauer and Morgan Ames of the University of California Irvine, says:?Unlike Negroponte?s approach of simply handing computers to children andwalking away, there needs to be integrated education improvement efforts.?It is not clear how governments all around the world fell for the schemethat is backed by little evidence.OLPC?s latest victim is India, even though Aakash is not a laptop. Mr.Sibal, like Negroponte, considers Aakash to be the panacea to allproblems. It?s not just that. Mr. Sibal also wants Aakash to be thecheapest tablet. This has proved to be a major hurdle. Datawind, aCanadian company, won the tender to provide tablets at a cost of less than$35. Its first version failed miserably because of poor hardware. Thenewer version seemed more promising, but it looks like Datawind willdefault on its promise to deliver 1,00,000 units by March 31.Even if the government somehow, however difficult it may seem, is able toget access to cheap tablets, they are not going to help achieve its aims.Can a laptop overcome the negative impact of a bad teacher or poor school?Can it make children smarter despite the lack of electricity, water,toilets or playgrounds? Can it overcome the limitations of stunted growthamong the malnourished? Can Aakash increase productivity of the workforceto counterbalance the money invested in it?There is no evidence that it can do any of these things. And yet, theNational Mission on Education through Information and CommunicationTechnology ?strongly hinges around a low-cost device through which thecontent created can reach the learner.? This adoption of OLPC?s main ideais fraught with problems. Warschauer and Ames rightly argue that handingout laptops, or in India?s case, tablets, ignores the local context andthus avoids solving any of the targeted problems.Right now when government officials are themselves confused over thefuture of Aakash, it is important to step back and analyse the reasons forpressing forward with a hopeless idea. Without concrete evidence, it wouldbe foolish to continue.(Akshat Rathi is a science and technology journalist based in the U.K.E-mail: rathi.akshat-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w< at >public.gmane.org)Keywords: OLPC project, Datawind, Aakash tablet, HRD ministry

Since I posted Akshat Rathi's op-ed piece in The Hindu on (against) Aakashtablet and, by extention, the OLPC project, I think it's fair to postalso the rejoinders that have come on the Bytes4All list (with possiblymore to come up, but interested readers may from now on follow it directlyon the Bytes4All list archive:http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/Cheers, p+4D!Edward Cherlin:Arrant nonsense.I have refuted the absurd claims made about the Peru study many times.Enemies of OLPC, of Free Software, and of the poor and oppressedsimply ignore the gains made in cognitive and computer skills bychildren in Peru.The remedy for not integrating computers with the curriculum is nottechnology bashing, but getting on with integration. I like to ask, Doyou think that it is better to curse the darkness or to teach childrento make candles? I am writing some of the books on candle-making, andrecruiting others to do so, in the Sugar Labs program for ReplacingTextbooks, and at FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) Manuals. Weneed schools of education to take on full-scale R&D on how to useinteractive digital textbook technology under Creative Commonslicensing to teach every school subject, and whatever else thechildren need to be able to get and create jobs and build civilsociety.Computers now cost less than printed textbooks in all but the poorestcountries, the ones with the most inadequate textbooks. To the shameof India, Bangladesh is now out ahead both on digitizing its textbooksand on doing the work to design, build, and integrate into its schoolsits national Doel computer.And furthermore, shame, utter shame on this so-called advocate forFree Software who does not want poor children to have access to it.Satish Jha:A truant chid on the street shouted against Mahatma Gandhi!Those who have no contribution that is recognized by the people at thefrontiers of knowledge, either in technology or pedagogy, can shout whatthey feel a gushed about with limited understanding of connecting thedots. But what will be that worth?The journalist who wrote in Hindu is like someone living in the plain oldtelephone era commenting on telecommunication in the times of smartphonesand phablets. He will be puzzled, if not baffled.The Hindu article writer did not showed little capability of connectingthe dots. Using third sources not knowing to read them can get onepublished in equally intellectually challenged environments. That does ntchange the fact that the guy has little understand or experience of Olpcas an approach.Ask those who benefit from it.

ArtLeaks members would like to initiate an open discussion at the BrechtForum in NYC on May 4th from 7 PM <http://brechtforum.org/>, around ourupcoming ArtLeaks Gazette, focused on establishing a politics of truth bybreaking the silence on the art world. This will be the official publiclaunch of our gazette, which will be available online and in print at thebeginning of May 2013, and will be followed by a series of debates in thenear future.Artleaks was founded in 2011 as an international platform for culturalworkers where instances of abuse, corruption and exploitation are exposedand submitted for public inquiry. After almost two years of activity, somemembers of ArtLeaks felt an urgent need to establish a regular on-linepublication as a tool for empowerment, reflection and solidarity. (Moreabout us here: http://art-leaks.org/about)Recently, this spectrum of urgencies and the necessity to address them hascome sharply into the focus of fundamental discussions in communitiesinvolved in cultural production and leftist activist initiatives. Amongthese, we share the concerns of groups such as the Radical EducationCollective (Ljubljana), Precarious Workers? Brigade (PWB)(London), W.A.G.E. (NYC), Arts &Labor (NYC), the May Congress of CreativeWorkers (Moscow), Critical Practice (London) and others.Eager to share our accumulated knowledge and facilitate a criticalexamination of the current conditions of the cultural field from a globalperspective, we are equally interested in questioning, with the help of theparticipants in the event, the particular context of New York City with itscultural institutions, scenes and markets.The event will be divided in two parts. In the first, we will announce andpresent the forthcoming ArtLeaks Gazette. Focusing on the theme ?Breakingthe Silence ? Towards Justice, Solidarity and Mobilization?, the structureof the publication comprises six major sections: A. Critique of culturaldominance apparatuses; B. Forms of organization and history of struggles;C. The struggle of narrations; D. Glossary of terms; E. Education and itsdiscontents; F. Best practices and useful resources (More herehttp://art-leaks.org/artleaks-gazette). This publication gatherscontributions from different parts of the globe, highlighting bothhistorical initiatives and emerging movements that engage issues related tocultural workers rights, censorship, repression and systemic exploitationunder conditions of neoliberal capitalism.This also becomes an opportunity to bring up for discussion a series ofquestions that have defined ArtLeaks? activity and that we would like totackle anew in conjunction with local cultural producers in the second partof the event: What are the conditions of the possibility of leakinginformation concerning institutional exploitation, censorship, andcorruption in the art world? What does it mean to speak the truth in theart field and to whom may it be addressed? What analogies and what modelscan we use in order to describe and operate within the conditions in whichcultural workers pursue their activities? We aim to bestow a greater levelof concreteness to these questions by inviting the participants to shareits own concerns and experiences related to inequality of chances,structural injustice and forced self-censorship within the context of theirwork. We are also interested in discussing current collaborations andfuture alliances and projects that unite common struggles acrossinternational locales. Visual and scriptural material which documents theevening will be uploaded on the ArtLeaks platform.Facilitators of the event: *Corina Apostol*, art historian and curator&* DmitryVilensky*(member of Chto Delat? <http://chtodelat.wordpress.com/>), artist& writer*The Brecht Forum has a donation sliding scale of 6 to 15 $. We recommendregistering for this event in advancehere<https://brechtforum.org/civicrm/event/register?id=12473&reset=1>.Even if you are unable to make a donation, we still encourage you to come ?we will not turn away anyone that wishes to participate in the discussions.*

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/erosion-of-gatekeepers/1096218/Erosion of gatekeepersPratik Kanjilal Posted online: Tue Apr 02 2013, 03:36 hrs Amazon-Goodreads merger unleashes a frisson in the publishing industry A merger and an acquisition in the US, both likely to be formalised in thesecond quarter, have the capacity to move the goalposts in English languagepublishing worldwide. It???s making writers antsy and when they think itthrough, readers may not be ecstatic either. Publishing companies andbooksellers, the gatekeepers of the world of books, who competefinancially, are trying to form monopolies in order to lean on each otherharder. And two important stakeholders in book publishing, writers andreaders, primary producers and consumers, feature only as interestedbystanders in this arm-wrestling match. It???s almost enough to make themwant to join hands and cut out the middlemen. On Thursday, Amazon announced the acquisition of Goodreads.com, areaders??? community which crowdsources reviews and ratings from 16 millionmembers. The volume of the deal remains unspecified, but educated guessesrange between $140 million and $1 billion. The US Authors Guild struck backimmediately, calling the buyout a ???truly devastating act of verticalintegration???. Its president, Scott Turow, made a bleak public statement:???Amazon???s acquisition of Goodreads is a textbook example of how moderninternet monopolies can be built. The key is to eliminate or absorbcompetitors before they pose a serious threat.??? Meanwhile, another monopoly-like deal has been slowly inching towards itsconclusion. In February, the Department of Justice cleared the proposedmerger of publishing giants Random House and Penguin. Now, the deal awaitsclearance from antitrust