Ideas for a Pirate Party program (was: [ox-en] Fwd: [Eugen Leitl] [p2p-research] Pirate Party program)

Hi list, Eugen!

3 days ago Stefan Merten wrote:
> From:  Eugen Leitl

> There's a window of opportunity right now to help formulate the
> goals of the emerging global Pirate Parties. I'm working on the
> German Pirate Party platform currently, and I'm asking for your 
> input.

Well, in this mail I'll think a bit about the topic and may be some
ideas / thoughts are useful.

As an Oekonux participant the most important thing for me is
furthering peer production and this is what I'd expect from the Pirate
Party. That means

1. Production of goods which are generally useful

2. by volunteers

3. who like to work in a respective project

4. where the products are available to the general public.

In other words: The mode in which much of Free Software, Wikipedia and
similar projects are running.

.. _drawing board intitiative: http://en.wiki.oekonux.org/Oekonux/DrawingBoard

In the `drawing board intitiative`_ there are lots of challenges and
questions listed. The ones I think are interesting for a party at the
current point in history are these:

* Availability of means of production

  A precondition for each production is the availability of the means
  of production. In this point I'll focus on the technical means of
  production.

  For many peer production projects the technical means of production
  are computers connected to the Internet. Today these are generally
  available in the rich countries.

  For other peer production projects such as OpenAccess the means of
  production are paid by those who finance the research - such as the
  state.

  Peer production in general would greatly benefit from the general
  availability of means of production. This can be turned into a
  political demand easily: Lower the cost of means of production when
  they are used for peer production. This could be done for instance
  by special tax reductions.

* Alienated uses of peer products

  Alienated uses of peer products is something which may impede peer
  production which otherwise would take place: If you can sell peer
  products instead of using them for your own needs then this reduces
  the motivation of volunteers.

  A legislation which prevents such abuse would be useful.

* Technology

  There is technology which furthers peer production. One instance
  seems to be production technology which is very universal and at the
  same time widely available. Computers are of course the obvious
  example. It could be the duty of the state to further such
  technology stronger than other technology.

* Let capitalists build fundaments

  There are many fields in which peer production is not yet possible -
  mainly because of the lack of means of production. On the other hand
  capitalist companies can support peer production by incarnating the
  part which peer production is not yet able to accomplish.

  This could mean that these companies produce things with their means
  of production which are designed in peer production projects and
  sell them to whoever wants them. Examples are contract producers
  which are already quite common in rapid prototyping. Also ideas for
  a car based on peer production often think this way.

  It could be the duty of the state to further such companies somehow.

* Enable the unemployed to peer produce

  This is about the human side of means of production. You need enough
  (qualified) humans to produce something. As long as the majority of
  people need money for a living there is a conflict between peer
  production and making money.

  One strategy could be to enable unemployed people to engage in peer
  production projects. Those institutions which care about unemployed
  people would be the "natural" institutions to support such
  engagement.

  This way the unemployed would do something useful which also could
  help them finding a new job. At the same time the idea of peer
  production would be spread to people which are unaware of it now.

  May be there are other ways to aliment persons who engage in peer
  production.

* Peer production as a legal concept

  As of now the concept of peer production is not well reflected in
  contemporary law. Since in capitalism law is the basis for many
  interventions a legal concept of peer production would be very
  useful. That would be the basis for many other strategies rooted in
  strategic interventions by the state.

  As a very minimum the legal status of contemporary licences used in
  peer production - such as the GPL - needs to be clarified and
  affirmed.

Additional ideas include:

* Fighting patents

  Patents are a danger for peer production because they declare
  ownership of ideas of other persons. Also the use of patents is
  questioned since the beginning of them. Patents need to be removed.

  Copyright on the other hand probably needs to be kept because at the
  moment it is the basis for Copyleft licenses. If, however, there are
  more useful concepts these should be furthered.

* Research on peer production

  Peer production is still a rather new phenomenon. Research needs to
  be furthered to understand the phenomenon better.

May be others here have mode ideas?


						Grüße

						Stefan
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