Dear Mr. Pagrotsky of the Social Democrats of Sweden,

this is an open letter sent by the Werebuild.eu and Telecomix organizations.

It has come to our knowledge that you are planning to have a dialogue with certain companies of the so called “Creative Industries”. One among them is Voddler, a streaming video provider, which recently has been running into some trouble with the Internet community. Being forced to close by the media industry only a few days ago, Voddler today opens again, running new software. Now is the time to protect the openness on the internet, once again.

We understand your will to promote “legal alternatives”. However, we must inform you that some of these companies are a threat to both intellectual property and to the openness of the Internet as a whole. Voddler breaks the rules of the internet and the laws of copyright.

The fantastic growth and development of the Internet has been made possible by the use of open software licenses and open standards and protocols. Even the simplest data transmission in the networks is dependent on protocols that are in the public domain. Without this, we would not have Internet as we know it today, only closed corporate networks. The future does not lie in previous century copyright, but in community licenses and open standards.

One of these open licenses is the GNU General Public License (GPL). By using GPL-licensed source code you commit to sharing any improvements to that code in the same manner, and sharing the very code you actually use in your own program. As it was revealed that Voddler broke these very fundamental principles of the GPL, the Internet community protested loudly. It is rather ironic when corporations, backed up by conglomerates who file innumerable complaints concerning intellectual property infringements also perpetrate the very same act.

Violations to Free Software licenses have been on the rise in recent times. During the 2005 CeBit conference, 13 companies were served with injunctions regarding their abuse of Free Software licenses.

Because of the large capital required to push an infringement case through court, these violations are seldom punished. The corporations, hungry for ever more quick money from the stock market investors, will not respect the openness needed for the Internet to flourish and benefit human communication.

Market actors who only demand respect for copyright when it suits their purposes can not be tolerated as political visionaries.

Mr. Pagrotsky – You should invite actors from the communities of the Internet, not only its corporations. There is a fantastic world of open software and culture out there, just waiting to enrich our daily lives.

From 15:00 CET we will today answer questions in our Press Room.

Best regards,

/ werebuild.eu and telecomix.org

Further references

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voddler#Source_Code_Copyright_Violation_Concerns

http://getsatisfaction.com/voddler/topics/gpl_and_voddlerplayer_exe

http://darkreverser.wordpress.com/

Recently you have heard many voices from the Internets. There have been chaotic moments on Twitter, blogs and on every forum and chat room. All about one extremely important issue – data retention.

The last couple of days we have seen a drastic change in your approach towards the Internet as a whole and data retention specifically. This change is great as it shows that you actually are aware of the hard facts that we have been trying to explain. First step was taken by the Green Party when cricital voices started to break through. Last night the Left Party declared that they were clearly opposed to data retention and today the Green Party as well made an official declaration stating the same. This is a complete change from what earlier has been said, but also a great victory for all your followers who appreciate openess and privacy.

We welcome your wishes to make data retention history, to make it disappear not only in Sweden but all over the European Union. The Werebuild and Telecomix crew has for a long time observed how this struggle has unfolded in many other countries. Thanks to the Internet, we are in daily contact with the international community.

It will take over 9000 voices to make data retention go away. That is why we want to work together with you! In Germany 35000 citizens made the appeal to the Constitutional Court come through. We just need to level up our collective struggle to make magic happen.

You are most warmly invited to join us. It does not at all have to be official, you can even be anonymous if you want. We need brains, not colours. The Internet already sparkles like a rainbow! Working with us will provide you with creative ideas, international support, the latest news via our newswire and you will learn the hottest skills out there for Internet activism.

Tune into the Telecomix News Agency on Twitter! Come to our main chat room! Use and gather information in our wiki! Share your datalove and join in on our parties!

Best regards and tons of datalove <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 from the Werebuild/Telecomix Cluster!

Useful links:
Werebuild Information Center on data retention
Telecomix News Feed
Telecomix Headquarters

From: Telecomix Department of Defense, under the leadership of Cameron Wiener.

To: Telecomix Crypto Munitions Bureau (TCMB).

Request for the deployment of a crypto munitions bureau.

Recently, across almost all internets, intrusive legislation has been passed by states, corporate abuse has become more common, and the usage of encryption technologies has been questioned by authorities. Signals intelligence agencies are copying our traffic under the guise of what they deem to be a “threat to security”. However, with the improvements made to the networks and ever growing computer performance, we can consider plaintext communication to be a bug, an error inviting interception. This bug has to be worked around, for the safety of fellow netizens.

It has been said that only criminal elements are the ones hiding on the internet. It has been said that only criminals need to worry as they are the only ones that require private correspondence. This is not true. Privacy is fundamental to our lives.