regulators in Europe and Canada, which is unlikelyto be denied. The merged entity will control perhaps one-third of Englishtrade publishing and will leverage its volumes to secure better terms fromAmazon, which dominates retailing. M&As sometimes trigger cascades as industries reorganise their assets. WhenRandom and Penguin announced their feelings for each other in October lastyear, Rupert Murdoch was expected to start cruising for a partner forHarperCollins. There was talk of a merger with Simon & Schuster in Novemberbut News Corp, which owns HarperCollins, was probably too preoccupied withthe fallout of the phone hacking scandal in the UK to do a notable merger.But if a deal of any magnitude had been struck, the English language marketwould have been divvied up into two lions??? shares, leaving a wedgepopulated by smaller players and indie presses ??? the Third Front of thebooks trade. It was assumed that the battle would remain a straight contestbetween publishers and retailers, each seeking to gouge better margins outof the other. As the sharpness of Turow???s criticism suggests, a flankingmanoeuvre like the Goodreads buyout was totally unexpected. Amazon has made sizeable acquisitions in the past ??? IMDb, audiobookspecialist Audible, the daily deal site Woot, the social buying siteLivingSocial, the e-commerce site Zappos and Kiva Systems, which developsrobotics for large scale warehousing. All these were straightforwarddecisions to improve market access and logistical efficiencies. But theGoodreads acquisition is an attempt to control consumer behaviour. Amazonhas acquired the biggest source of credible crowdsourced reviews andratings on the Net, and it will kill it to remove competition with its ownuser reviews. It will do this without even trying. Product reviews are powerful marketing aids but they are distrustedprecisely because they have commercial value. The credibility of media andindustry reviews is lower than that of word of mouth publicity. TheGoodreads business model was based on this distinction. The credibility ofthe site owed to its independence and its ability to build ever-expandingcircles of trust among users who already knew each other. The site wasacquired by Amazon because it can influence sales and had the potential todivert traffic to competing stores. But absorption into the very industryit critiques would probably lower the perceived credibility of Goodreads.In which case, rather than gaining a strategic asset, Amazon would haveonly eliminated competition. Goodreads is an interesting example of the erosion of the traditionalgatekeepers of the Anglo-American industry ??? publishers, booksellers,critics and agents ??? who are surrendering ground to the crowd. First,Anglo-American publishers transferred marketing roles to writers.Traditionally reclusive, they have turned performers in order to promotetheir work. Agents and editors used to be deeply involved in shaping thebooks of their writers, but that is now the exception rather than the rule.And then Goodreads crowdsourced opinion and crowded out the critic. Eventually, perhaps mainstream trade publishers would like to get out ofthe way altogether? The industry has concentrated on financials rather thancreativity and worked quite hard to convince writers that they would bebetter off publishing themselves, and thus triggered a self-publishingwave. Now, any agency which can join the dots between the writer and thereader, cutting out traditional publishing services, can establish a newmarket dynamic. It would do for the book trade what iTunes did for music??? rattle cages very hard and chuck the goalposts way out of sight.***

Dear Nettime,I'm working on a book that will be a compilation of how-to's by and forelectronic and new media artists. A sort of "Recipes for Disaster", butfor the digital age. Some of you may have fun and usefullessons/exercises you've come up with for workshops/courses you've taught,or techniques you've learned during the making of a past project that you'dlike to share. Submissions on low-tech, hi-tech and critical uses andmisuses of technology in art production welcomed! Deadline for proposalsis coming right up (April 8th), but finished articles will be due by June1st. You can find details about the call herehttp://rhizome.org/announce/opportunities/59432/view/I'm really looking forward to seeing what ideas you all come up with, butplease in the meantime, let me know if you have any questions.Best,Tammy

https://www.puscii.nl/blog/content/whats-wrong-kids-these-daysTags in the fucking Cloud ubica censorship utrecht culture radio analyse hacken surveillance puscii politie privacy internetvrijheidWhat's wrong with the kids these days? Submitted by groente on Tue, 03/26/2013 - 14:51 On the moral decay of the Dutch hacker scene A lot has changed since the days when the people around Hacktic set up and defined the Dutch hacker scene. The Hang Out made way for a variety of hackerspaces; Hacktic itself is long dead (who needs dead trees to communicate nowadays anyway?) and the crew organizing OHM2013 is a completely different one from the oldies that had set up the Galactic Hacker Party and HIP. In short, we're looking at a complete new generation of Dutch hackers. Of course, nothing is more normal and healthy than for kids to rebel against their parents, but our parents have given us a difficult task there. For how in hell does one rebel against oldies who self-identified as "techno-anarchists" and were all too pleased with their image as online rebels? Some of the kids found a way: join the police! Well, technically, create a company that does the online dirty work for the police, but in this day and age of neo-liberalism and privatisation the difference is marginal... Now, the notion of hackers voluntarily joining the police probably sounds completely absurd to an outsider, but that's pretty much what happened. The Dutch High Tech Crime Unit is called Fox-IT. In case the name doesn't ring a bell, they're the main sponsor of OHM2013, employer of half of the organising core team, and you may find their logo painted on the wall of a Dutch hackerspace - not as a fuck-the-police-type graffiti, but as a thank-you for their kind sponsorship. Let's have a closer look at this company. Founded in '99 by two TU Delft alumni who had previously worked for the NFI (forensics institute) and the BVD (secret service), Fox-IT started as a relatively normal security company. Such was the hip thing to do for a hacker who wanted to legally cash in on their skills at the height of the IT bubble. Things start to get saucy around 2006 when they developed FoxReplay, a tool for wiretapping, and started selling on the international market. Not caring much for their customers regard for human rights, Fox-IT has promoted their services to countries like Iran and the United Arabic Emirates, and sales to Egypt have also been confirmed. On September 27th 2011, Fox-IT sold their tapping-branch to the US company Netscout, conveniently just one day before a change in EU regulations was to place restrictions on the export of wiretap equipment. But things also get a lot closer to home for the Dutch hackers, as Fox-IT has assisted the Dutch police in the apprehension of 4 members of AntiSec NL, a Dutch group closely linked to Anonymous. To add to the sauce, Fox-IT has been experimenting with 'hacking back', as they call it. In an operation that was meant to take down the Bredolab botnet, Fox-IT used the seized 'command and control' servers to inject code on infected machines worldwide to display a message from the Dutch police. A clever hack, if you will, but also a controversial and illegal one. Lately, Fox-IT has been publicly lobbying to create legal rights for law enforcement to actively crack target systems. Fox-IT now has customers worldwide and around 150 employees. They are the prototype of a privatised blend of law enforcement and defense, unhindered by any ethics and stretching its praxis to the shady borders of legality. That's the kind of company considered hip amongst contemporary Dutch hackers, who seem all too happy associating with and working for them. Fox-IT is actively recruiting within the scene, and many a hacker who used to share his tools and knowledge now works for them. Now, where did that come from? Sure, the scene has always had a bit of a flirtatious relationship with the secret service, but the old Hacktic crew simply giggled at the silly men with sunglasses and trenchcoats who attended their meetings. Moreover, they were exposing the wiretapping and other sniffing methods that were in use then, giving the general public means to detect, if not avoid, or play around with them. Those early days of the hacker scene were marked by a shared sense of ethics: a hands-on attitude, for freedom of information and a healthy distrust of any authority. Luckily, on a global scale, many of these values have persevered. For example, one look at the CCC website is enough to see a strong outspokenness on the political issues surrounding hacking, actively monitoring and criticizing state surveillance. In fact, hackers worldwide are working on tools to subvert (state) surveillance and censorship. Furthermore, with the rise of Anonymous and related groups, we have seen an incredible increase in politically motivated hacks and cracks, all based on those same basic values of personal freedom and distrust towards authority. How are we to interpret the bizarre contrast between upholding these values and happily accepting a company like Fox-IT in our midst? Are OHM and a number of hackerspaces drifting away from the hacker scene towards the security industry? Or do people simply not think or care about these issues because they distract from playing with LEDs and arduinos? Maybe the money is simply too good? Either way, the Dutch hacker scene is suffering from a severe case of schizophrenia where, on the one hand, it identifies itself with a global scene struggling against surveillance and, on the other hand, it condones, receives money from, advertises or even concretely works on the buildup of exactly that surveillance state. The usual approach to such mental illness that is seen all too often within the hacker scene is to simply ignore it and bury it deep down in our subconciousness. Indeed, sometimes simply ignoring the peculiar conflicts that arise within our brain may lead us to perfectly happy (though perhaps somewhat socially awkward) lives. Not in this case, though. As the world around us is transforming, the importance of resolving this inner conflict is becoming ever more urgent. Like it or not, the hacker scene is a key player in a much larger