КОЛКО ДУШИ СА НУЖНИ ДА СЕ СМЕНИ ЕДНА КРУШКА СПОРЕД ЗОДИЯТА

Овен: ”Само един. При това може да смени не само крушката!!!”

Телец: ”Предпочитам естествена светлина. И абсолютно сигурни ли сте, че старата крушка е изгоряла? Мразя да хвърлям неща, които биха могли да са полезни!”

Близнаци: ”Един вероятно е най-добрият вариант, защото ако са повече от един, ще се отплеснат в разговори и напълно ще забравят за крушката…”

Рак: ”Четирима. Един рак и трима психотерапевти, които да помогнат за мъчителния процес на смяната”

Лъв: ”Истинските лъвове не сменят крушки! Истинските лъвове намират някой друг да направи това вместо тях.”

Дева: ”Точно 1,655221 души в средностатистическия случай”

Везни: ”Добре, де, ще го направя… освен ако ти не си така добър да го свършиш вместо мен, но явно си много зает в момента… тъй че ще го направя… И все пак, не искаш ли ти да го свършиш?”

Скорпион: ”Нито един. Скорпионите не ги е страх от тъмнината!”

Стрелец: ”Айде стига, бе! Я погледни навън… Слънцето грее, птичките пеят, животът е пред нас, а ти се шашкаш за някаква глупава крушка?!?!?!”

Козирог: ”Нямам време за глупости.”

Водолей: ”Виж сега, енергията е материя, а дали материята е енергия още не е доказано, но със сигурност светлината е форма на енергия и тъй като електрическата крушка е материя….”

Риби: ”Каква крушка?”

Българският Еврокомисар

Разочарованията в случая са много.
Тази жена очевидно не става, още от първия си ден като министър. Показа се като нахална, ограничена, изказваща се без подготовка и неподходяща за ресора си.

Друго – толкова ли не я видяха що за стока е, та трябваше да ни срами пред Европа?

За конфликтите на интереси да не говорим. Те, за съжаление в бг обаче никого не учудват. Май Бойко е прав, че няма и един сред политическата прослойка, за който да не се намери, ако се търси достатъчно, я конфликт на интереси с фирми, я роднини от ДС, я приятелства и връзки с мафиоти.

От цялата история и срамота се надявам поне малко да си вземат бележка някои хора. Да търсят и наемат за държавна работа хора, които имат качества, знания, работливост и могат да носят отговорност, а не само да слушат и да са деца на приятели примерно.

Да разберат, че е крайно време в България законите да станат това, което ни учат в университета – регулатори на обществени отношения, пред закона всички са равни и законът действа вина, незнанието на закона също не оправдава неговото неспазване.

Тъжно е и друго в тази история Веднага разни хора започнаха да търсят начини да извличат лични дивиденти – СДС – предлагайки Надежда, която е достатъчно компрометирана, поне за запознатите с приватизационните й дела. БСП и НДСВ да гледат сеир и да си мислят, че те така ще изглеждат по-малко черни от всичките простотии, които сътвориха на гърба на простия народ.

А последиците си ги носим и ще си ги носим всички. Прозрачността и спазването на закона са благо за всички. Каквото е и гражданското общество, което обаче ние за 20 години не успяхме да си отгледаме. Европа просто опитва да ни покаже как.

На нас обаче ни липсва задружност. Липсва ни масово и трудолюбие и скромност. Желева не е паднала от небето. аз познавам много “Желеви”. В България това е масов модел на напредване. Безочие и нахалство. Сигурна съм, че можеше да се намери и по-лоша от нея.

Искам да мисля, че това ще даде урок на много хора. Не само във връзка с ЕС. А и изобщо. Че е нужно да се спазва законът, да се работи, да се чете повече, отколкото се позира, танцува румба и други подобни…

И може би, че доброто побеждава, и че да бъдеш морален не е срамно и отживелица. Затова баба ми и майка ми харесват турските сериали, защото им дават надежди…

Draft text of new “Copenhagen Accord”

Copenhagen Accord

The Heads of State, Heads of Government, Ministers, and other heads of delegation present at the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen,

In pursuit of the ultimate objective of the Convention as stated in its Article 2,

Being guided by the principles and provisions of the Convention,

Noting the results of work done by the two Ad hoc Working Groups,

Endorsing decision x/CP.l5 that extends the mandate of the Ad hoc Working Group on Long-term cooperative action and decision x/CMP.5 that requests the Ad hoc Working Group on Further Commitments of Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol to continue its work,

Have agreed on this Copenhagen Accord which is operational immediately.