In many countries there are laws that regulate how knowledge of cryptography is allowed to spread. From some locations it is even illegal to export cryptographic tools, forcing the developers to host their repositories overseas. These laws are residual products from the old cold war era, codified in the Wassenaar Arrangement, amongst many other texts.

The world has since changed considerably. Anyone with access to a computer can encrypt data to hide it from unauthorized peers. Cryptographic tools have become effortless means for anyone to use.

The TCMB will work according to the basic principles of the Internet. Its original design was nuclear proof; a distributed network built for the purpose of survival. Destroying one node in the network means that traffic is rerouted through other nodes. Today, however, we do not fear the ballistic missiles in the skies anymore. The cold war is over, but the threat to the information flows are still alive and real. In order for communications to survive without censorship or surveillance, computer networks have to be hardened to meet these new hazards.

There are soon 1 billion hosts on the internet. Each of these nodes can act as an encryption device capable of participating in anonymizing overlay networks, and protecting all of its traffic from unauthorized access. We can build a practically infinite number of internets inside the internets. There is nothing stopping us from creating fractal cipherspace, it is only a matter of generating bits and bytes that are encrypted and tunneled.

For internauts around the world there is an ever growing need for securing their data online. Regimes in Iran, China, the United Kingdom, France and Italy keep oppressing users to the extent that they risk their personal safety. What we need is a global network of tunnels that keep them safe. We have decided to work as tunnel diggers, fellow burrowers in cipherspace.

To pursue the overarching goal of creating a cipherspace within the internet as we know it, the Department of Defense declares that the Telecomix Crypto Munitions Bureau is inaugurated, and is given the following tasks:

• Provide the engineering details needed to tranform desktop computers, embedded systems and powerful servers into nodes that make up the fabric of the cipherspace.
• The construction of networks bridging to cipherspace and islands of high speed darknets where censorship can not exist.
• The rise of the free digital infrastructure, in the form of blackthrows, long-range cantennas, wifi satellite dishes, and free anonymous data havens.
• The generation and collection of tutorials and security wikis.
• The further improvement of blackthrow technologies and their application within digital infrastructures.

TCMB must meet both the goals of spreading knowledge and the demands for anonymity. The Bureau is commissioned to use the i2p-enabled IRC server telecomix.i2p. The Bureau will also produce philosophic knowledge in the WeRebuild Wiki.

Data matters! As an internaut, this is your life, your thoughts and your private information. The internauts should be in charge of it!

For freedom of thought to be preserved, the destruction of certain systems becomes a necessity. At other times these systems are to be designed and created ourselves. Some messages to be deciphered so as to allow the information contained for many to withdraw, others encrypted allowing the integrity between a few to withstand.

Language builds semantic bridges for understanding.
Linguistic errors dig syntactic tunnels of intimacy.

The TCMB is instructed to promote The Dark Sunday Celebration, as a time for reflection upon the life of the traffic that you produce, what do the bits you give birth to grow up into? Are they treated with integrity? What you can do to make their internet a nicer place? The knowledge of cipherspace is a knowledge for everyone!

Internet Visa Stamp of Authenticity

thanks to advanced internaut research, especially by our Italian based friends Yanfry and Scambio Etico, we have collected some strategical material for you. At least three countries within the European Union are successfully working towards a data retention free Europe, something that is crucial to the ecology of a sustainable internets. Sweden can be number four, if you work with us!

We would like to share this information with you! We want to work with you in making the nets a better place for all of us.

See you soon again!

Legal cases for which 2006/24/EC has not been implemented or only partially implemented in Member States.

Romania:
Constitutional Court in Romania stated (decision 1258 of 8 Oct 2009) that the Directive cannot be implemented because incompatible with articles 25 (freedom of movement), 26 (right to privacy) 28 (secrecy of correspondence) of the Romanian Constitutional Chart (to be noted: art .20 of Constitutional Charter of Romania allows intelligence services to access personal data without magistrates authorization). The Constitutional Court objected that 2006/24/EC does not circumscribe properly the set of personal data to identify the single person: identification of type of call, type of device used, and geographic localization. The court also cites Klass et al. vs. Germany (1978) and Popescu vs. Romania (2009) in front of the Council of Europe (European Court for Human Rights), The Court urges for more clarity in the scope of the law transposing the Directive, and more care against possibile abuses by the actors which must store data. Therefore the Court rejected the implementation.