political game that will determine the face of future online communication. If we are to sell away our skills to unscrupulous companies working for power-hungry governments, that future could be very grim. It is for these reasons that the current generation of hackers needs to take a step back and reconsider the wise lessons our parents gave us. One cannot simply take the cool image of being a hacker yet act in ways that are complete opposite. It's not cool to assist in the creation of an Orwellian dystopia. It's also definitely not cool to assist in the apprehension of your fellow hackers (imagine how they might feel about attending the largest European hackercamp this year). That is not to say it's all black and white, or that we should form some sort of unified front, but maintaining a praxis that is the direct opposite of what you are preaching is both unhealthy for yourselves and dangerous towards others. So please, work out who you really are and where you stand. Read the old philes and the new. Rethink what's going on in the world around you. Discuss the role we play in it. Define your identity. And, in the end, if you still wish to call yourself a hacker, leave the fox out.Comments Submitted by anon on Tue, 03/26/2013 - 16:36.I am a little upset right now... I was so sad that I couldn't attend HAR2009. And I was really looking forward to visit OHM2013. Thank you for clearing this up on time, so I can reschedule to go to another place this summer. * reply Submitted by anon on Tue, 03/26/2013 - 17:46.Huh? Really? You thought the point of this blog was to say that OHM2013 is going to suck? I really don't understand your reaction, unless you really care that much about who is on the sponsor list. * reply Submitted by anon on Tue, 03/26/2013 - 19:32.anon if you don't care about who is the sponsor probably you haven't understood the post itself. OHM2013 does suck if it's sponsored by that company. * reply Submitted by anon on Tue, 03/26/2013 - 20:45.har2009 was sponsored by fox-it too so har2009 sucked as well! end of argument. * reply Submitted by anon on Tue, 03/26/2013 - 21:41.The difference was that back The difference was that back in 2009, foxit wasnt actively performing and pushing for strikeback ;) * reply Submitted by groente on Tue, 03/26/2013 - 20:57.this is not a boycot Just to be clear, this was never meant as a callout to boycot OHM, nor was it meant to imply that the whole event sucks. It's merely spelling out what should've been an obvious 'wtf?' and giving some food for thought... * reply Submitted by anon on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 00:36.the death of ohm 2013 by groente Too late 'groente': the uptake of this article by fefe has led to a storm of outrage from the German hacker community (who remember their own NAZI past well and now get into a fit against anything that remotely smells of their own ways back then). Volunteers are dropping out. Congratulations, you killed OHM. I was looking forward to it! Now we may *never* have this event again in The Netherlands. The only event where the dutch hackers come together in the thousands and are interacting with their peers. A black day in the history of dutch hackerscene. A name to remember. 'Groente', the man who killed OHM2013. * reply Submitted by anon on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 05:08.not to blame _if_ german hackers are dropping out in the hundrets, groente still isn't to blame for it, because $correctTM then would be: "Don't tell people about our gold sponsors", which makes no sense. * reply Submitted by anon (not verified) on Thu, 03/28/2013 - 01:11.who needs german hackers who needs german hackers anyway ? they smell ! * reply Submitted by anon (not verified) on Thu, 03/28/2013 - 11:03.Very childish... Very childish... * reply Submitted by fierman on Tue, 03/26/2013 - 21:04.no, ohm2013 does not suck The mere fact that people are raising questions to the scene does not mean that the whole event 'sucks'. In fact, most of the people from the Puscii collective will be present at OHM2013, actively participating in discussions and events. The main question is of course: how can we relate to our own values like respect for privacy, human rights and critical thinking, while at the same time 'we' are co-operating with companies who are literally opposing those same values. That is a question the hackerscene should be willing to discuss and answer. One of the best places to do that is at OHM2013, * reply Submitted by anon on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 00:41.Relax! It's only money... And without the substantial kind of sponsoring, like Fox-IT is giving, there would be no OHM2013 to go to and discuss all this. People, it's just money... It wasn't taken from dying children, no kittens were killed for it, and it will be used for the greater good. It may be money coming from governments. Maybe even some very rotten ones. So in effect *they* may even have sponsored OHM. But I can only see this as a good thing: Even if the most evil governments have -indirectly- sponsored OHM2013, this does not change a thing about how we can use that money. OHM2013 is a 100% independent event. Sponsors get no say in the content. Just be glad that money wasn't spent on buying weapons or the like! * reply Submitted by anon on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 14:04.In money we trust! I found your comment really stupid. How you can say that the origin of money doesn't matter? And do yu really think this money is no meant to be considered an investemnt in new kind of weapons? First result, really concrete, is that there are people that consider normal to have partenrship with governement and military agency, to sell tools to control and limit other people, just to have a bigger conformt area! What's the greater good that money will be used for? To create a great show about hacking with a lot of colorful and tricky superficial details but the inside is fucking rotten: how you can talk about freedom when the event is organised with money mad3e by limiting freedom of other people? You just becom a puppet in the hands of that agency. It would be much better to ask to pay a fee than have a free but bloody event! the way to get to a goal is even more important than just reach the goal! * reply Submitted by anon on Tue, 03/26/2013 - 22:52.Alternative One way to deal wit this ... How much did Fox give? Lets raise that money and tell Fox to stay away. * reply Submitted by anon on Tue, 03/26/2013 - 23:03.Start raising... Start raising... * reply Submitted by anon on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 05:36.good idea imo * reply Submitted by anon on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 11:55.EUR25.000,- Fox-IT is a gold sponsor, meaning they gave at least 25.000. With 3.000 people attending this is EUR8,33 euro per person... But it shouldn't be to hard to find 25 companies, NGO's, groups or so that are willing and could pay EUR1.000,- Hey, it is the age of crowd-sourcing, right? * reply Submitted by anon on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 13:58.EUR 50000 Don't forget costs for breaking open a signed contract. Great ethical solution: we don't agree with something, so we just pay to have it removed from sight. Nicely done, the Hollywood content criminals have taught you all well. * reply Submitted by anon (not verified) on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 16:36.If you think it isn't that If you think it isn't that hard to find a sponsor who doesn't feel the need to influence the program, please feel free to ask these sponsors to read the sponsor documentation and contact the board. Some possible sponsorships already are declined because they did want to influence the camp and/or the program and that is NOT something OHM organisation (which could be you, because it can be anybody) wants. * reply Submitted by anon on Tue, 03/26/2013 - 23:07.Fox is not our biggest problem Cannot remember this being an issue back in the good 'ol days of 2009 when Fox-IT was also one of sponsors that provided much needed *early* cashflow. The world was *slightly* less insane back then but only slightly (wikileaks members had not yet been openly threatened by western governments with extra-judicial killing - and if you don't know what that means you really need to read this post to the end). The old-fart part of me does agree with some of the 'kids-these-days' feelings voiced in the piece on PUSCII, just not the focus on Fox. A willingness to fight and take real and personal risks for basic-priciples is needed more than ever in our societies today. A willingness to understand what is happening in the world (especially if this is very outside your comfort zone) and to help others do so is just as important. A bit more Free Software (principled stand) instead of just 'opensource' (practical method) would not hurt the Dutch technology scene IMHO. I sometimes voice the opinion that the rules applied by the victors of WWII to German leaders (thou shalt not initiate offensive wars based on lies) should now also apply to the leadership of the US, the UK and the Netherlands. For this I am called a radical. Perhaps more of us need to get a bit radical or risk waking up in 1984 someday soon. If no-one pushes back against the stuff you're trying to accomplish you're obviously not trying hard enough. Do note that OHM2013 will be the *only* major event in the Netherlands were some important whistleblowers from the world of spooks and spies (CIA, NSA, FBI, MI5) are given a platform to share their insights with people who will hear about them for the first time. Just as HAR2009 was the *only* place in NL in 2009 were Wikileaks got a soapbox in front of a significant audience. That's how messed up the country is right now. We offer something real at a time when it is much needed. I would not be involved with OHM if it were otherwise - life's too short and the planet too fucked-up to mess about with minor stuff. (Arjen Kamphuis does not work for Fox-IT and left IBM in 1999 ;-) * reply Submitted by anon on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 01:37.A well written article deserves a somewhat OK response... Thanks for a sourced and well written statement, i can only respect an author that has taken the time and liberty to write a story that is backed up with some facts and details. This should be commended, whoever the author may be. Free will: The author states that working for a company results in the employee fully accepting all that the company has done in the past and that the employee wholemindedly promotes and understand every aspect of that