1. We underline that climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time. We emphasise our strong political will to urgently combat climate change in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. To achieve the ultimate objective of the Convention to stabilize greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, we shall, recognizing the scientific view that the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees, on the basis of equity and in the context of sustainable development, enhance our long-term cooperative action to combat climate change. We recognize the critical impacts of climate change and the potential impacts of response measures on countries particularly vulnerable to its adverse effects and stress the need to establish a comprehensive adaptation programme including international support.

2. We agree that deep cuts in global emissions are required according to science, and as documented by the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report with a view to reduce global emissions by 50 per cent in 2050 below 1990 levels,taking into account the right to equitable access to atmospheric space. We should cooperate in achieving the peaking of global and national emissions as soon as possible, recognizing that the time frame for peaking will be longer in developing countries and bearing in mind that social and economic development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of developing countries and that a low-emission development strategy is indispensable to sustainable development.

3. Adaptation to the adverse effects of climate change and the potential impacts of response measures is a challenge faced by all countries. Enhanced action and international cooperation on adaptation is urgently required to enstue the implementation of the Convention by enabling and supporting the implementation of adaptation actions aimed at reducing vulnerability and building resilience in developing countries, especially in those that are particularly vulnerable, especially least developed countries, small island developing States and tiuther taking into account the need of countries in Africa affected by drought, desertification and floods. We agree that developed countries shall provide adequate, predictable and sustainable financial resources, technology and capacity-building to support the implementation of adaptation action in developing countries.

4. Annex I Parties to the Convention commit to reducing their emissions individually or jointly by at least 80 per cent by 2050. They also commit to implement individually or jointly the quantified economy-wide emissions targets for 2020 as listed in appendix l, yielding in aggregate reductions of greenhouse gas emissions of X per cent in 2020 compared to 1990 and Y per cent in 2020 compared to 2005. Annex I Parties that are Party to the Kyoto Protocol will thereby further strengthen the emissions reductions initiated by the Kyoto Protocol. Delivery of reductions and financing by developed countries will be measured, reported and verified in accordance with existing and any further guidelines adopted by the Conference of Parties, and will ensure that accounting of such targets and finance is rigorous, robust and transparent.

5. Non-Annex I Parties to the Convention will implement mitigation actions,including those listed in appendix II, consistent with Article 4.1 and Article 4.7 and in the context of sustainable development. Mitigation actions subsequently taken and envisaged by Non Annex I Parties shall be communicated through national communications consistent with Article l2.1(b) every two years on the basis of guidelines to be adopted by the Conference of the Parties. Those mitigation actions in national communications or othenavise communicated to the Secretariat will be added to the list in appendix II. Mitigation actions taken by Non Parties will be subject to their domestic measurement, reporting and verification the result of which will be reported through their national communications every two years. Non Amiex I Parties will provide biennial national inventory reports in accordance with revised guidelines adopted by the Conference of the Parties. [Consideration to be inserted US and Chinal. Nationally appropriate mitigation actions seeking international support will be recorded in a registry along with relevant technology, finance and capacity building support. Those actions supported will be added to the list in appendix II. These supported nationally appropriate mitigation actions will be subject to intemational measurement, reporting and verification in accordance with guidelines adopted by the Conference ofthe Parties.

6. We recognize the crucial role of reducing emission irom deforestation and forest degradation and the need to enhance removals of greenhouse gas emission by forests and agree on the need to provide positive incentives to such actions through the immediate establishment of a mechanism including REDD-plus, to enable the mobilization of financial resources from developed countries.

7. We decide to pursue various approaches, including opportunities to use markets, to enhance the cost-effectiveness of; and to promote mitigation actions. Developing countries, especially those with low emitting economies should be provided incentives to continue to develop on a low emission pathway.

8. Scaled up, new and additional, predictable and adequate fimding as well as improved access shall be provided to developing countries, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Convention, to enable and support enhanced action on mitigation, including substantial finance to prevent deforestation (REDD-plus), adaptation, teclmology development and transfer and capacity-building, for enhanced implementation of the Convention. The collective commitment by developed countries is to provide new and additional resources amounting to 30 billion dollars for the period 2010 – 2012 as listed in appendix lll with balanced allocation between adaptation and mitigation, including forestry. Funding for adaptation will be prioritized for the most vulnerable developing countries, such as the least developed countries, small island developing states and countries in Africa affected by drought, desertification and floods. In the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation, developed countries support a goal of mobilizing jointly 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries. This funding will come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including altemative sources of finance. New multilateral funding for adaptation will be delivered through effective and efficient fund arrangements, with a governance structure providing for equal representation of developed and developing countries.

9. To this end, a High Level Panel will be established under the guidance of and accountable to the Conference of the Parties to assess the contribution of the potential sources of revenue, including alternative sources of finance, towards meeting this goal.