Bulgaria:
- 11 Dec 2008 Supreme Administrative Court of Bulgaria rejected art. 5 of the law implementing the Directive, stating that the provision does not put any limitation on data access from computers and does not contain any guarantee for the right to privacy enshrined in the Bulgarian Constitutional Charter. What’s more, the Supreme Court stated that art. 5 is incompatible with art. 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Germany:
- 15 Dec 2009 class-action (with 34000 signatures) from German Working Group on Data Retention (AK Vorrat) against Federal Government representatives in front of a Court. During the hearing, the embarrassing questions brought on by the AK Vorrat forced the Gov’t to recognize the sensible character of the directive provisions. According to AK Vorrat those provisions are disproportionate and incompatible in a democratic society and with art. 8 of European Convention on Human Rights. The Court has suspended the application of the law. Refer to Ralf Bendrath (some know him from the meeting at the EP) for more details.

Links:
http://reguligence.biz/2010/01/23/data-retention-aims-to-fight-file-sharing-user-rather-than-terrorists/
http://afsj.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/directive-on-data-retention-now-the-floor-goes-to-the-german-constitutional-court/
http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/2009/02/court-allows-retention-of-call-and-e-mail-data/63892.aspx

Professor Jan Rosén

Dear Swedish Government,

It has come to our knowledge by way of a communiqué of yours, that you are issuing an investigation concerning a revision on copyright legislation.

We, the We rebuild EU clusters, are manning our cannons to make sure this investigation is carried out in a proper manner. As of now, a single person strongly in favor of a more aggressive legalisation strategy of IPR has been appointed to conduct the investigation of future copyright legislation. This is, in our eyes, not the wisest way to proceed. We understand that professor Jan Rosén is attempting to determine whether the current law needs revision in order to suit the proposed directive. However, we do not think that an issue of this extent is suitable to be handled by a single individual, and thus we wish to contribute with our team of experts on this subject.

When it comes to discussions concerning copyright legislation with regards to the Internets, we as ambassadors of the internautical community, demand to have our voices heard and take part. We consider the Internet to be both our back yard and our living room, and therefore claim our right to be part of the legislative process.

Our demand is both humble and firm: We will be a part of the legislative process. It must however be noted that this is not a proposition, but a statement. We will publish our research on this Interfax messaging service within the specified deadline.

Until then, we will keep you updated on the progress of our work through our communication channels. We have previously contributed to the Government with our extensive report on the Concept of Openness in digital infrastructure. We appreciate the productive debate that has grown between us, and want to ensure that we can be contacted at any time for discussions concerning these very important matters.

Sincerly,

The Werebuild clusters and the Telecomix News Agency.

E-mail: info@werebuild.eu

This week the Werebuild clusters have acted strongly against the ACTA negotiations, both in letters to our Members of Parliament and we have also observed the “neo-colonial” export of Acta legislative consequences for the Carribean states.

Our dialogue with elected representatives are slowly building up. We need your help to make sure that the Swedish, and of course all politicians are aware of that you are the ones re-electing them or not!

One Swedish MP have responded so far, and we thus publish his letter below in English and Swedish. In the UK there are several. What about the politicians in your part of the internets?

If you act now, we might have a chance to hold every single politician responsible for their (non)-actions in ACTA. This is what the internet does, it tears down the walls between you and your politicians. Please contact your politician now, in Sweden and elsewhere. Instructions for the members of the Committee for Commerce in Sweden are in our wiki.

***

Hello and thank you for your e-mail!

I fully agree with your fears regarding the ACTA-negotiations. We promote, in all contexts, that the debate must be completely open in order for a critical debate throughout all society to take place. Moreover, I am worried on the one hand about the actual nature of the outcomes of the negotiations, on the other hand about the potential discontent and omission that people feel, and that they may loose faith in the democratic system as such. Unfortunately we [the Green party] have been unable to reach out to the Government in addressing these issues. In order to do so we need a stronger public opinion, and that requires effort from us all to take effort to make the issue more visible in news media and in other channels.

With best regards

Per Bolund
Member of Parliament for the Green Party (Miljöpartiet)
Committee of Commerce

***

Hej, och tack för ditt mail!

Jag håller helt med dig i din oro över ACTA-förhandlingarna. Vi driver i alla sammanhang på för att förhandlingarna ska vara helt öppna så att det kan bli en verklig samhällsdebatt om förslagen. Annars är jag orolig över dels vilka förslag som kommer att komma ut från förhandlingarna, och dels över att folk känner sig helt utelämnade och förlorar tron på det demokratiska systemet. Tyvärr har vi inte fått regeringen att lyssna än så länge. För det behövs en starkare opinion, och då krävs att vi alla anstränger oss för att driva frågan i media och på andra sätt.