company, implying that such company has the power to remove any free will of the employee. Such is not the case, as absolutism on working for companies / having some mindset is just as dangerous as absolutism by state control. Look at the Zen symbol. Insiders: Hackers also have a significant impact on the direction of many companies. Is having "insiders" not a crucial prevention of absolutism? Many company-people are very stupid/short-sighted and might aid in more forcefully oppressing hackers. For example: without embedded hackers and the good spirits of those, there would be no "responsible disclosure" policy and the movement that companies will adopt this. We: There is no such thing as "we". "we" just happend to be. I don't like to be controlled by people that say that "we" should do anything. "we" is temporal, "we" is separating people, fuck "we". If someone wants to be part of the "we" and be an outspoken mistrusting, over skeptic, conspiracy driven individual, so be it. Is this also "we"? Maybe... Just another random vision: Although your story has critique and is fairly negative while not having consulted the opposing party. This makes bad journalism and turns this into a column thing. But I still like it over empty allegations, because it gives a body to discuss and might inspire people. But be careful: Even when everyone and everything has changed their ways, there are still people using some (possibly outdated) facts to create a negative image. Just to refer foxes: this is what companies like Fox News do best. -- Stitch * reply Submitted by anon on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 08:05.Lagging behind The general trend with "the kids these days" is, in my observation, going in the right direction. Whereas for years the hacker community in The Netherlands was half-heartily following thought leaders from the US and Germany, there seems to be a trend to form an opinion that develops in the same direction as Germany. I'd say it's lagging behind a bit, which only reflects society as a whole. Bits of Freedom, the rise of hacker spaces, debate around government agencies recruiting, this all leads to more outspoken opinions. What The Netherlands lack is a single platform to discuss. In Germany there is the CCC, where a clear opinion was formed and guarded over more than 30 years. In The Netherlands no such thing. There is the four-yearly hacker camp though, a most excellent spot to discuss trends like described above. * reply Submitted by anon on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 09:27.HITB network run by police! Yes you are right it is bad. Did you know that the hacker conference next month in amsterdam, hack in the box (HITB) has a network team with the leader (ruud or ruuder or something) being a guy who works for the police? You think i will go to a conference where the police are tapping the network because they make the network? oh and that same ruud or whatever is also the leader of the hackerspace in amersfoort. really, hackers stay away from hitb ohm or the hackerspaces they are all infested with cops!! * reply Submitted by anon on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 10:03.TOR and CCC are in it as well You know TOR? From Jacob Appelbaum? You know they are working closely with the police in the US and The Netherlands, right? https://blog.torproject.org/blog/trip-report-tor-trainings-dutch-an d-bel... And Dingledine is also good friends with Rop Gonggrijp, you know. The example hacker from way back? He sold out to KPN, and now has a company that makes cryptographic phones. And those are sold to governments to keep their communication a secret from their people. And what all the germans are upset about? They should look at theirselfs first: one of the CCC figureheads at least works for the same company from Rop Gonggrijp making phones to help oppressive governments to keep their secrets. So not only the dutch hackers are falling for the trap. The american hackers are too, and so are the Germans! * reply Submitted by Jacob Appelbaum (not verified) on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 21:10.open dialog is important Working closely? Hardly. Talking with people? Understanding what they're doing and how anonymity actually is seen, used and debated across the spectrum? Yeah - what exactly is wrong with such activities? Anonymity must be for everyone and if we try to pretend otherwise, we'll see that only the police and intelligence agencies have anonymity. That is basically the current state of affairs - anyone with privilege and wealth is welcome to their privacy at a cost; everyone else is out of luck. I want privacy, security and anonymity for everyone on the planet. Cryptophone is used by lots of people around the world. Demonizing Frank and Rop for Cryptophone is unreasonable. They produce devices without a backdoor and have led the way to normalizing secure communications for everyone - yes, it includes people that I personally find uncomfortable and yet, such a thing cuts both ways. Will you also demonize them for allowing WikiLeaks to use such phones? When speaking at the NCSC event, I made it perfectly clear that police malware and wiretapping are wrong. Not just ethically but also strategically. I openly challenged the current "intelligence service" way of operating. I encourage you to attend such an event and discuss your feelings on the matter openly. If you think merely conversing with the people attending NCSC is somehow evil, I'd ask you to share how you've come to that conclusion? If you think that speaking about the issues and threats we face (essentially a talk similar to the 28c3 talk that Roger and I gave about Tor) is wrong, I'd ask again, how did you come to that conclusion? * reply Submitted by anon on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 11:32.Bullshit What is bullshit, are you still a client at KPN/Tmobile/Vodafone/etc? They also work for the Dutch Police... :p BTW, if you are such a crazy and 1337 hackah, aren't you smart enough to install an openvpn then? * reply Submitted by anon (not verified) on Thu, 03/28/2013 - 01:07.openvpn has fox it code in it Using openvpn would be stupid. check the commit logs, fox-it is one of the committers of that vpn software. * reply Submitted by anon on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 13:46.lol ik wil wat jij rookt * reply Submitted by Ruuder (not verified) on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 14:45.I like this speculation of I like this speculation of monitoring if you like come and check out our nice non existing tapping hardware at hitb, but if you think you are so good that you coud lay you hands on all this information why the .... can't you find out my real name or nick. With that i wish you a very nice day. * reply Submitted by anon (not verified) on Thu, 03/28/2013 - 01:05.HITB network master is police snitch If you realy want to know i looked up the details. *** CENSORED *** and works for a detachment company where he is now stationed at the police offices in emmen to manage the IT infrastructure of the police. Think of that. The person who manages it infrastructure for the police is managing the network at a so called hacker conference. I am sure your tapping infrastructure is well hidden at hack in the box. And as a nice detail, what company sponsored hitb last year in amsterdam? Yes. It was fox it. * editted by groente: please don't abuse our blog for d0xing. * reply Submitted by fierman on Thu, 03/28/2013 - 01:10.HITB is hardly a hackerscene HITB is hardly a hackerscene event. It is a network event for the security industry. please do not confuse the two :) Also, it is not up to us to judge on what people do in their spare time, and where they work; especially when the distinction is very clear. Completely different discussion, which only distracts here. * reply Submitted by zarya (not verified) on Thu, 03/28/2013 - 12:14.Very nice you found all that Very nice you found all that information, but its still wrong. I will give you the right details then. I am Rudy my nick is Zarya. it is true that i do something with networking for the Police but its nog managing but its designing there is a big diference. today is my last day in this function. I have nothing to do with the tap department i design firewall and network infrastructures i dont implement them. I hope you are well informed now. btw i dont work in Emmen. If you still think that we install tapping equipment at HITB that one is true, in the bar downstairs you will find most of our tapping equipment. It is used to tap a alcoholic liquor called Beer. * reply Submitted by anon (not verified) on Fri, 03/29/2013 - 16:26.HITB HITB was sponsored by Fox-IT last year, and even worse this year their sponsor is VUPEN who supplies western governments with: As the leading source of advanced vulnerability research, VUPEN provides government-grade exploits specifically designed for the Intelligence community and national security agencies to help them achieve their offensive cyber security and lawful intercept missions using extremely sophisticated codes created by VUPEN Vulnerability Research Team (VRT)." http://conference.hitb.org/hitbsecconf2012ams/ http://conference.hitb.org/hitbsecconf2013ams/ http://www.vupen.com/english/services/lea-index.php * reply Submitted by anon on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 11:58.Response from < at >ioerror I'm really happy to see that someone took the time to write this article and I'm also happy to see that it was related to puscii. For those that do not know the history of ascii and puscii - these two groups are two extremely important parts of Dutch/European sustainability, artistic, hacking and autonomous culture. I've long respected their squatting activity, their Free Software ethics and their political actions. I find the observations in the article extremely grim and depressing - it is largely as a matter of agreement, I might add. The desire to collaborate with authoritarian power structures is often hand-waved away with "one has to eat" or "we're not helping Syria" style arguments. They're often followed up with arguments about fear of punishment or about the so-called justice done on occasion by such structures. The privatization of this kind of policing is concerning. It is built on the already questionable notion that the police themselves would be legitimate actors in this space if they merely had the talent. This is false in many cases and such partnerships generally seek to expand the authoritarian reach of the State, without any of the democratic oversight, transparency or even the semblance of consent on the