10. We decide that the Copenhagen Climate Fund shall be established as an operating entity of the financial mechanism of the Convention to support projects, programmes, policies and other activities in developing cotmtries related to mitigation including REDD-plus, adaptation, capacity- building, technology development and transfer as set forth in decision -/CP.l 5.

ll. In order to enhance action on development and transfer of technology we decide to establish a Technology Mechanism as set forth in decision -/CP.l5 to accelerate technology development and transfer in support of action on adaptation and mitigation that will be guided by a country-driven approach and be based on national circumstances and priorities.

12. We call for a review of this Accord and its implementation to be completed by 2016, including in light of the Convention’s ultimate objective. This review would include consideration of strengthening the long-tenn goal to limit the increase in global average temperature to 1.5 degrees.

It’s a beautiful day, don’t let it get away….

The path to success

Many Goals Remain Unmet in 5 Nations’ Climate Deal

Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Obama with Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao, across from him, the prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh, right, and other world leaders at the Copenhagen climate summit on Friday.

nytimes.com

By HELENE COOPER and JOHN M. BRODER

Published: December 18, 2009

COPENHAGEN — Leaders here concluded a climate change deal on Friday that the Obama administration called “meaningful” but that falls short of even the modest expectations for the summit meeting here.

Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Obama stepped off Air Force One Friday morning in Denmark to address the Copenhagen climate summit.

The agreement addresses many of the issues that leaders came here to settle, but the answers are bound to leave many of the participants unhappy.

Even an Obama administration official conceded, “It is not sufficient to combat the threat of climate change, but it’s an important first step.”

“No country is entirely satisfied with each element,” the administration’s statement said, “but this is a meaningful and historic step forward and a foundation from which to make further progress.”

The statement added, “We thank the emerging economies for their voluntary actions and especially appreciate the work and leadership of the Europeans in this effort.”

But many of those emerging economies are likely to express displeasure. Europeans said the deal does not require enough of the United States, China and other major emitters and could put European industries at a competitive disadvantage because the European Union is already subject to a carbon emissions constraint program.

The accord drops the expected goal of concluding a binding international treaty by the end of 2010, which leaves the implementation of its provisions uncertain. It is likely to undergo many months, perhaps years, of additional negotiation before it emerges in any internationally enforceable form.

“We entered this negotiation at a time when there were significant differences between countries,” the American official said.

“Developed and developing countries have now agreed to listing their national actions and commitments, a finance mechanism, to set a mitigation target of two degrees Celsius and to provide information on the implementation of their actions through national communications, with provisions for international consultations and analysis under clearly defined guidelines,” the official said.

The deal came after a dramatic moment in which Mr. Obama burst into a meeting of the Chinese, Indian and Brazilian leaders, according to senior administration officials. Chinese protocol officers protested, and Mr. Obama said he did not want them negotiating in secret.

The intrusion led to new talks that cemented key terms of the deal, American officials said.

Sergio Serra, Brazil’s senior climate negotiator here, confirmed that Mr. Obama had “joined” a meeting of Brazilian, Indian, Chinese and other officials, although he did not say that Mr. Obama walked in uninvited.

“After several discussions had taken place they were joined by President Barack Obama,” Mr. Serra said. “Several important decisions were taken — not a few due to Brazilian mediation — that we hope will bring a result, if not what we expected, that may be a way of salvaging something and pave the way to another meeting or series of meetings to get the full result of this proceeding.”

The agreement is believed to be based on a document that was being edited by high-ranking officials from some two dozen countries throughout the day.

In that draft, developed nations committed to a long-term target of reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050. No specific midterm target was set. Developing countries, meanwhile, would pursue mitigation efforts of their own, and agreed in general terms to some sort of reporting on those efforts — something the industrialized world had been seeking.

The draft dropped earlier language that said a binding accord should be reached “as soon as possible,” and no later than at the next meeting of the parties, in Mexico City in November 2010. Instead, the draft set no specific deadline, saying only that the agreement should be reviewed and put in place by 2015.

The draft also included a few hard figures about joint emissions cuts of 50 percent by 2050. It included a dozen or so enumerated points asserting general commitment to the idea that “climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time” and asserted that “deep cuts” in global emissions are required.

It also sought to lay out some framework for verification of emissions commitments by developing countries and to establish a “high-level panel” to assess financial contributions by rich nations to help poor countries adapt to climate change and limit their emissions.

In the draft, many of the specifics remained to be negotiated, however.

In a press conference following the announcement, Mr. Obama thanked other world leaders for their help in reaching the accord — which he nonetheless characterized as being only a start.