Vänliga hälsningar

Per Bolund

It’s been shown in mid-January that the high level of detail in this agreement is high because the agreements contains large chunks copied straight from existing EU legislation.

ACTA is suspected of being a problem because it’s detailed, and that it will contain sharp instruments for enforcement of copyright. But in the Korea agreement, we are already getting sharp instruments on a global level, if it passes. And even when Korea FTA does not change any directives as such, trade agreements will always be considered “sources of interpretation” in courts, and may change how case law turns out!

This agreement will have go to through the European parliament either in an assent procedure or a co-decision procedure some time during the spring. The IP chapter should be removed from the agreement, or the agreement turned down, or we’re creating a legal order in which it is okay for Directorate-General (DG) Trade to make legislative initiatives in secrecy on a global level.

What is worse is, there is an economic partnership agreement (EPA) with a coalition of Caribbean states (CARIFORUM) which was signed in 2008 and passed through parliament by assent procedure last year. This EPA is also Korea-level detail. There seems to be an attempt to implicitly transfer power to the DG Trade to conclude these treaties, and if we’re going for ACTA we need to stop that.

Read more:

Korea analyses:
http://action.ffii.org/acta/korea
http://erikjosefsson.eu/blogg/2010/01/10/does-acta-export-ipred1-and-more

These sections of Korea are copied from EU directives:
http://www.erikjosefsson.eu/sites/default/files/92.243.28.240.html

Agreement texts:
http://euwiki.org/FTA/CARIFORUM
http://euwiki.org/FTA/Korea
http://euwiki.org/FTA/Canada

Economic partnership agreements:
http://ec.europa.eu/trade/wider-agenda/development/economic-partnerships/negotiations/

This service was brought to you by the Telecomix Communications Agency.

It appears increasingly clear that ACTA will affect Swedish citizens and businesses far more than normal trade agreements do. Representatives from the Commission says that the negotiations will harmonize legislation, among other things what you can do on the internet, and who is responsible for it. ACTA negotiations will therefore have implications for our freedom and our right to private communication. But such negotiations should not be secret! The legislative process itself is the core of the Swedish parliamentary democracy. ACTA must be subject to the transparency the democratic legislative process requires.

To achieve the necessary transparency, the negotiating setup must be re-negotiated. No representative of Sweden have signed the confidentiality agreement, which the U.S. put forward in the beginning of the negotiations (the McCoy Agreement). Despite that fact, Sweden is said to be bound by this agreement. Sweden is not. Sweden is only bound by a general convention which says that trade agreements should be negotiated in secret. But ACTA is not a trade agreement.

Therefore, the ACTA negotiations must be suspended and a new framework for negotiations developed. The Parliament must be involved, and the parts of ACTA that might change Swedish law must be open to the public.

It is not compatible with your job as an elected legislator to accept secrecy. Both you and ordinary citizens must have the right to monitor which laws are negotiated. Without it, Sweden is not a real democracy. You are the legislator, don’t let yourself be eliminated by accepting that others do your work in secret.

WeReBuild.Eu Networks

[This post was originally written in Swedish and has been delivered to legislators]

Det framgår allt tydligare att ACTA kommer att påverka svenska medborgare och företag långt mer än vad ett normalt handelsavtal gör. Representanter för kommissionen säger att förhandlingarna avser harmonisera lagstiftning som bland annat har att göra med vad man får göra på internet och vem som är ansvarig för det. ACTA-förhandlingarna kommer därför att få konsekvenser för vår yttrandefrihet och vårt meddelarskydd. Men sådana förhandlingar får inte vara hemliga! Lagstiftningsprocessen som sådan är kärnan i den svenska parlamentariska demokratin. ACTA måste underkastas den transparens det demokratiska lagstiftningsarbetet kräver.

För att uppnå nödvändig transparens måste själva förhandlingsformen förhandlas om. Ingen representant för Sverige har skrivit på det sekretessavtal som USA lade fram i början av förhandlingarna (McCoy-avtalet). Trots det sägs Sverige vara bundet av detta avtal. Det är Sverige inte. Sverige är endast bundet av en allmän  konvention som säger att handelsavtal ska förhandlas under sekretess. Men ACTA är inte ett handelsavtal.

Därför måste ACTA-förhandlingarna avbrytas och ett nytt ramverk för förhandlingarna tas fram. Riksdagen måste vara delaktig, och de delar av ACTA som kan komma ändra svensk lag måste vara öppna för allmänheten.
Det är inte förenligt med ditt jobb som folkvald lagstiftare att acceptera hemlighetsmakeri. Både du och vanliga medborgare måste ha rätt till insyn i vilka lagar som förhandlas fram. Utan det är Sverige inte en riktig demokrati. Det är du som är lagstiftare. Avskaffa inte dig själv genom att acceptera att andra gör ditt jobb i hemlighet.