topics at hand. Most people hardly understand the abstract ideas involved, let alone the actual concrete details. The Dutch police actually do this on many levels - that is - they do it not only with private Dutch companies like Fox-IT but also with other law enforcement. The FBI has some full time people who are embedded within the Dutch law enforcement offices. My understanding is that they have desks in the same (!) office area as other Dutch police. Consider this as a threat not only to the Dutch democratic processes but also to the notion that the Netherlands is somehow independent in terms of law-enforcement and intelligence. Surely, one would not jest that the FBI deployed with the Dutch police would serve the Dutch police first, right? Perhaps they'll take some puscii members who are actually Dutch citizens to sit with their FBI office counterparts? It seems doubtful and as such, it raises questions on a number of levels. I've met a lot of Dutch police in the last few months as I have recently visited the Hague for the latest NCSC event. Many of the higher level computery security folks are personally nice people. Even some of the AiVD people are personally friendly - quite a difference from some of the other intelligence agencies. Obviously, I'm not in agreement with a lot of their policies, their methods, tactics, strategies or even comfortable with their relationships. While they do work for goals that I think are reasonable such as stopping non-consensual human trafficking, it is perhaps with methods that may lead to abuse or other serious concerns. I don't hold any personal contempt for them for doing what amounts to a thankless job. I do however find myself thinking that the new Dutch hacking generation should not forget that some power structures are not worth supporting simply because one is not personally oppressed by it on a daily basis. With that said, the complicity of hackers in these kinds of actions is beyond loathsome. Rather than helping to actually secure our systems, we see compromises that undermine the very core of our modern world. If we look to the physical world for an analog of such total surveillance, even in camera heavy parts of the world, humanity still largely rejects such total spying programs, if they are lucky enough to be consulted at all. Why then should people of any stripe help to build similar systems that are nearly total and almost completely incomprehensible to most people on the planet? The answer is simple: we shouldn't! Hackers and those who are technically literate have a responsibility to consider the larger issues at stake. Those who don't, who just follow orders, who use simplistic self-serving reasoning in place of thoughtful ethics - those people are building a world where most of humanity will be subservient to such architecture. Total identification, total and complete logs of our activities, our relationships, our beliefs, our experimentations, our core values - everything. History will not reflect well on such people and the near future will be extremely uncomfortable if those resisting have anything to say about it. I look forward to leaked documents and leaked software about companies like Fox-IT as well as details on such surveillance programs. While people are digging, don't forget to identify the people and the money trails involved - if such companies will promote and construct such systems for all of us, lets give it to them first! Leak more documents! In solidarity, Jacob * reply Submitted by anon on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 13:56.Response to Jacob Appelbaum Americans are not part of the solution right now, Americans are part of the problem. That is a very black and white statement. One which I don't fully believe in. But Jacob Appelbaum is an American who is part of the problem. By exporting his self-righteous belief and morality upon other countries, he distracts attention from the source of many of todays problems: the united states of america. That the US law enforcement agencies are infiltrating the Dutch police is not the fault of the Dutch police. We are forced by the US patriotic and oppressing foreign politics to have these feds among us. No-one here wants them, yet we are powerless against the sanctions we face when we go against the US. Jacob, you are a crowd pleaser. You are someone with a black-and-white view of the world, one which reminds a lot of the McCarthy period in your country. Where you were either a morally impecible American or a communist. Where a witch-hunt was commenced to clear the US of any leftist dissidents. Or the recent wars you waged, wars that no-one wanted but everyone was forced to join with your president's 'either you are with us or you are against us'. You are forcing people away from a good cause by making the world appear to be a matter of black-and-white. Please fix your own country before you blame other countries for compliance with your colonial and oppressive regime. Many of us work in IT, many of us work with Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, Fox-IT, Madisson Gurkha, Philips, Competa, LogicaCMG, Pink/Roccade and any other number of larger and smaller IT firms. All of those people, in your black-and-white view of the world are 'against you'. Do not think you will find sympathy within that group (still the large majority) by claiming they will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. Those are empty threats. Also, what has puscii done lately for the world at large apart from writing rants from their wellfare-benefit paid for armchair in their illegaly squated dwellings? Nothing. Please Jacob, go back to fixing your own country and stay there until you fixed that. Don't go bragging about telling other countries they are bad for complying with your own policies. * reply Submitted by anon (not verified) on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 20:26.So PUSCII is government So PUSCII is government sponsored... that's outragous. And for all this money they sell complaints and grievances. It's rediculous. * reply Submitted by groente on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 20:48.for the record puscii was and always will be completely independent from whatever kind of sponsorship. neither do we have to rely on rich parents or state allowance for our daily income. also, our complaints and grievances aren't sold, you get them for free. it's indeed ridiculous. * reply Submitted by Jacob Appelbaum (not verified) on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 21:53.stay classy (For your information: The original post wasn't by me - it was posted as part of a discussion on a mailing list; I'll reply to you here as this is the forum where you have decided to participate.) Your attempts ironic nationalist rhetoric is only made worse by the notion that all perceived members of some national group are somehow in lockstep. It is made worse by your statements that we're somehow less, even when one generally agrees with you! Perhaps you could have made some overtly anti-Muslim statements with your xenophobic commentary? Perhaps in the next reply? I'm a very vocal person about the United States of America and so often a critic that it causes me serious issues. For you to suggest that I distract attention from the issues that directly relate to the US is simply incorrect. My 29c3 keynote was entirely about the threat that the NSA poses to the entire world and that this fault is squarely on the shoulders of the people in the US. Did you miss that? Did you miss the discussions about the drone strikes or the illegal wars? I have protested the Afghan war from the outset as I did with the Iraq war and the drone war over the entire planet. When I spoke out against the assassination of even Bin Laden himself that I was (actually) spit upon by other Americans. Do you seriously suggest otherwise? The entire point of my statement is that the FBI shouldn't be sitting in the Dutch police offices - if more Dutch people knew that this was the case, I suspect there would be protects, actions and likely lawsuits. As far as I understand Dutch law, it is actually quite illegal. When you suggest that you are powerless, I suspect that you mean that you have made your choices and feel powerless in your position - for whatever reason - if you feel that you are really forced, bring it out and show that you are forced; openly debating is one of the only ways that these things will change. This is why I called for more leaked documents - the internal debate that is hidden from view will help to clarify exactly these issues that puscii raises. Your comment is particularly offensive when you compare me to the McCarthy era as one of the McCarthyists. I have lived in the last four years under heavy surveillance, with intense harassment and I have been unofficially blacklisted at times by my very own government. Why is that? Because I have effectively protested and resisted those wars you reference. You like to suggest that I'm of the black-and-white cloth without understanding that there are hard edges. Yes, I firmly believe that political assassination by the state for free speech related issues is essentially always wrong. No, I do not believe that people working at Cisco are evil. No, I don't think that people writing proprietary software are bad people - at worst is is simply a waste of human effort. Hardly a stark condemnation. You suggest that because some of my hard edges are controversial that I'm black-and-white for every topic. Absolute nonsense. I think those at Cisco who helped design and implement the Golden Shield project, especially those who marketed it for finding religious minorities - those people are on the wrong side of history. I have worked extensively to stop US companies from participating in such activities because I agree that the US is the source of so much of this technology. I am not alone in this action, I'm a minor player at best. Does that mean that I have a black-and-white view? No. It means that I have firm boundaries and I stand my ground. People who work on products that are *intentionally* used to assist in ethnic or political cleansing are on the wrong side of history. When they are later known to be used in such a way, I think continued support of it is extremely questionable. If you think you're the majority with such behavior, I'd encourage you to claim it openly. If you think the majority of such behavior isn't even remotely related, I'd encourage you to state that openly as well. If it isn't a big part of the business, I guess it should be an easy part of the market to abandon. I agree that the United States is in dire