“This progress did not come easily,” he said, “and we know that this progress alone is not enough.”

“The developed countries have decided that damage to developing countries is acceptable,” he told reporters, saying that the 2-degree target would “result in massive devastation to Africa and small island states.” He and many other representatives of the most vulnerable countries wanted a target of 1.5 degrees.

“Today’s events, which really are a continuation of the history of the negotiations for the last two years, represent the worst development in climate change negotiations in history,” Mr. Di-Aping said.

Mr. Obama’s announcement came late in a day that began with his 11-minute address to world leaders shortly after noon, and that was filled with brinksmanship and 11th-hour negotiations. Mr. Obama, whose speech included remarks that appeared pointed at China’s resistance to mechanisms for monitoring emissions reductions, met privately with Prime Minister Wen Jiabao afterward. But Mr. Wen did not attend two smaller, impromptu meetings during the day that Mr. Obama and United States officials conducted with the leaders of other world powers, an apparent snub that infuriated administration officials and their European counterparts.

The deal eventually came together after a dramatic moment in which Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton burst into a meeting of the Chinese, Indian and Brazilian leaders, according to senior administration officials. Mr. Obama said he did not want them negotiating in secret.

The intrusion led to new talks that cemented central terms of the deal, American officials said.

Sergio Serra, Brazil’s senior climate negotiator here, confirmed that Mr. Obama had joined a meeting of Brazilian, Indian, Chinese and other officials, although he did not say that Mr. Obama walked in uninvited.

“After several discussions had taken place, they were joined by President Barack Obama,” Mr. Serra said. “Several important decisions were taken — not a few due to Brazilian mediation — that we hope will bring a result, if not what we expected, that may be a way of salvaging something and pave the way to another meeting or series of meetings to get the full result of this proceeding.”

Jian Xiaoyan, a press officer with the Chinese government, said there was no one available to comment Friday night.

The agreement apparently grew out of a document that was being edited by high-ranking officials from some two dozen countries throughout the day. But many specifics that were included in earlier versions were excised in the document left on the table when Mr. Obama made his announcement, and many parties considered it at best a work in progress. The agreement contains several enumerated points asserting a general commitment to the idea that “climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time” and asserts that “deep cuts” in global emissions were required.

In at least one earlier version, the deal included a collective agreement among nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050 — with developed nations pledging as a bloc to reduce emissions by 80 percent over the same period. Those numbers were no longer in the version circulated after Mr. Obama’s announcement.

Also dropped from earlier drafts was language calling for a binding accord “as soon as possible,” and no later than at the next meeting of the parties, in Mexico City next November. The deal presented Friday evening said only that the agreement should be reviewed and put in place by 2015.

The document does lay out a framework for verification of emissions commitments by developing countries and for establishing a “high-level panel” to assess financial contributions by rich nations to help poor countries adapt to climate change and limit their emissions.

Many of the specifics remained to be negotiated, however.

Mr. Serra, the Brazilian diplomat, said that the process left many alienated, particularly the smaller countries that have little influence in a major international negotiation. Many involved in the process here suggested this would be the last time that 193 nations would gather in this way to negotiate such a complex accord.

“Certain groups like G-77 are not happy when a few people make decisions,” Mr. Serra said. “It’s not an inclusive exercise. Perhaps it can’t be.”

Reporting was contributed by Elisabeth Rosenthal, Tom Zeller Jr. and Andrew C. Revkin from Copenhagen, and Liz Robbins from New York.

Climate Change Conversations

Graphic

Who’s at the Climate Talks, and What Do They Seek?

Interactive Feature

Science and Politics of Climate Change

Related

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Times Topics: Copenhagen Climate Talks (UNFCCC)

Text of President Obama’s Climate Speech

Pass the Bill

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: December 17, 2009

nytimes.com

A message to progressives: By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy. Declare that you’re disappointed in and/or disgusted with President Obama. Demand a change in Senate rules that, combined with the Republican strategy of total obstructionism, are in the process of making America ungovernable.

Skip to next paragraph

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Paul Krugman

Go to Columnist Page » Blog: The Conscience of a Liberal

But meanwhile, pass the health care bill.

Yes, the filibuster-imposed need to get votes from “centrist” senators has led to a bill that falls a long way short of ideal. Worse, some of those senators seem motivated largely by a desire to protect the interests of insurance companies — with the possible exception of Mr. Lieberman, who seems motivated by sheer spite.

But let’s all take a deep breath, and consider just how much good this bill would do, if passed — and how much better it would be than anything that seemed possible just a few years ago. With all its flaws, the Senate health bill would be the biggest expansion of the social safety net since Medicare, greatly improving the lives of millions. Getting this bill would be much, much better than watching health care reform fail.

