This dog will bite back. 23 april 2009

"Like a dog!"

Welcome to the iRevolution. The more you fight us the stronger we become.

The future is now! This is the barricade!

You are the pirate bay.

Detta är IPRED 28 februari 2009

Riksdagen röstade i veckan igenom IPRED. Den lag som även har kallats "privatpolislagen".

Det är värre än väntat. Jag har saxat rakt upp och ned ur Rick Falkvinges blogg.

Jag vill göra er extra uppmärksamma på följande stycke i texten nedan:

Några hävdar att den bygger på ett EU-direktiv; att Sverige skulle vara tvingade att införa det här. Det är ren lögn rakt upp och ner. Det har varit hela vägen uppe i EG-domstolen som har tydligt sagt att Sverige inte inte inte måste införa de här galenskaperna.

Detta är alltså IPRED. Läs och lär dig:

Veckans argumentationsövning är inte så mycket en övning i retorik, som att tala om vad Privatpolislagen Ipred som riksdagen antog i onsdags faktiskt innebär. Att prata om detta med sina vänner och bekana räcker väldigt långt. Alltför ofta möts man av reaktionen “men det kan inte vara sant!“. Det är det.

Till att börja med får Lobbyn - och när jag skriver Lobbyn, så menar jag upphovsrättslobbyn - göra privata brottsutredningar. Det har varit skitförbjudet tidigare, men de har haft tillfälliga undantag. Nu skrivs det uttryckligen in i lagen att de, just de, får göra privata brottsutredningar. De är undantagna från personuppgiftslagen som säger att privata intressen inte får göra sådant.

Sedan får de tvinga en internetleverantör att lämna ut personuppgifterna för den person som ligger bakom IP-numret de spanat på, och som de anser fildelar. Det kan inte ens polisen få ut. Lobbyn får alltså mer långtgående befogenheter än den svenska polisen. Läs den meningen igen: Lobbyn, en privat industri, får mer långtgående befogenheter att kränka vanliga medborgares privatliv än den svenska polisen. Det är bland annat därför som det här har kallats för privatpolislagen.

Därefter får de frysa bankkontot och beslagta huset för en person som de misstänker för fildelning. I klartext, så är det den som står för abonnemanget bakom ett IP-nummer. Ja alltså, personen och familjen får bo kvar där, men det är belagt med så kallat “kvarstad”, vilket innebär att det i allt väsentligt är taget i beslag. Notera nu att det inte ens gäller personen som är misstänkt för fildelning, utan istället personen bakom det abonnemang som har använts.

Sedan kommer de och knackar på och gör husrannsakan. Det är först då man får reda på att ens bankkonto är frysta. Formellt heter det inte husrannsakan, utan intrångsundersökning, men det är precis samma sak med ett annat namn. Då går de igenom alla datorer, alla backuphårddiskar, alla MP3-spelare, allt. Har du nakenbilder på datorn? Varsågod att titta, Lobbyn, säger riksdagen. Har du privata dagböcker? Varsågod, Lobbyn. Privat surfhistorik? Politiska åsikter? Sexuella preferenser? Kom, kom, ta för er bara, Lobbyn. Inte bara på dina datorer, utan för alla i hela hushållet. Riksdagen är generös, den som inte har något att frukta kan inte ha något att dölja.

Därnäst kommer de med ett utpressningsbrev. Då kräver de dig, eller den barnfamilj som de gjort husrannsakan hos, på tiotusentals eller ibland hundratusentals kronor. Vi vet att det är så, vi har sett deras utpressningsmallar.

Skadeståndet de kräver behöver inte vara pengar de förlorat. Lagen går ifrån en grundprincip i svensk civilrätt om att man bara kan kräva igen faktiska förluster. Lagen tillåter Lobbyn att sätta skadeståndsnivån utifrån “industrins intresse att det inte upprepas” — i klartext, så högt att det skrämmer folk. I allt väsentligt privata straffböter, alltså. Men på hundratusentals kronor i stället för, som är brukligt, hundralappar.

I “vänlighet”, så erbjuder de sig att inte gå till domstol om du betalar halva beloppet inom tio dagar. Om det går till domstol, så hotar de med att du dessutom måste betala deras rättegångskostnader på ytterligare massor. I Danmark, där det här systemet har funnits ett par år, så blir de flesta så rädda att de betalar för att bli av med problemet, oavsett om de har gjort något fel eller inte. Konceptet “rättssäkerhet” existerar inte. Lobbyn är inte ett dugg intresserad av att personen som faktiskt fildelat betalar, de är intresserade av att någon får agera syndabock. Om det är rätt person är inte så viktigt.

Sedan kan man gå till domstol om man trots allt kräver någon form av rättvisa och inte vill betala, utan vill bevisa sin oskuld. Bevisa sin oskuld. Det är inte längre en straffrättslig rättegång, utan en civilrättslig. “Oskyldig till motsatsen bevisats bortom rimligt tvivel” gäller inte. Men — aha! — Lobbyn har ju frusit ens bankkonto. Så det finns inga pengar till försvarare. De pengarna som finns kommer man inte åt.