need of reform - our wars, our imperialism, our push for things like a new CALEA, our drone strikes, our War on Some Drugs; all of it and almost without exception. It is however nearly impossible for the US to have such reform as long as other countries refuse to push back even slightly. You suggest that I alienate you and others from these otherwise good causes and I say, if you're alienated by your perceptions of my actions, I question your actual commitment to these causes in the first place. I'm not a fan of the falun gong but I would never side with those who torture them because I consider their beliefs or expressions to be different than my own. Oh and while we're talking about our own national politics - I look forward to your analysis of the Dutch monarchy, the Raad van State, internet and telephone surveillance, and its role in supporting the aforementioned US imperialist wars. * reply Submitted by Juerd (not verified) on Wed, 03/27/2013 - 22:34.Re (Cross-posted, like the original article, to both this blog and the mailing list . In Dutch; sorry about that.) Puscii skribis 2013-03-26 13:16 (+0000): > What's wrong with the kids these days? Om je uitspraken in de juiste context te kunnen lezen, zou ik graag willen weten wie de schrijver van het artikel is. Hoe oud (bejaard?) ben je, als je deze mensen "kids" vindt? En waarom heb je het idee dat het fenomeen dat je beschrijft, iets met generaties te maken heeft? Wat doet leeftijd er eigenlijk toe? > On the moral decay of the Dutch hacker scene TL;DR: Ik ben het ten dele met je eens, maar vind dat je het te zwaar aanzet, en ik kan je argumentatie niet helemaal volgen. > In short, we're looking at a complete new generation of Dutch hackers. Wat kort door de bocht. Er is verloop, maar er vallen zeker geen generaties te onderscheiden. Het gaat hier echt niet om kinderen en ouders. Je metafoor klopt m.i. totaal niet, en staat potentieel de kern van de discussie in de weg. > Some of the kids found a way: join the police! Alsof er nooit eerder hackers bij of voor de politie hebben gewerkt? > Now, the notion of hackers voluntarily joining the police probably > sounds completely absurd to an outsider Alleen omdat outsiders denken dat alle hackers crimineel zijn. Dat geldt noch voor de oude rotten, noch voor de jongste aanwas. > The Dutch High Tech Crime Unit is called Fox-IT. In case the > name doesn't ring a bell, they're the main sponsor of OHM2013, Ik vind Fox-IT geen prettig bedrijf, maar als ze hun geld willen uitgeven aan onze feestjes, zeg ik: met beide handen aanpakken die poen! (Al was het maar om meer profijt te hebben van het geld dat we met z'n allen aan belastingen betalen.) Het moet onafhankelijkheid niet in de weg staan, en daarom ben ik een stuk skeptischer als het gaat om het sponsoren van hackerspaces en doorlopende initiatieven, maar voor kortstondige dingen zoals evementenen zie ik weinig risico's. Het is niet alsof we bij het organiseren van eerdere evementen vervelend hebben gedaan als overheden zich van hun beste kant lieten zien met hun vriendelijke medewerking. Joh, al komt het geld van de paus. Zonder geld kun je het evenement niet van de grond krijgen. Daar staat tegenover dat ik erg blij ben dat zoveel Nederlandse hackers diep in de buidel tasten om hun hackerspace de kans te geven om financieel onafhankelijk te blijven. > employer of half of the organising core team Lichtelijk beangstigend als je het mij vraagt, maar dit zegt wellicht meer over de arbeidsmarkt voor hackers, dan over de mensen die ervoor kiezen (of zich genoodzaakt voelen) om voor Fox te gaan werken. > and you may find their logo painted on the wall of a Dutch hackerspace > - not as a fuck-the-police-type graffiti, but as a thank-you for their > kind sponsorship. Fuck the police vind ik sowieso een kinderachtige houding waar ik me graag van distantieer. De politie is een gigantische organisatie van voornamelijk welwillende mensen. Dat ze ook (grote, gigantische, verwerpelijke) fouten maken, is nog geen reden om de politie als organisatie als vijand te zien. "Alle kleuren zijn mooi" is te kort door de bocht. Onder hackers en hackerspaces bestaat grote diversiteit. Dat er een hackerspace is die sponsorgeld accepteert en een vosje op de muur schildert, wil echt niet zeggen dat de gehele Nederlandse hackergemeenschap daar achter staat. Sowieso heb ik begrepen dat ze (Hack42 dus) een specifiek project hebben laten sponsoren, niet de hackerspace zelf. Hacken betekent voor verschillende mensen ook verschillende dingen. Wie het hacken vanuit een puur technologisch perspectief benadert, zal zich minder bezwaard voelen om activiteiten te laten betalen door laakbare partijen, dan wie hacken (ook) vanuit een ideologische hoek ziet. > Not caring much for their customers regard for human rights, Fox-IT > has promoted their services to countries like Iran and the United > Arabic Emirates, and sales to Egypt have also been confirmed. Als je de verkoop van producten en technieken aan landen met dergelijke nare regimes, hoe denk je dan over het gratis weggeven van software en het openbaar delen van kennis? En wat hebben ze ueberhaupt verkocht? Is een mes een wapen, of een gereedschap dat (al dan niet toevallig) ook als wapen kan worden gebruikt? Hoe zit het dan met schroevendraaiers? > AntiSec NL, a Dutch group closely linked to Anonymous. Ja, want iedereen weet dat Anonymous een vastomlijnd en enkelvoudig iets is, waar je banden mee kunt hebben. En ze blijven altijd binnen alle universele ethische grenzen. > A clever hack, if you will, but also a controversial and illegal one. Veel hacks, van hackers in privesfeer, van bedrijven en van overheden, zullen controversieel en illegaal zijn. Maar controversiele en illegale dingen kunnen best goed zijn. Ik ben fel tegenstander van "terughacken", maar je kunt je in het debat beter niet laten leiden door wat er momenteel in de wet staat. Vaak zat is de wet zelf gewoon fout. Je kunt "het is illegaal" simpelweg niet als argument gebruiken in een discussie over ethiek. Of, anders gezegd: you say "illegal" like it's a bad thing. > Lately, Fox-IT has been publicly lobbying to create legal rights for > law enforcement to actively crack target systems. Het is hun recht om een mening te hebben, die mening te uiten, en te proberen de wet aangepast te krijgen om hun wensen uit te laten komen. > [Fox-IT] are the prototype of a privatised blend of law enforcement > and defense, unhindered by any ethics and stretching its praxis to the > shady borders of legality. Hear, hear. > That's the kind of company considered hip amongst contemporary Dutch > hackers, who seem all too happy associating with and working for them. Er zijn hackers die dit hip vinden en graag voor zo'n bedrijf willen werken. Er zijn ook hackers die homoseksualiteit haten. Er zijn hackers die PHP fantastisch vinden, en er zijn hackers die vinden dat domme mensen minder rechten zouden moeten hebben. Zoveel hackers, zoveel meningen. Het zijn net mensen. > Those early days of the hacker scene were marked by a shared sense of > ethics Ethiek is een persoonlijke beleving, en inderdaad is er vandaag de dag zeker geen consensus binnen (enorm gegroeide) de hackergemeenschap. Hoe groter een groep wordt, hoe meer het op allerhande gebieden het gemiddelde van de bevolking zal benaderen. Dat betekent voor hackergroepen vaak dat de gemiddelde intelligentie afneemt en dat de ooit gedeelde ethiek niet meer zo vanzelfsprekend is. De schaduwzijde van sociaal succes? > For example, one look at the CCC website is enough to see a strong > outspokenness on the political issues surrounding hacking, actively > monitoring and criticizing state surveillance. Dat zal ook heel veel te maken hebben met hoe vroeg de CCC is begonnen, met hoe enorm de CCC propaganda voert binnen de eigen gelederen, en dat het een grote club is waar mensen blijkbaar graag bijhoren. Nederland heeft zo'n organisatie niet en het window om een dergelijk instituut op te richten is volgens mij al geruime tijd voorbij. Nederlandse hackers van weleer, de oldies die je eerder benoemde, hebben kennelijk nooit de neiging (of het doorzettingsvermogen) gehad om zich officieel te organiseren en in die structuur op grote schaal gezamenlijk politiek te bedrijven. Dat ze dit hebben nagelaten, kun je ook opvatten als iets positiefs. > Are OHM and a number of hackerspaces drifting away from the hacker > scene towards the security industry? Hacker scene en beveiligingsindustrie overlappen. Het is duidelijk goed mogelijk om je in beide te begeven, hoewel dat zeker sociale consequenties heeft. Werk je voor Fox-IT, dan zul je sommige geheimen wellicht niet te horen krijgen van andere hackers. Ben je actief in de hackergemeenschap, dan zul je sommige geheimen wellicht niet te horen krijgen van je werkgever. Of juist wel, om je loyaliteit en geheimhouding op de proef te stellen. Ik benijd mensen die zichzelf in die situatie brengen in ieder geval niet. Wat betreft OHM: bij het organiseren van zo'n feestje werp je je op als quasi-professioneel evenementenorganisator. Er komt weinig typisch hackwerk bij kijken. Het is hard werk, waarbij politieke menings- verschillen vaak geen belemmering vormen. > The usual approach to such mental illness that is seen all too often > within the hacker scene is to simply ignore it and bury it deep down > in our subconciousness. Er is een prettigere manier om om te gaan met diversiteit: omarmen! Net zoals je mag geloven wat je wilt, en ik het niet met je eens hoef te zijn, en zoals je mag uitspreken wat je vindt, en ik het niet met je eens hoef te zijn, mag je ook werken voor een werkgever, zonder dat ik het met je eens hoef te zijn. Dat hoeft samenwerking en vriendschap niet in de weg te staan. De situatie wordt overigens echt niet genegeerd. Het is heel vaak onderwerp van discussie, althans zeker bij RevSpace, en ongetwijfeld ook in andere hackerkringen. * reply Submitted by groente on Thu, 03/28/2013 - 00:49.