At its core, the bill would do two things. First, it would prohibit discrimination by insurance companies on the basis of medical condition or history: Americans could no longer be denied health insurance because of a pre-existing condition, or have their insurance canceled when they get sick. Second, the bill would provide substantial financial aid to those who don’t get insurance through their employers, as well as tax breaks for small employers that do provide insurance.

All of this would be paid for in large part with the first serious effort ever to rein in rising health care costs.

The result would be a huge increase in the availability and affordability of health insurance, with more than 30 million Americans gaining coverage, and premiums for lower-income and lower-middle-income Americans falling dramatically. That’s an immense change from where we were just a few years ago: remember, not long ago the Bush administration and its allies in Congress successfully blocked even a modest expansion of health care for children.

Bear in mind also the lessons of history: social insurance programs tend to start out highly imperfect and incomplete, but get better and more comprehensive as the years go by. Thus Social Security originally had huge gaps in coverage — and a majority of African-Americans, in particular, fell through those gaps. But it was improved over time, and it’s now the bedrock of retirement stability for the vast majority of Americans.

Look, I understand the anger here: supporting this weakened bill feels like giving in to blackmail — because it is. Or to use an even more accurate metaphor suggested by Ezra Klein of The Washington Post, we’re paying a ransom to hostage-takers. Some of us, including a majority of senators, really, really want to cover the uninsured; but to make that happen we need the votes of a handful of senators who see failure of reform as an acceptable outcome, and demand a steep price for their support.

The question, then, is whether to pay the ransom by giving in to the demands of those senators, accepting a flawed bill, or hang tough and let the hostage — that is, health reform — die.

Again, history suggests the answer. Whereas flawed social insurance programs have tended to get better over time, the story of health reform suggests that rejecting an imperfect deal in the hope of eventually getting something better is a recipe for getting nothing at all. Not to put too fine a point on it, America would be in much better shape today if Democrats had cut a deal on health care with Richard Nixon, or if Bill Clinton had cut a deal with moderate Republicans back when they still existed.

But won’t paying the ransom now encourage more hostage-taking in the future? Maybe. But the next big fight, over the future of the financial system, will be very different. If the usual suspects try to water down financial reform, I say call their bluff: there’s not much to lose, since a merely cosmetic reform, by creating a false sense of security, could well end up being worse than nothing.

Beyond that, we need to take on the way the Senate works. The filibuster, and the need for 60 votes to end debate, aren’t in the Constitution. They’re a Senate tradition, and that same tradition said that the threat of filibusters should be used sparingly. Well, Republicans have already trashed the second part of the tradition: look at a list of cloture motions over time, and you’ll see that since the G.O.P. lost control of Congress it has pursued obstructionism on a literally unprecedented scale. So it’s time to revise the rules.

But that’s for later. Right now, let’s pass the bill that’s on the table.

Related

Times Topics: Health Care Reform

How it feels to be sued for $4.5m

When I contemplate the above sum, I have to remind myself what I’m being charged with. Investment fraud? An attack against the government? No. I shared music. And refused to cave

www.guardian.co.uk/ 2009/jul/27/

Joel Tenebaum

To a certain extent, I’m afraid to write this. Though they’ve already seized my computer and copied my hard drive, I have no guarantee they won’t do it again. For the past four years, they’ve been threatening me, making demands for trial, deposing my parents, sisters, friends, and myself twice – the first time for nine hours, the second for seven. I face up to $4.5m in fines and the last case like mine that went to trial had a jury verdict of $1.92m.

When I contemplate this, I have to remind myself what I’m being charged with. Investment fraud? Robbing a casino? A cyber-attack against the federal government? No. I shared music. And refused to cave.

No matter how many people I explain this to, the reaction is always the same: dumbfounded surprise and visceral indignance, both of which are a result of the amazing secrecy the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has operated under. “How did they get you?” I’m asked. I explain that there are 40,000 people like me, being sued for the same thing, and we were picked from a pool of millions who shared music. And that’s when a look appears on the face of whoever I’m talking to, the horrified “it could have been me!” look.

The reason this has remained so silent despite passionate opposition is that nearly all people settle. My story of becoming an exception started four years ago.

In 2005, my parents received a letter from Sony BMG, Warner, Atlantic Records, Arista Records, and UMG Records claiming “copyright infringement”. They were given a number to call, which was their “settlement information line”, a call centre staffed by operators who, we are emphatically told, are “not attorneys”. The process of collecting money from these threats was so huge, they had set up a 1-800-DONT-SUE-ME-style call centre.

