My fringe session on free software and data went well last night, we discussed the issues, possible policy and campaigns on what is a pretty niche subject. My cause was helped by the organisers using OpenStreetMap's coverage in the conference pack to show people how to get around - a nice treat for me since I helped map this area!

I started out by describing why Greens should care about "intellectual property", touching on the potential for free information to empower communities, taking control from centralising corporations to promote small and medium-scale social enterprise and exploring/defending/deepening alternative property forms such as the commons; also classical environmental concerns like the availability of data and research on climate change, e-waste created by Microsoft Vista's upgrade cycle, and so on.

I then introduced some context, namely:

• How Greens led the fight against software patents;
• Our policies promoting free software and access to information, also captured in various places in our manifesto;
• The amazingly successful media campaign against Microsoft Vista;
• Our collaboration on the free software, free society open letter promoting free software;
• Commentary and opposition to the Windows-only and DRM-full BBC iPlayer platform.

Participants fleshed out various ways of looking at the problems, including: open access scientific journals, and the comparative cost of open access versus paid access models; the quality of data available; the formats and standards in which data is made available; legal and technical restrictions on data; working cultures that lead to these problems and a general culture of excessive centralisation & restriction. So quite comprehensive!

Two nice practical ideas came out, which was a relief...

First, access to electoral data including boundaries (wards, constituencies, etc.), election results (that vary in format and quality across council web sites) and the postcode database. In Brighton, Jason Kitkat wanted to set-up a "who is your councillor" web page but couldn't because of the post codeissue. We could talk to people like ORG, mySociety, the British Computer Society, OKFN and others to represent this issue to the Electoral Commission. A bit dorky, perhaps, but maybe an easy win?

The second is to see if we can convince someone in a council that we have some political power in - i.e. Brighton, Lewisham, Norwich or Oxford - to assist OpenStreetMap more directly. For example they could notify OSM volunteers when streets, amenities etc. are created or change.

I'm hoping to turn a list of email addresses into a working group, with a view to submitting a policy motion in the Autumn conference and developing those campaigns in the meantime. Fingers crossed, stay posted!

I've been using and advocating free software for around six years. When studying and then working as a freelance writer, migrating an office seemed so simple -- draw up a list of comparable programs and, over a reasonable period, move your staff across. But over the past few weeks I've been trying to use Ubuntu Gutsy on my desktop PC in a Windows-based office, and whilst most things work just fine, it's far from the seamless integration I was hoping for.

Had a lovely Christmas and New Year and got reflecting on what I've achieved in 2007 outside of my job. Except for some good media work for the Green Party on free software issues, and keeping up my commitments for People & Planet and KDE, I've mostly dithered about not really making good ideas happen. So here's what I'm planning to get up to in the following year:

• Organise a Free Culture art show - I've got an offer of a space on Old Kent Road, now I just need to gather together the bods to make it happen;
• Become a Sustrans Ranger for part of the Wandle Trail in London;
• Get a decent Green Party campaign going on free software and free data;
• Join a south London choir and get singing again;
• Get on with the economics reading group I'm doing with friends to broaden and deepen my knowledge;
• Map around Wandsworth Road station area with my wonderful lady;
• Meet more nice people in my area to avoid having to travel so far to see old friends or sitting around lonely.

I'm publishing a draft of something I've scribbled into on and off for the past couple of months, here's the abstract:

Greens have started to mobilise with the increasingly confident Free Culture and Free Software movements in the face of copyright maximalists. This short paper establishes a vision of cultural policy that asks how we can defend, create and enlarge spaces where cultural activities can unfold freely. It then walks the reader through a critique of copyright; first it argues that copyright is a civil rather than a natural property right, so it should be shaped to serve the aims of cultural policy rather than inalienable rights; and second that it conflicts with this paper's vision of cultural policy in various ways. Finally it suggests a few brief strategies for Greens to advance cultural policy through active politics.

I'd be interested to get any feedback.

In other news, I've come third in this year's top green blogs list, which is almost as cool as the mobile clubbing happening I danced in at the Tate Modern last Friday :)

Can anybody help? I want to set-up a computer that sits in the exhibition centre at work for members of the public. It's currently off the network and just runs Windows XP with auto-login, some videos on the desktop and an internet connection to browse a few permitted web sites in Internet Explorer. Soon we're going to connect it to our network so I want to make sure it's locked down!

Ideally I'd like it to run Kubuntu Linux with Kiosk, it would both be easier for me, better (of course) and a nice way to demonstrate a computer running nothing but free software to my colleagues. But I also need to look into the possibilities with Windows (sigh) since we don't have anyone else in our charity or support company who knows anything about Linux.

Can anyone drop a comment with some tips for setting up a well secured video & web browser Linux box, and any hints for Windows?

The Free Software Foundation has published a letter and petition, free software free society signed by The Green Party of England and Wales, People and Planet, Friends of the Earth International, and The New Internationalist. It calls for social activists to avoid upgrading to Microsoft Vista, and to work on a free software migration strategy.

I'd encourage you to read this story on Linux.com and Sian Berry's latest blog over on the New Statesman web site. If you work for a non-profit organisation then try and get it to sign up and start planning to move over!

