There has been a recent public outrage over anti-piracy lobbyist amendments to a European Parliament Telecom reform bill. The amendments would both implement a 'three-strikes' rule, which would cut off internet access for anyone suspected of illegal file-sharing, as well as giving government control to which internet software and services could be 'lawfully' used. On 7 July 2008, in Brussels, politicians voted in favour of the addition of these amendments to the Telecom law which will be voted on in September.

Thank you to Stefan Meretz for taking the time to engage at length
with my essay, "Copyfarleft, Copyjustright and the Iron Law of
Copyright Earnings." [http://www.metamute.org/en/copyfarleft_a_critique]

The main argument advanced in the essay is that artists can not
earn a living from exclusivity of "intellectual property" and that
that neither copyleft licenses like the GPL, nor "copyjustright"
frameworks such as the creative commons, can help.

The only thing, I believe can help, is workers' self

In July last year Mute published Dmytri Kleiner's critique of copyright and its 'radical' copyleft alternative, presenting a reformist programme based on Ricardo's 'iron law of wages'. But Marx demolished this analysis 140 years ago, argues Stefan Meretz. Time for FLOSS to catch up?

Taking issue with the argument that, after decentralisation, control is embodied within the protocols of networks, Harry Halpin gives a historical account of the all-too-human actors vying for power over the net. Not technical standards but immaterial aristocrats rule cyberspace and their seats of power are vulnerable to revolutionary attack

                               Free Software
                         Toni Prug, toni@irational.org
                                August 13, 2007

Challenges to traditional copyright resulting from peer-to-peer applications, free software, filesharing and appropriation art have caused a wide ranging debate on the future of copyright. Dmytri Kleiner brings existing critiques of material property from the left to bear upon the realm of copyleft artistic production and asks how, within the existing copyright regime, can artists earn a living?

From an early interest in recycling ‘obsolete’ computers, James Wallbank’s mission to demystify the black box of technology has grown into a desire to ‘open source’ creativity in general and media in specific. Here he talks to Charlotte Frost about Access Space, a community media space he co-founded and runs in Sheffield, and their travelling Grow Your Own Media Lab project

Interest in the rapidly developing visual programming language Pure Data, the ‘crack cocaine’ of multimedia software, is growing. In this review of bang, the book about Pure Data published as part of the International Pd Convention held in Graz 2005, Andy Farnell momentarily puts down the pipe to focus on the phenomenon and the scene around it

Waves, a recent exhibition and conference in Riga curated by RIXC and Armin Medosch, tuned in to artistic engagements with the electro-magnetic spectrum. By exploring the material, if imperceptible, base of the information sphere, this event attempted to escape the conventional fetishisation of message over medium. But here, Rob van Kranenburg argues for a less esoteric, more abrasive confrontation with the 'matrix'

Dyne:bolic 2.1 - code name DHORUBA - has been released on Metamute's Public Library Bittorrent server http://pl.metamute.org. You can visit the Public Library, download the file and run it live on your computer's CD drive without effecting your existing OS. Dyne:bolic contains all the tools you need for creating and distributing, video, audio and multimedia works.