The operators did little more than ask how you would pay (they wanted $3,000, I believe) and repeated intimidating lawsuit statistics. I sent them a money order for $500, which they returned. I told them I couldn’t pay any more. We discussed whether I might qualify for “financial hardship”, and then I stopped hearing from them, which I didn’t question. I graduated from college and began studying for my physics doctorate.

And then in August 2007, I came home from work to find a stack of papers, maybe 50 pages thick, sitting at the door to my apartment. That’s when I found out what it was like to have possibly the most talented copyright lawyers in the business, bankrolled by multibillion-dollar corporations, throwing everything they had at someone who wanted to share Come As You Are with other Nirvana fans.

I had assumed that as an equal in a court of law in the United States, my story would be told and a just outcome would result. I discovered the sheer magnitude of obstacles in your way to get your say in court. And even if you get to trial, (which only one other person, Jammie Thomas Rasset, has done) you’re still far from equal with the machine controlling 85% of commercial music in the US.

But to even start fighting assumes you (a) know what you’re even being sued for and (b) have a concept of what grounds to fight it on. Most of the time you know nothing except for the huge stack of paper written in legalese that says you owe several thousand dollars and it will probably cost you more than that just to hire a lawyer. If you can find one.

I had frequent contact with one of their Colorado counsel. While she was impudent to the point of vicious (“Come on Joel, I think you did it”), I continued to use phrases like “I respect your position” and “we have a respectful difference of opinion”. I have no record of this intimidation because the person in question made sure to keep contact restricted to phonecalls.

Every conversation consisted of her trying to get information out of me about my defense, telling me how much bigger the settlement would be if I didn’t settle now. Shaken, I would call my mother, who was a state-paid lawyer in child custody cases, and ask her what to do. We blindly fired all kinds of motions at them. Eventually my mother became afraid to answer my calls, worried it would be about the case. For the court “settlement” I offered $5,250, which the RIAA declined, asking $10,500. I saw myself on a conveyor belt, being pulled inexorably toward the meshing of razor-sharp gears.

Then in summer 2008, I arrived home to find a letter addressed to me. The return address said “Harvard Law School”. Curiously, I opened and read it. “My name is Charles Nesson, professor of Law at Harvard. I caught wind of your case,” it said. “I can be of any assistance, don’t hesitate to call.” I called. Nesson picked up. I said, “Yes, you can be of assistance!” My mom drafted a letter to him, summarising where we were. The opening line read, “Dear Professor Godsend”.

Since then I’ve learned that you don’t have to accept phone contact from the RIAA lawyers, but could demand correspondence by mail. I’ve been deposed twice – for nine hours one day and for another seven a few weeks ago – where I was asked every irrelevant question about my life, cars that I owned, websites I’ve operated. The RIAA will try to denigrate this, saying I was only talking for seven hours and then five and a half, but I was stuck in their office the entire time. You think it makes any difference to me when I can’t work?

My sisters, dad and mother have all been deposed. My high-school friends, friends of the family too. My computer’s been seized and hard drive copied, and my parents and sister narrowly escaped the same fate for their computers. And the professor who supervises my teaching is continually frustrated with my need to have people cover for me, while my research in grad school is put on hold to deal with people whose full-time job is to keep an anvil over my head. I have to consider every unrelated thing I do in my private life in the event that I’m interrogated under oath about it. I wonder how I’ll stand up in a courtroom for hours having litigators try to convince a jury of my guilt and the reprehensibility of my character.

But the support helps. I’ve had a great team of Nesson’s students helping and the professor himself has been magnificent. Most of all, I’m touched by the warm messages of support from the people who’ve written in, Twittered, and Facebooked me (though I’ve been too paranoid to friend strangers lately). Best hopes to others dealing with the same: Brittany Kruger, Jammie Thomas, and the other 39,997 of us.

The trial starts today, 27 Monday July. Regrettably, it won’t be webcast as we requested due to the RIAA’s successful opposition, but we will tweet (with the hashtag #jfb) and blog as much as possible, and there is a website where you can follow us and learn more.

Finding a fair price for free knowledge

24 June 2009 by Peter Eckersley

newscientist.com

TEN years ago, a piece of software called Napster taught us that scarcity is no longer a law of nature. The physics of our universe would allow everyone with access to a networked computer to enjoy, for free, every song, every film, every book, every piece of research, every computer program, every last thing that could be made out of digital ones and zeros. The question became not, will nature allow it, but will our legal and economic system ever allow it?

This is a question about the future of capitalism, the economic system that arose from scarcity. Ours is the era of expanded copyright systems and enormous portfolios of dubious patents, of trade secrecy, the privatisation of the fruits of publicly funded research, and other phenomena that we collectively term “intellectual property”. As technology has made a new abundance of knowledge possible, politicians, lawyers, corporations and university administrations have become more and more determined to preserve its scarcity.