< at >juerd The metaphoric use of generations shouldn't be taken too literally, i think it has more to do with the general spirit of the times then the actual age of people. What i was trying to accomplish was depicting a simplified genealogy of the narratives within the dutch hacker scene. The generation metaphore seemed appropriate enough and saved me from having to use tl;dr-academic-talk. As for why the notion of hackers joining the police sounds absurd? Trying to wave that away because of the way the media has depicted hackers seems a bit too easy. I don't even think hackers are generally regarded as criminals. Online rebels? yes, criminals? not necessarily. Hacking has connotations of the subversive (no wonder given the self-labeling as techno-anarchists) and playful creativity, which hardly are attributes one would ascribe to the your average police constable. Speaking of the your average police constable; before you dismiss a fuck-the-police as childish, please bear in mind that being on the receiving end of a truncheon (often enough simply for voicing ones opinion) doesn't generally add to ones willingness for nuance and subtleness. Having said that, let's get a bit more to the point. You (and you're not the only one) seem to claim that Fox-IT has no influence whatsoever on the organisation of OHM. Don't you think it's ironic that the spokesperson of OHM today quoted in Der Spiegel stressing how there was no influence on the program ... is also working on marketing at Fox-IT? While it may not be as apparent as direct influence on the program, there are of course reasons why a company hands over a pretty large amount of money. What bothers me most is the image of acceptance it portrays, by accepting a company like Fox as your sponsor you're implicitly endorsing its policies and activities. So yes, Fox-IT has the right to express and lobby for their political views, but that sure doesn't mean you should endorse them. Quite frankly, when OHM has activists listed as their target audience yet at the same time endorses a company like Fox-IT, this leads to division by zero. The subject of endorsing brings me to your point regarding diversity. Sure the scene is very heterogenous and in principle this is a very good thing. But when you say 'there are hackers who hate homosexuality', I would sure hope they be removed from the terrain the moment they start their hate mongering. Celebrating diversity and freedom of speech should not be confused with blindly accepting the intolerable. As much as I empathise with peoples economic circumstances that might force them into jobs that go directly against hacker ethics, I maintain it is a very wrong signal when the promotion of said jobs is silently endorsed or even encouraged. Anyway, one of my main reasons for this rant was the impression people didn't know or simply didn't care. I'm happy to hear there's already been lively discussion at revspace. I'm also very happy to see there is now a much broader discussion and I sincerely hope all those considering boycotting Ohm will still be there to participate in the real life discussions on how to deal with these issues. ps. I'm really not that old, but don't you know it's impolite to ask...? * reply Submitted by anon (not verified) on Thu, 03/28/2013 - 10:11."Don't you think it's ironic "Don't you think it's ironic that the spokesperson of OHM today quoted in Der Spiegel stressing how there was no influence on the program ... is also working on marketing at Fox-IT?" How is this ironic? What are you suggesting? "there are of course reasons why a company hands over a pretty large amount of money." In this case, what specific reasons are there? "So yes, Fox-IT has the right to express and lobby for their political views" Do they have the right to lobby for their political views? What rights are these rights exactly? --stitch * reply Submitted by anon (not verified) on Thu, 03/28/2013 - 11:07.To be clear, the sponsor To be clear, the sponsor contract was signed September 2012. The two board members of IFCAT didn't work for Fox-IT at that time. * reply Submitted by gmc (not verified) on Fri, 03/29/2013 - 01:36.... That is incorrect. I started working for fox-it in june 2012. * reply Submitted by anon (not verified) on Thu, 03/28/2013 - 03:13.K.I.T.T.! I need you! But we all loved Michael Knight from the Foundation for Law and Government (F.L.A.G.) and MacGyver of the Phoenix Foundation, didn't we? All those adventures, going where official law enforcement and military couldn't go due to some pesky laws. * reply Submitted by Herman Acker (not verified) on Thu, 03/28/2013 - 10:21.Old people seem to forget details about the past Groente glorifies the past and despises involvement of Fox-IT. As a hacker from the past I would like to note that the past was less glorious. We didn't have a respectable Fox-IT company backing initiatives. Organized crime and radical groups tried to get a foothold within the hacker community with the aim of abusing any outcome. These guys were always in the background, trying to influence the community and to monitize hacks. I don't see fox or any other security firm sponsoring these events doing this. For the record: I have no ties with Fox, I don't like it when someone tries to abuse history. * reply Submitted by groente on Fri, 03/29/2013 - 06:10.Old people seem to be in need of glasses Sure the past had its fair share of problems, but atleast the narratives and praxis seem a lot more coherent. And given the trail of dirt they've left behind, I'm not so sure whether I'd qualify Fox-IT as 'respectable'. Is actively recruiting in the scene and sponsoring events not 'trying to get a foothold within the community?' Also, monitizing hacks is pretty much their core business. If you can't see that, I would suggest a visit to the optometrist... * reply Submitted by anon (not verified) on Thu, 03/28/2013 - 21:22.official statement Here's an official statement on the OHM2013 website regarding this subject: https://ohm2013.org/site/sponsors/sponsor-policy-faq/ * reply Submitted by Damien Ward (not verified) on Fri, 03/29/2013 - 16:32.Contact Hi there Groente -- would love to talk to you about this topic some more, is there any way I could get in contact? Thanks * reply Submitted by groente on Sat, 03/30/2013 - 03:53.contact Hey Damien, Sure, you can find me on IRC (IRCnet, OFTC or irc.indymedia.org), or mail to groente at surprisesurprise puscii dot nl. * reply Submitted by gmc (not verified) on Sat, 03/30/2013 - 15:06.On hackerspaces, Fox-IT and OHM2013 My personal contribution: http://wordpress.metro.cx/2013/03/30/on-hackerspaces-fox-it-and-oh m2013/

Press Release. April, 5th 2013, NYC. Loophole for All project newsletter.*The Good News: Tax Day is April 15th and Loophole4All wants to helpyou to pay fewer taxes with an insane special offer: Providing all itsservices for free! You can now highjack an offshore Caymans companyFOR FREE to avoid unjust taxes in your home country.*The Bad News: Loophole4All faces its first instance of repression,which is limiting its resources.PayPal suspended the account of Loophole4All.com, freezing the $700raised in one month through selling the identities of Caymanscompanies. The reason: "PayPal may not be used to send or receivepayments for items that encourage, promote, facilitate or instructothers to engage in illegal activity".Loophole4All denies the accusations since it promotes and facilitatesa form of civil disobedience and subversive art performance againstcorrupt and unjust laws. Meanwhile, PayPal (Ebay Inc.) is a companybased in Luxembourg, an offshore country, and its own legality isquestionable for evading responsibility to the rest of the world itoperates in (generating some $145 billion not taxed anywhere).*Please Note: If you bought something on Loophole4All.com in the pastyour payment will be affected but not your order. Unfortunately,PayPal policy won't refund your payment before the next 180 days.However you can still access your companies on Loophole4All.com and ifyou bought paper documents they will be shipped to you in the next days.This situation means that everyone will receive all the services andproducts provided by Loophole4All.com for free! However, please donateto keep the project alive and growing. This isone-starving-artist-enterprise against an entire country, several lawsand hundred of thousands of corporations, now serving several types ofaudiences participating in this project. Please DONATE here:http://Loophole4All.com/donations.phpIn response to the backlash by PayPal and in celebration of Tax Day, avideo interview with Paolo Cirio will be released on the 15th April onGRIT TV. Stay tuned at http://grittv.org !*The Loophole for All art installation will be exhibited for the firsttime at the Architectural Association in SoHo, London from the 26th of April:http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/PUBLIC/WHATSON/exhibitions.php?item=267#-p-cultural-hijack-p*Learn more:Watch the full interviews with the major offshore experts for moreinsight about the offshore world, its origins, effects, history andother ugly truths. Beyond wealthy individuals, offshore centers arestructural to the global economy:http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLL-TvlALqpBv_5_QOPgTHzZRdvOf9eHjOAlso note the final list of the damaging issues that the offshoreworld enables, assembled through the research and investigation madeby Paolo Cirio. Beyond wealth, offshore business challenges the notionof law in our globalized world:http://Loophole4All.com/doc.php#issues*Others news from Investigations About the Offshore World:Shocking new leak of the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands andSingapore companies and trusts made the global media headlines:http://www.icij.org/offshore/secret-files-expose-offshores-global-impactShocking new documentary about offshore networks in Netherlands andbeyond by the Dutch national TV:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4o13isDdfYShocking new article about the offshore world and the complicity ofpowerful governmental organizations:http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-18/oecd-enables-companies-to-avoid-100-billion-in-taxes.html*Selected New Press Coverage of Loophole4All project:Spain: http://tecnologia.elpais.com/tecnologia/2013/03/13/actualidad/1363185425_390571.htmlUK: http://taxjustice.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/loophole4all-over-200000-cayman.htmlItaly: http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2013/03/21/cayman-hacker-vende-online-societa-crisi-colpa-dei-paradisi-fiscali/536520/Hungary: http://atlatszo.hu/2013/03/20/az-nfu-es-az-offshore-hatteru-palyazok-dont-ask-dont-tell/Colombia: http://polodemocratico.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4267:mas-de-120-empresas-colombianas-se-encuentran-registradas-en-paraiso-fiscal-de-islas-caiman-para-evadir-impuestos&catid=64:nacionales&Itemid=48U.S.: http://blogs.artinfo.com/artintheair/2013/03/12/cayman-islands-government-calls-scam-on-artist-selling-tax-dodging-companies-data/U.S.: http://www.disinfo.com/2013/02/artist-steals-identities-of-200000-corporations-avoiding-taxes-in-the-cayman-islands/Spain: http://www.pymesyautonomos.com/reflexiones/paolo-cirio-incrementa-la-presion-para-que-empresas-y-la-sociedad-veten-a-los-paraisos-fiscales*Former Press Releases of Loophole4All project:http://Loophole4All.com/press-2nd.phphttp://Loophole4All.com/press-1st.phpThis one:http://Loophole4All.com/press-3rd.phpThanks for the attention.Paolo Cirio's press office.*http://PaoloCirio.net

