Category: Economics
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Edward Snowden: Modern-Day Pirate?
Over the past 48 hours the number of countries saying ‘no’ to Edward Snowden’s application for asylum has grown rapidly. From Austria to Brazil, Finland to Spain, it seems that representatives from nations on Snowden’s list have been queuing up with their statements and sad shakes of their head. Attempts have been made to place…
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Mutiny at TED – Put Down Your iPads and Strap on Your Eye Patches!
Was a HUGE privilege to be invited to speak at TEDx Exeter in April this year. I was given 12 minutes to speak on piracy, so decided to take one aspect of Mutiny! and look at how pirates work to defend and enrich the commons. In preparing the talk it struck me that TED is actually…
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Insurance as Commons, Campaigns as Mutiny: Reflections on #NicsFight
It’s been a very very busy 10 days since the NicsFight campaign kicked off. For those of you who don’t know, my very good friend Nic died in October from cancer; his insurance company (Friends Life) have been refusing to pay out on a critical illness policy which would transform the lives of the widow…
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Gimme the Loot : Pirates at the Jacobin
Really nice article by Gavin Mueller over at the Jacobin – a magazine of culture and polemic -asking if piracy has been a ‘radical force.’ Once the heroes of nations, pirates went from being state-sponsored champions to tolerated annoyances to the basest sort of criminals. Henry Morgan was knighted after plundering Panama in 1674; fifty years…
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Paula Le DieuA Brief History of Copyright | Do Lectures
Really nice video here (thanks to Luke Sital Singh for pushing it my way) from the Do Lectures weekend in 2011, at which the Director of Digital content at the British Film Institute, Paula Ledieu, gives a short history of copyright, what’s gone wrong with it, and how it needs to be fixed. This…