Slutligen, efter de har dömt någon till enorma skadestånd (eftersom man inte har råd med försvarare), så kan den anklagade barnfamiljen tvingas att själv betala en tidningsannons för att berätta att de blivit dömda. Det här är också något helt nytt, en återinförsel av skampålen, som den dömde dessutom tvingas att betala för.

Man behöver inte någon speciell retorik just nu. Det räcker att berätta rakt upp och ner vad den här lagen innebär. Problemet är snarare att över huvud taget bli trodd.

Några hävdar att den bygger på ett EU-direktiv; att Sverige skulle vara tvingade att införa det här. Det är ren lögn rakt upp och ner. Det har varit hela vägen uppe i EG-domstolen som har tydligt sagt att Sverige inte inte inte måste införa de här galenskaperna. Det är bara regeringens eget ansvar och de har inga att gömma sig bakom.

Privatpolislagen är inte en anti-fildelningslag. Det är en anti-rättssäkerhetslag.

Prata om det här med dina vänner och bekanta. Berätta om Piratpartiet.

Är det så här vi vill ha det?

It's not about piracy, it's about freedom 16 februari 2009

Today was the first day of the Spectrial. I followed the proceedings on web radio (swe). Really, really boring. I'm so happy I'm not there, even though I'm on trial.

People have asked me if I condone piracy.

I tell them, it's not about piracy. It's about freedom.

There are cars that can top 200 kph. I don't condone driving really fast, but I'll fight for my freedom to chose how fast I go. My freedom to behave responsibly. I can use any blunt tool, like a hammer, to injure someone. Do I think the company producing the hammer should be held responsible? Do I think BMW should be sued for marketing cars that go really fast?

No.

If we give up our freedoms, one day we may find that we don't have any left.

You are The Pirate Bay

Today is the first day of the Pirate Bay trial (also known as the #spectrial).

This is why you should care:

The Pirate Bay is a search engine for shared files. The files are not on the pirate bay itself, but on the various users computers. File sharing is 60% of all internet traffic, and the pirate bay handles 50% of that traffic. This means that The Pirate Bay is involved in 30% of all traffic of the whole internet.

That is a huge abundance of information. It's instructional videos, manuals for technical equipment, vintage porn images, collections of old movies, modern movies and music, and music, and music(?).

All that traffic, that 30% of the Internet traffic is coming from the users computers. If you're sharing you're part of that traffic. 

Just as Google would have no purpose without all the people and companies creating the web pages, The Pirate Bay would have no purpose unless we shared.

And share we do. With joy. It's natural. Copying is the basic behaviour of any baby. It's innate. This means that I'm on trial. You're on trial. We're on trial.

Support the pirate bay by changing your profile image 15 februari 2009

Tomorrow is the first day of The Pirate Bay trial, known as the Spectrial. 

Here is an instruction on how to change your profile picture:

In Twitter:

1. Log in to your Twitter account.
2. Go to Settings > Picture.
3. Download this image.
4. Choose that file, press save.
5. Done.

In Facebook:

1. Login to Facebook.
2. Click your name on the top bar.
3. Under your profile image, click View Photos of Me.
4. Scroll down to your albums, and click your Profile Pictures album.
5. Click Change Profile Picture.
6. Download this image.
7. Under Upload Picture, chose the downloaded image.
8. Upload the picture.
9. Done.

Best of luck!

My thoughts on twitter etiquette. 26 januari 2009

Twitter is a wonderful tool for news discovery, sharing of information and casual conversation. Many interesting people are on twitter, like Guy Kawasaki, Fred Wilson or Jason Calcanis. They're all entrepreneur heroes of mine.

Here are some of my thoughts on proper twitter usage:

1. Retweet any link you find interesting. By doing this you let great links go viral, and you bring attention to people who post interesting links. Allways include the original posters @name, to give credit to the starter of the meme. (Good point Mike!) Consider also including the @name of anyone retweeting an interesting link (retweeting a retweet).
2. For retweeting use the format "RT @name text...", and not via, retweet or anything else. This is for clarity and for readability.
3. Write in english. Most people on twitter is not of your nationality, and for better reach use an international language.
4. Keep you conversation clear. Twitter messages are like a river, that you take a dip into once in a while. Therefore, many of your followers didn't read your last tweet, or that which you're replying to. Thus you should try to help them understand your conversation. Try to answer with

   Thank you @name for commenting on my post on Twitequette: http://tinyurl.com/cnwqrw

   rather than

   Thank you @name for your comment.