So will we cling to scarcity just so that we can keep capitalism? Or will capitalism have to evolve into some new kind of digital economics? The question underlines many things – from music piracy to the woes of the newspaper industry to Google’s efforts to scan all the books in the world.

This fragile scarcity has a purpose: to make things expensive. Water is plentiful and essential; diamonds are rare and useless. But diamonds are much more expensive than water because they’re much rarer. People in the business of selling information have good reason to want a future where knowledge is valued like diamonds rather than water. Here pharmaceutical giants, Hollywood, Microsoft, even The Wall Street Journal speak with one voice: “Keep expanding copyright and patent laws so our products remain expensive and profitable.” And they pay lobbyists worldwide to ensure this message reaches governments.

The irony of the battle between advocates of abundance and advocates of scarcity is that both sides are right. It makes no sense to limit and control access now we have technologies to give information to everyone. But it is also foolish to pretend we do not need incentives to help produce and publish that information.

While financial incentives are a very complicated business, two simple points hold true. First, even without payment, some folk will always record music, write software, make their feature films, do their own investigative journalism, occasionally even test their own drugs. You couldn’t stop them if you tried. Second, we will all be better off with more, not fewer, professional careers available for knowledge producers. Not having to stick with a day job allows creative workers to be more creative and productive, for the benefit of all.

Crucially, though, if we really want to end scarcity, we will have to build institutions that promote knowledge-sharing, while at the same time ensuring that there are incentives for creative and technical minds to contribute.

Science, and the universities that support it, is the grandest example of a system that has evolved to promote the abundance of knowledge. Universities offer incentives in the form of tenure, promotion and prestige to researchers who can discover and share the information which their peers consider most valuable. Academics are human: they are as greedy, short-sighted and treacherous as everyone else, but the academic environment encourages them to focus those vices and impress their colleagues with their cleverness and cool discoveries published in fancy journals. Sometimes those cool discoveries are imagined or incomplete, but then others get ahead by pointing this out, and when the whole process works, the result is science.

In recent years, however, science has become another front in the conflict over scarcity. As any biologist will tell you, patents, secrecy and commercialisation have become a way of life. At the same time, science has inspired new institutions and movements that promote its ideals and its liberty.

Take the open access movement, which has campaigned to ensure that scientific articles are freely available to the public, who ultimately paid for the research with their taxes. Historically, most scientific writing was confined to expensive scholarly journals and essentially available only to people with university affiliations. Some publishers resisted the open access movement, but trends are against them. In March this year, for example, the US Congress made permanent a requirement that all research funded by the National Institutes of Health be openly accessible, and other countries are following. Within a decade or two, it is safe to say that all scientific literature will be online, free and searchable. Journal publishers will still be paid, but at a different point in the chain.

Outside the universities we have some even more remarkable developments. Fifteen years ago, who would have predicted that teenagers would be allowed to edit the world’s primary reference source from their homes? Twenty years ago, who would have predicted that teams of volunteers would succeed in writing and giving away software that produces many billions of dollars of economic wealth?

Wikipedia and the free and open-source software movements have produced stores of knowledge while trying to insulate themselves from the old institution of copyright, which is inherently unsuited to their processes of authorship. But that’s not enough: we urgently need institutions to liberate knowledge produced under the old rules, too.

The music industry, for example, is slowly realising it cannot win the war on copying. People are pirates, and there are still 10 songs copied for every one bought on iTunes. Soon, the record labels will start to experiment with alternatives to copyright, such as licences that allow unlimited, restriction-free file sharing in exchange for flat fees, maybe a $5 or $10 voluntary payment with your monthly internet provider bill. This kind of system will not be perfect, but it will allow us to have wonderful libraries of legal MP3s, and it may help more independent professional musicians to flourish.

People are pirates… there are still 10 songs copied for each one bought on iTunes

Another experiment in post-scarcity capitalism concerns the digitisation of the world’s books. One draft of the rules for access to scanned books is currently being written in the US courts as Google settles a class action over its scanning projects. This settlement will make books more searchable and improve access to both out-of-print and “orphaned” books whose copyright holders can’t be found. Under the current version, books will only be available in snippets and sections. Some out-of-print books will be available through institutional and individual subscriptions, but we don’t yet know whether the prices will be inviting to most of the public, thus making Google Books a true post-scarcity project.

