We got a little bit of coverage with our response to the BPI's plans to kick people off the net if they've brushed up too close to a little music piracy. It's always nice to read people writing comments along the lines of "I'm going to vote Green! Exactly what i would have said, they have brains!"

It has been a funny year for the industry. Massive acts have been releasing music for free, which gets a mixed reception amongst the 99% of musicians who aren't going to get millions from voluntary payments and gigging. At the same time the true dinosaurs in the industry are getting hot under the collar about piracy again when you think they'd be putting all of their energy into the growing online media market.

As individuals who create, and perhaps earn something of an income from our work, all we can do is to keep creating and finding ways to earn whilst sharing as much as possible. Artists and/or their collectives are all entrepreneurs - or unsuccessful. We'll keep pressing for a more liberal copyright policy from the Green Party end, with more of an emphasis on the cultural commons and the need to find business models that are better than iTunes (lock you into their proprietary systems) and the BPI's proposal.

I had a great time in Liverpool at the Open Source City, many thanks to Folly for feeding and watering me! Liverpool's a great city - I've never been there before - lots of grand stone facades, friendly, friendly people and some interesting little arts venues run out of slightly dilapidated properties with the permission of landlords.

As promised, I've uploaded all my material from my talk about the philosophy of free culture. You can grab my slides, my short paper on my own Green approach to the subject, my masters dissertation on a Lockean approach to Free Culture and my undergraduate dissertation on Marxism and the Hacker Ethic!

Now I need a rest... too much time on trains, clubbing in the East End, working on my presentation and not really sleeping properly has taken it out of me!

I'm speaking at the Open Source City micro-festival, part of the European Capital of Culture programme. If you're in the area then there will be some good talks, workshops and performances. From the blurb - "Open Source City tips its hat to Liverpool’s pioneering spirit by offering a programme of art, workshops, masterclasses, talks and concerts that shed light on the growing impact of Free/Libre Open Source Software on the creative practices of today, in particular in media art and music."

I'll be talking about a few philosophical perspectives on intellectual property, using Kant, Locke and Marx as my starting points. Should we follow Richard Stallman in thinking that there is a categorical imperative to share freely? Perhaps the nonrivalrous nature of information means there is a good case to leave it in common rather than seeking private ownership? Or should we be more concerned with the act of creation, the way in which people labour on ideas and information, and encourage spaces in which we can engage in unalienated labour?

To keep it grounded I'm going to use examples from communities I've been part of, namely KDE, Remix Reading and OpenStreetMap.

We've got the answers to the other questions we submitted, predictably vague but useful nonetheless (for campaign quotes, and just in building up the pressure to do something). You can read the questions and responses on Hansard, but I particularly like the look of this bit:

For central government bodies other than trading funds, the clear policy is that raw information should, subject to any statutory provision, be freely available or provided at the marginal cost of dissemination.

That's good to know, and backs up the Green Party's case for making it accessible as well, e.g. Parliamentary procedure in an open, machine-readable format rather than plain HTML, or key data on domestic energy use in one place as a canonical source rather than being scattered across different sections of government departments (Defra, BERR, CLG, etc.)

There's a nice piece in the Guardian today summarising recent developments, well worth a look. It would be nice if we could supply those guys with a decent set of OpenStreetMap graphics for use in articles rather than using non-free sources too!

The Government has responded to the first of several questions I drafted for Tim Beaumont, the Green member of the House of Lords. We want to pile on the pressure so that the Labour Government takes the report they commissioned seriously, and to find out if they intend to act on any specific parts. One very general question - asking "whether they intend to make the Ordnance Survey's MasterMap available free of financial or legal restrictions" - got this response:

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Andrews): As announced in the Budget, the Government will look closely at public sector information held by trading funds including Ordnance Survey, to distinguish more clearly what is required by government for public tasks and ensure that this information is made available as widely as possible for use in downstream markets. In the lead up to the next spending review, the Government will ensure that information collected for public purposes is priced so that the need for access is balanced with ensuring that customers pay a fair contribution to the cost of collecting this information in the long term. In the mean time Ordnance Survey will continue to generate the revenue it requires to cover its costs, to fund investments and to provide a return to government, from sales of paper mapping and from licensing use of the Crown copyright and Crown database rights in its data, including OS MasterMap.

So no surprises there, but the spending review is definitely a good campaign target. If the Government took their own research seriously, and approached Ordnance Survey's funding a little more creatively (e.g. with land registry surcharges), then communities like OpenStreetMap would be able to open up hugely beneficial opportunities. Expect a report from the Green Party on this whenever I get the time to finish it off!

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!

The Green-EFA Alliance have put together this silly little video as part of the I wouldn't steal campaign. The Greens have been leading the fight against laws that protect multinationals' profits at the expense of ordinary citizens, and artists who create those films. Here's the vid:

A cabal met up this Wednesday and so the free art show is definitely going to happen, hooray! The best kind of Green politics - combine a practical celebration of your ideals with some alternative propaganda and persuasion. I need to get on with mapping the rest of the area around the gallery on OpenStreetMap. Then I can produce public transport maps to convince those dafty North Londoners that it's not that difficult to reach Old Kent Road :).

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 :)

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!