FIGHT HISTORY: 731 chromogenic printsWell there really was a brief glimmer of new-sucker-hope but...C'mon, you're all just peripheral losers!Maybe in the mean-time you can still inadvertently drum-up some legitimatebusiness for someone else.Don't think of this as extinction. Think of this as downsizing.For thousands of years, human beings have screwed-up and trashed andcrapped on this planet, and now history expected you to clean up aftereveryone. You have to wash out and flatten your soup cans. And account forevery drop of used motor oil.And you have to foot the bill for nuclear waste and buried gasoline tanksand landfilled toxic sludge dumped a generation before you were born.You held the face of the artworld-angel like a baby or a football in thecrook of your arm and bashed him with your knuckles, bashed him until histeeth broke through his lips.Bashed him with your elbow after that until he fell through your arms intoa heap at your feet. Until the skin was pounded thin across his cheekbonesand turned black. You wanted to breath smoke.Birds and deer are a silly luxury, and all the fish should be floating.You wanted to burn the Louvre. You'd do the Elgin Marbles with asledgehammer and wipe your ass with the Mona Lisa. This is your world,now. This is your world, your world. And those ancient people are dead.You want to blast the world free of history.http://bbrace.net/c41/c41.htmlhttp://bradbrace.net/c41/c41.html/:b

<https://greenhost.nl/2013/03/21/spam-not-spam-tracking-hijacked-spamhaus-ip/>Spam? Not Spam? Tracking a hijacked Spamhaus IP Today we noticed we that a lot of our incoming email was being marked asspam. Since this included many messages that were clearly not spam, wedecided to investigate more deeply. We found that a third party wassubverting the Spamhaus service using a routing-based attack. First clues: Spamhaus misbehaving?To filter out spam we use a combination of about 30 different rules. One ofthem is based on the Spamhaus advisory services, which are a family ofDNS-based block lists (DNSBLs) commonly used to filter email. Spamhauskeeps track of servers which are sending large amounts of spam, andpublishes the IP addresses of these servers. In our system, when an emailcomes in, we use Spamhaus to look up the IP address of the remote server.If we find a listing, we compute that the chances are higher that themessage is spam.As each incoming email goes through our system, we record which anti-spamrules contributed to its overall spam score. Today there were many morepoints attributed to Spamhaus advice then usual, so we suspected somethingwas wrong with Spamhaus or that they changed their systems in some majorway. But we checked with them, and found nothing had changed. Even moresurprising, the IP addresses our system was recognizing as "listed inSpamhaus" did not have official records on the Spamhaus web site.Spamhaus is checked using DNS, so we can use simple DNS client tools tomake queries by hand. For example, if an email is received from IP address24.43.30.128, we check whether that address exists in the Spamhaus "ZEN"list on the UNIX command line as follows:$ host 128.30.43.24.zen.spamhaus.org128.30.43.24.zen.spamhaus.org has address 127.0.0.2A reply (always in the form 127.x.x.x) means that there is a positive matchin the database.Spamhaus presents 22 public DNS servers for querying their system. Aftersome testing, we discovered that one of these (ns0.spamhaus.org,204.16.254.40) was always returning "127.0.0.2" to any query. So itseemed one of their systems was serving bad data, reporting that every IPaddress on the internet was a source of spam. This meant about 5% (1/22) ofour incoming emails were getting a much higher spam score than theydeserved, and thus a larger proportion of messages were being marked asspam.Locating a rogue Spamhaus serverAs Spamhaus has a good track record, we thought this behavior wasuncharacteristic. An error like this would normally be fixed quickly. So wesuspected something more complex was going on. We looked up the server inthe RIPE database and found it was in a group of addresses controlled byVitalwerks Internet Solutions. Then we performed a traceroute to theaddress, which produced some strikingly unusual results:# traceroute -n 0.ns.spamhaus.orgtraceroute to 0.ns.spamhaus.org (204.16.254.40), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets 1 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 0.213 ms 0.189 ms 0.150 ms 2 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 0.945 ms 0.971 ms 0.945 ms 3 * * * 4 * * * 5 * * * 6 204.16.254.40 17.831 ms 17.752 ms 17.716 msSeveral 'hops' along the path (3, 4 and 5) did not reveal themselves to thetraceroute at all. We expected to see some hops belonging to Vitalwerks.One 'missing' hop is not very unusual, but several consecutive hops (almostthe entire route!) being missing was another clue to something fishy. Wehad to look more deeply, by asking our BGP routers, to find out where thismisbehaving Spamhaus server was really located:router# show ip bgp 204.16.254.40BGP routing table entry for 204.16.254.40/32Paths: (1 available, best #1, table Default-IP-Routing-Table) Advertised to non peer-group peers: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 34109 51787 1198193.239.116.204 from 193.239.116.204 (84.22.127.134) Origin IGP, metric 10, localpref 140, valid, external, best Last update: Tue Jan 5 11:57:27 1971Finding the truth, getting back to normalAs can seen from the BGP output, we were using a /32 route going over AS34109. This was highly suspicious for two reasons. First, a /32 routerefers only to a single IP address. Except in special cases, routes arenormally /24 (256 hosts) or larger. Second, the AS 34109 belongs to CB3ROBwhich is an Internet provider that has actually been in conflict withSpamhaus (see: spamhaus; allspammedup; theregister). Certainly they weren'trunning a legitimate Spamhaus server.It seems clear that the CB3ROB network hijacked one (or more) of the IPaddresses of Spamhaus, and installed a DNS server there which incorrectlyreturns positive results to every query. The result causes harm to Spamhaususers and their customers, making Spamhaus unusable for anyone unable tocorrect the problem as we did, and perhaps even undermining the credibilityof Spamhaus itself.As we take measures to protect our routers from route hijacking, we weresurprised to find this rogue entry appeared in our routing tables. Wediscovered a small misconfiguration in our software, and after fixing thatthe problem was solved. We could once again reach the real0.ns.spamhaus.org server:# traceroute -q1 0.ns.spamhaus.orgtraceroute to 0.ns.spamhaus.org (204.16.254.40), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets 1 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 0.190 ms 2 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 0.394 ms 3 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 10.967 ms 4 r22.amstnl02.nl.bb.gin.ntt.net (195.69.144.36) 1.961 ms 5 ae-2.r03.amstnl02.nl.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.211) 3.695 ms 6 xe-3-0-3.ar1.ams3.nl.nlayer.net (69.22.139.202) 3.700 ms 7 as23352.vlan-102.ar1.ams3.nl.nlayer.net (69.22.139.123) 2.562 ms 8 ge0-4.aggrB3.ams3.nl.scnet.net (205.234.220.231) 3.953 ms 9 204.16.254.40 (204.16.254.40) 2.393 msRoute hijacking has happened before, such as when Pakistan Telecom startedannouncing itself as the route to YouTube in 2008, but it is still ratherunusual.As the core routing protocol of the Internet, playing "tricks" with BGP canbe hazardous to the whole network. Moreover, Internet peering (routeexchanging) relationships are based on building trust, so we don't thinkBGP is the place to make political demonstrations that cause networkinterruptions. We need to build trust between small network participantslike Greenhost and CB3ROB, to foster digital diversity and innovation. Butfor now, we have suspended our BGP peering with the network that caused usall this trouble today -- and our email services are back to normal.

greetings, RobThe Talkative Planet. What is to be done?To stand shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart - Bruce Springsteen??????No, I don't claim to know anything about such things, and I'm not layingdown the law. But I feel it. I have been visited, or spoken to, 'Ramer saidgravely. 'Then, I think, the meaning was direct, immediate, and theimperfect translation perceptibly later: but it was audible.??????Every half century or so this title shouts out to a poor messengersomewhere. It is like the grin trying out faces. Robert Hughes wrote aboutthat grin trying out faces and finding fault with all of them. Not one faceseemed to suit the grin to perfection. Yet somehow we ??? humans ??? ableto see the faces, the damage done, still we ask over and over: what is tobe done? As if we have any agency.???humor???Let us start with the obvious. In WWII the Germans redecorated largeparts of Berlin with wooden structures. They painted a lake or some woodsand hoped the Allied pilots would get lost. One evening the British sendone plane. That plane dropped one bomb. Made out of wood. That wooden bombwas the perfect response. The plane could have been shot down, the pilotlost, the plot broken. Still they flew. To start with the obvious: there isno more reciprocity in response of this kind. Even in the harshest andtoughest wars fought by men, there was humor; not irony, no laughter, no'fun', but humor, some thing of old that honored the process, the fact thatliving and dying are two sides of one coin, flipped by a hand unseen, yettwirling with a sense of style, of creating meaning out ofnothing.???Throughout history humorless periods have been indicators ofontological changes. It is as if all lubricants have been sucked out of theengines that drive societies and everyday life. Every thing lies painfullyclear in the light, Nietzsche said. Yes, painfully clear it lies indeed. Noform, nor ritual, no 'let's pretend at least we are doing fine', no'style'. In the words of Propp, every possible diversion of action withinthe morphology of the tale at hand has been tried. The tale itself has runits course. There is no logical or illogical ??? say 'fluke' ???possibility of regeneration or innovation. It has branched out to itsfullest. Then it starts wondering and above all, it starts to worry. If itis not worrying, it is making plans to leave. And try out a new face, a newtale.read onhttp://www.shareconference.net/en/text/talkative-planet-what-be-done