WeReBuild.Eu Networks

In a statement to the European Commission published today,[2] AK Vorrat points out that the directive has resulted in less liberty for citizens, in a constant threat that information on personal contacts, mobile phone movements and Internet use may be sold, lost or otherwise cause harm, as well as in higher prices for telecommunications services and in less competition.

In a legal complaint regarding the directive filed with the European Court of Justice in 2006 and disclosed today on the Internet,[3] Ireland pointed out that initially, many countries had not imposed any data retention requirements, and that “no issue relating to the internal market could justify the imposition upon a Member State of an obligation to require telecommunications operators to retain data [...] where no such obligations previously existed under the law of that State”.

In several Member States, courts examined and are examining complaints filed by citizens and telecommunications operators, alleging that the indiscriminate collection of communications data violates the human right to privacy. Constitutional Courts in Romania[4] and Bulgaria[5] have already ruled data retention legislation unconstitutional. The German Federal Constitutional Court will hear complaints filed by over 34′000 citizens in December.[6] Another action is pending in Ireland,[7] while an application to the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic is currently being prepared. “In a landmark decision taken last year, the European Court of Human Rights declared illegal a British DNA and fingerprints database, stating that ‘the blanket and indiscriminate nature of the powers of retention [...] constitutes a disproportionate interference’ with privacy and ‘cannot be regarded as necessary in a democratic society.’[8] The same is the case with the blanket and indiscriminate collection of information on personal contacts, mobile phone movements and Internet use”, comments legal expert Patrick Breyer (AK Vorrat). “Anonymity is indispensable for a multitude of activities in a democratic state. Subjecting all citizens to a constant recording of whom they are in touch with is threatening to undermine or even destroy democracy while ostensibly defending it. The Commission must put an end to this Big Brother law now.”

“EDRI and its members have been campaigning against this directive for years,[9] arguing that such data retention is necessarily a hazardously invasive act. Communication data is well beyond being simple logs of who we’ve called and when we called them. Traffic data are now used to create a map of human associations and more importantly, a map of human activity and intention,” reminds Meryem Marzouki (EDRI). “With the growing use of massive national databases, and the current plans towards their interoperability at EU-level and full access for police purposes, the data retention directive paves the way to further extensions of purposes, where data once collected strictly for the requirements of a given service delivery become used for citizens surveillance and social control, when not for intelligence purposes. This is not acceptable in a democratic society, and should be ended now.”

A Swedish translation of this press release can be found here.

Footnotes:

1. Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and amending Directive 2002/58/EC.

2.(Full Statement in German) and English summary.

3. http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/images/ireland_2006-07-11.pdf
4. http://www.legi-internet.ro/english/jurisprudenta-it-romania/decizii-it/romanian-constitutional-court-decision-regarding-data-retention.html
5. http://www.edri.org/edri-gram/number6.24/bulgarian-administrative-case-data-retention
6. http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/content/view/51/70/lang,en/
7. http://www.digitalrights.ie/2006/09/14/dri-brings-legal-action-over-mass-surveillance/
8. http://www.coe.int/t/e/legal_affairs/legal_co-operation/data_protection/Documents/1S.%20AND%20MARPER%20v.%20THE%20UNITED%20KINGDOM%20EN.pdf
9. http://www.edri.org/campaigns/dataretention

This press release is also supported by:
- Dutch speaking League for Human Rights (Liga voor Mensenrechten)
- Belgium
- French speaking League for Human Rights (Ligue des droits de
l’Homme) – Belgium
- Flemish Bar Association (Orde van Vlaamse Balies) – Belgium
- French and German speaking Bars of Belgium (Ordre des Barreaux
Francophones et Germanophone) – Belgium
- General Association of Professional Journalists in Belgium (AGJPB
- Association générale des Journalistes Professionnels de Belgique -
AVBB : Algemene Vereniging van Beroepsjournalisten in België) – Belgium
- Statewatch – UK
- Werebuild.eu – Sweden

European Digital Rights European Digital Rights (EDRi) is an international association of civil rights organisations whose aim is to protect the privacy and freedoms of citizens in the information society. Homepage and contact details: http://www.edri.org

Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung (German Working Group on Data Retention) The Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung (AK Vorrat) is a Germany-wide organisation which campaigns against extensive surveillance in general and the blanket logging of telecommunications and other behavioural data in particular. Homepage und contact details: http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de