So here’s a challenge to the governments of countries that want to lead the way, whether rich or poor: sit down with Google (or one of its competitors), authors and publishers, and work out a deal that offers a complete, licensed digital library free to your citizens. It would cost taxpayers something, but less than they currently spend on buying scarce books and supporting large paper collections. It would be great news for publishers and authors, who would receive most of the funds and would no longer need to fear piracy.

It’s time to recognise that when we build institutions to promote the abundance of knowledge, everybody wins. When it comes to knowledge, you can never have too much of a good thing.

Profile

Peter Eckersley is a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, which sets out to defend digital civil liberties. His doctoral research at the University of Melbourne is on alternatives to digital copyright. He can be contacted at pde@eff.org

Now is the time for a less selfish capitalism

By Richard Layard, ft.com

Published: March 11 2009 20:02 | Last updated: March 11 2009 20:02

What is progress? The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has been asking this question for some time and the current crisis makes it imperative to find an answer. According to the Anglo-Saxon Enlightenment, progress means the reduction of misery and the increase of happiness. It does not mean wealth creation or innovation, which are sometimes useful instruments but never the final goal. So we should stop the worship of money and create a more humane society where the quality of human experience is the criterion. Provided we pay ourselves in line with our productivity, we can choose whatever lifestyle is best for our quality of life.

And what would that involve? The starting point is that, despite massive wealth creation, happiness has not risen since the 1950s in the US or Britain or (over a shorter period) in western Germany. No researcher questions these facts. So accelerated economic growth is not a goal for which we should make large sacrifices. In particular, we should not sacrifice the most important source of happiness, which is the quality of human relationships – at home, at work and in the community. We have sacrificed too many of these in the name of efficiency and productivity growth.

Most of all we have sacrificed our values. In the 1960s, 60 per cent of adults said they believed “most people can be trusted”. Today the figure is 30 per cent, in both Britain and the US. The fall in trustworthy behaviour is clear in the banking sector but can also be seen in family life (more break-ups), in the playground (fewer friends you can trust) and in the workplace (growing competition between colleagues).

Increasingly, we treat private interest as the only motivation on which we can rely and competition between individuals as the way to get the most out of them. This is often counterproductive and does not generally produce a happy workplace since competition for status is a zero-sum game. Instead, we need a society based on positive-sum activities. Humans are a mix of selfishness and altruism but generally feel better working to help each other rather than to do each other down.

Our society has become too individualistic, with too much rivalry and not enough common purpose. We idolise success and status and thus undermine our mutual respect. But countries vary in this regard, and the Scandinavians have managed to combine effective economies with much greater equality and mutual respect. They have the greatest levels of trust (and happiness) of any countries in the world.

To build a society based on trust we have to start in school, if not earlier. Children should learn that the noblest life is the one that produces the least misery and the most happiness in the world. This rule should apply also in business and professional life. People should do work that is useful to society and does not just make paper profits. And all professions – including journalism, advertising and business – should have a clear, professional, ethical code that its members are required to observe. It is not for nothing that doctors form the group most respected in our society – they have a code that is enforced and everyone knows it.

So we need a trend away from excessive individualism and towards greater social responsibility. Is it possible to reverse a cultural trend in this way? It has happened before, in the early 19th century. For the next 150 years there was a growth of social responsibility, followed by a decline in the next 50. So a trend can change and it is often in bad times (such as the 1930s in Scandinavia) that people decide to seek a more co-operative lifestyle.

I have written a book about how to do this and there is room here for three points only. First we should use our schools to promote a better value system – the recent Good Childhood report sponsored by the UK Children’s Society was full of ideas about how to do this. Second, adults should reappraise their priorities about what is important. Recent events are likely to encourage this and modern happiness research can help find answers. Third, economists should adopt a more realistic model of what makes humans happy and what makes markets function.

Three ideas taught in business schools have much to answer for. One is the theory of “efficient capital markets”, now clearly discredited. The second is “principal agent” theory, which says the agents will perform best under high-powered financial incentives to align their interests with those of the principal. This has led to excessive performance-related pay, which has often undermined the motive to work well for the sake of doing a good job and introduced unnecessary tension among colleagues. Finally, there is the macho philosophy of “continuous change”, promoted by self-interested consulting companies, which disregards the fundamental human need for stability – in the name of efficiency gains that are often not realised.

We do not want communism – as research shows, the communist countries were the least happy in the world and also inefficient. But we do need a more humane brand of capitalism, based not only on better regulation but on better values.

Values matter and they are affected by our theories. We do not need a society based on Darwinian competition between individuals. Beyond subsistence, the best experience any society can provide is the feeling that other people are on your side. That is the kind of capitalism we want.

Lord Layard is at the London School of Economics Centre for Economic Performance. He has written ‘Happiness’ (2005) and co-authored ‘A Good Childhood’ (2009)