Yesterday the BBC were confronted with two iPlayer protests outside their offices in London and Manchester. We were calling for the BBC to release software that is cross-platform and free from restrictive Digital Rights Management components. I went along in my role as Green Party Speaker on Intellectual Property & Free Software, along with the Party's Principal Speaker Derek Wall:

The BBC is a public service, and a great one at that with a good history of standing up in the public interest against certain corporate and commercial pressures. But the iPlayer helps prop up Microsoft's monopoly, makes it more difficult for schools and the like to switch away from Windows, and gives new momentum to the pro-DRM movement at a time when sectors of the entertainment industry are starting to abandon it. Why not spend some of that £130m on the Creative Archive project, or working with the British software industry to develop a DRM-free, free software player? If content providers don't want to license their work for the iPlayer then tough luck, the BBC has enough muscle and in-house programming output to make a really decent service. As ORG thoroughly documented the iPlayer is just a bad decision.

Defective by Design have a nice report, along with some of the coverage and responses in the media. You can also read what the Green Party said, and Derek's blog post. There are lots more pictures here and here.

Even though the BBC Trust didn't make a sound in response, it's great to see some eye-catching activism around this issue in the UK after so many years of behind-the-scenes lobbying and responding to consultations! :) If you're in the UK and haven't done so already, sign the petition with over 15,000 signatures!

IPCentral's weblog comes second only to my Fox News op-ed feed for the "irritatingly bad journalism" award. I try to read things I know I'll disagree with, not least because really bad articles make me reflect on whether I overlook similar problems amongst writers I happen to agree with. But then I read nonsense like the free software market is a forking mess, or walking to local shops damages planet more than driving by car and really despair.

I suppose the second article is a sign of progress, the Green movement is high profile enough to attract continuous cheap shots from morons who get into papers like The Times (London).

The walking/driving claim is part of a trend given unwelcome oxygen by the Freakonomics book. I quite enjoyed the book, it's useful to apply broad statistical analysis to trends and cast doubt over intuitive truths. But then there's just bad analysis and interpretation.

Does it make more sense to drive to local shops? Sure, if you eat intensively farmed and processed beef to give you the calories for a walk to the shop, and if in the driving scenario you don't do any exercise and so suffer all sorts of health problems. A better conclusion from the comparison is that our food chain has become far too energy intensive, and that we need to analyse the environmental and social impacts of all our activities holistically. A vegan walking to buy local, seasonal organic vegetables would score far better than the meat-eating car driver who goes to the local gym. Forget catchy headlines and the latest big tip in the media. You're better off considering your own ecological footprint and finding your own way to reduce it to a sustainable level, then taking political action where the shared infrastructure push yours up or obstruct effective personal action.

Back to IPCentral, is the free software world turning into a forking mess, nightmare for businesses and home users? Well first of all it isn't, no, the "upwards of 300 Linux distributions" are about as useful an indication as listing the number of pubs in London and concluding that there are too many for residents of one particular urban village. Relevant questions would be: how many high profile distributions are there for business desktops, how much do they cost, are they supported and are they compatible? That leads you to some interesting discussion about the state of free software, rather than a silly wager about the supremacy of "profit motive [versus] religious fanaticism".

Reading the news can be a bit like arguing with a bright 18 year-old. You're confronted by a smart arse who doesn't actually know what they're talking about, but who enjoys provocative remarks that hang on the slightest thread of logic.

Linux.com have run a nice story about the Green Party of England & Wales and our position on free software.

For average hackers in their cubicles, the relation between environmental and free software issues may seem remote but the Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW) is working to connect the dots. Since adopting a motion in favor of free and open source software (FOSS) in 2005, party members have not only spoken frequently in favor of FOSS, but also on related issues, such as software patents and lockdown technologies in Vista.

The reasoning behind these efforts might surprise, as much as gratify, the average hacker. For now, they also leave the GPEW scrambling to live up to its own ideas.

I'm planning to get to the party conference this September and see how enthusiastic the party faithful are about free software, and copyright/patent issues more generally. If all goes well I'm going to push for better policies, more migration action in the offices and a wider understanding in local parties.

The panel I helped organise on the philosophy of the commons at iCommons' annual iSummit in Dubrovnik went down really well. It got some nice writeups on the iCommons web site (one, two, three) and spurred lots more discussions throughout the event. In fact it was so much fun, and got so many people talking from the audience, that David Berry and I are thinking of editing a collected volume of articles on the subject! It has also really made me want to go and do a PhD again, though I've no idea where I might do it, nor whether I'd look at this sort of stuff or focus on more practical green political issues.

As usual, the best bits of the summit were in between scheduled panels, talking mainly with people from openDemocracy, academics, activists and some of the really great artists (I had the pleasure of finally chatting with Joy Garnett). By the time our panel came around my brain was completely thrown so my talk was a bit impromptu. Given that this confusion remains, here are some sketchy thoughts on where I'd like to take my chapter, where I want to focus my thoughts.

First, I've been trying to translate the typical discourse of free culture into one that makes more sense. In my talk I spoke a bit about the way in which the free culture movement has inherited the free software movement's tendency to label things as "free" and "non-free" without thinking through the arguments that made Stallman & co. arrive at those terms. As Andrew Rens pointed out, it's particularly sick to tell a South African, whose country went through a painful 50-year struggle against apartheid, that they have the wrong meaning of "free"! I find it completely nonsensical to say "that piece of art isn't free". So here are some translations:

• free culture -> free cultural practice
• free content -> free relations with cultural artefacts
• digital commons -> a commons of cultural activity; spaces in which cultural activity unfolds freely, in which self-realisation is possible / facilitates / encouraged / etc.
• enclosure of the digital commons -> enclosure of domains of cultural practice

Second, I want to synthesise various strands of work that I've done over the years to better reflect this new discourse: my MA dissertation on a Lockean argument for free culture; my undergraduate dissertation on the hacker ethic, alienation and meaningful work; my recent short writings about Lessig's shifting CC ideology and real cultural freedom. Lots of thinking to be done in spare moments!