I've been appointed as the Green Party England & Wales Speaker on Intellectual Property and Free Software (huzzah!)

This means I'll be their spokesperson on the issue -- responding to news stories, writing letters and articles, possibly taking interviews, and generally raising the profile of the party and principal speakers on this important issue.

The good news is that it should be easy to impress, since the party has a good track record on the issues. The Greens led the fight against software patents in Europe by co-organising conferences on our behalf, getting us into the Parliament and giving us a base to work from. As part of the Green-EFA Alliance they're still talking in the EU about the knowledge commons and the problems with TRIPS & the super-pro-IP position adopted by most other mainstream parties.

Back in 2003 Tony Cooper wrote this interesting article about the party's view on IT, which filtered through into policies passed in 2005 committing the party to promoting free software, opposing software patents and seeking an intellectual property regime that preserves the incentive to create whilst maximising public access to information.

So it will be really interesting pushing these issues in the media, and raising awareness of the Green Party's position amongst free software / free culture advocates.

The bad news is that it means I'll have to re-evaluate other work I'm doing, especially since my really cool job is taking up a lot of my time and energy. I'm tempted to drop everything except this new position, my job and the Free Culture Foundation, perhaps helping KDE a little around the big KDE 4.0 release.

I get to meet the party press officers next Tuesday, and the principal speakers in due course, which will be really interesting. Tuesday will be fun, I'm also meeting the chief prosecutor from First Capital (Dis)Connect to discuss my little episode! Right, time to wash up and take a trip to the farm shop...