   Every tweet is like a headline, and a good headline is clear and obvious.
5. Shorten your URL's. Use a tool like TinyURL.com to keep them from cluttering the conversation. Many twitter tools include this feature.
6. Use #hashtags often, but not too often. Don't clutter an hashtag with your tweets unless they're relevant.
7. Converse briefly. A few @'s back and forth is fine by me, but I don't really want to see your whole conversation. It's rarely that interesting. When conversations gets more personal, consider moving to direct message (DM) (Or maybe your favourite IM, since twitter directs are fubar). Guy Kawasaki is a master of this, I've got quite a few DM's from him from @'s he's replied to.

What are your twitter etiquette tips? I'd love to complete my list.

Also, if you don't allready, please follow me on twitter.

Internet users surpass 1 billion 24 januari 2009

ComScore reports that the global internet users surpass a billion. Pretty amazing. China is #1.

I took the numbers and multiplied the global share by GNP per capita:

Indicates you what countries are the most interesting if you want to capitalize on your users. I realize that internet users may be in the higher percentile of earners in their respective country, but never the less.

My morning tears of joy 19 december 2008

This is for those of you who doesn't follow my twitter feed.

Not much bring me to tears, but passionate cheerful happiness does. Always. Every time. It's like a curse.

This morning I got a link from Anders Fredriksson. It's a shameless spoof from "Where the hell is Matt." Never the less, it's beautiful. It's a video of some of the worlds best startups dancing in sheer joy.

Only this and "Extreme Home Makeover" can bring me to tears. I know. I'm a sucker.

Why do we still think locally?

Mike Butcher of TechCrunch UK gave an excellent speech at LeWeb '08 covering the european startup spirit. He says about the europe startup scene:

...  in Rome I found Angel/Entrepreneurs like Gianluca Dettori of dpixel trying their damndest to get a startup scene going, resorting to throwing their own conference (TechGarage). In Istanbul I found blogger Arda Kutsal or Webrazzi writing about the Web 2.0 scene in Turkey - and there are more Turkish connections inside Silicon Valley than you might think.

Why does this surprise anyone? The Internet is as local as it is global (the world is where you are). Of course there are going to be amazing startups all over the globe. Everywhere there is an internet connection there is a person thinking: "What if I could have this?", or "What if we could do that?". These people will build amazing stuff. 

So why is it that the common opinion is that it's going to be built in Silicon Valley? Great companies are not built by white educated men in their thirties. They're built by people. Creative, talented, smart, engaged and hard working people.

Right now we've got a generation of people are growing up who never lived without the Internet. They'll have a whole new perception of what the world is like, how small it is.

So lets stop talking about this amazing UK startup or that great Italian startup. Lets start thinking about this great company built by all these talented people who really understand what I need and what I want.

I'm bored with the locality of the world.

My predictions in Tech for 2009

ReadWriteWeb list their predictions (or wishes rather) for 2009. The first thing they cover is 

What We Want in 2009: Help Us Manage Social Media Better
For the entrepreneurs still looking to get our attention with the latest social media toys, their pitch may no longer be "come try this, it's new," but instead, "come try this, it helps." Because if there's anything we learned from 2008, it's that social media overload is not sustainable.

In my previous post I covered social media overload too. Makes me proud that they feel it too.

Anyway, here are my predictions / wishes for 2009.

Twitter breaks it into the mainstream.

The way they do it is by appealing to journalists, who in turn use it for research and social interaction, for a more fulfilled journalism. And just like Michael Arrington they post the topics of their articles on Twitter before before the article goes public.

Apple hits 15% market share.

But before that Apple break the 10% barrier, probably very soon.

Many sites start using Microformats.

Effectively this makes any site an API, allowing for interaction between sites in a yet unimaginable way. It's the natural next step, the ultimate modularisation of the World Wide Web. 

Facebook hits a virtual brick wall.

The behemoth made sense in a booming economy. Now, monetization of a company with 1000+ employees is getting urgent. I'm not sure what this brick wall will be, money, lack of CPM for ads, expenses of servers or whatever.

Tech startups survive.

At least to a greater extent than expected. The tech economy learnt a great deal from the days of the bubble. Maybe the most important lesson was how to live and exists cheaply - something many businesses are not used to at all. So I predict tech companies, specifically startups, will survive to a greater degree compared to other types of business.

What are you predictions?

Happy holidays to you all!

(How) do you handle social media overload? 09 december 2008

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the fragmentation of Social Media. More specifically about juggling all different services without losing time.

Today Seth Godin writes about the tsunami of media and information. His posts reflects pretty closely my sentiments about the problems with all my different social media. 

I use a lot of social media services. Among these are Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, Tumblr, FriendFeed, YouTube, Last.fm, Spotify, Del.icio.us, Picasa and Flickr. And this is just of the top of my head. I bet I use three to four times as many weekly.

My way to cope with this so far has been to funnel them through each other. Facebook becomes a collector of my streams, through different feed imports . This is what Tumblr and FriendFeed are designed for, but I have a bigger audience on Facebook.

And my entrance to my feeds is usually Twitter. Anything I say on twitter propagates itself through my feeds to touch as many of my contacts as possible.

I'm thinking of writing a more lengthy post (no promises) about tips and tricks on how to cope with social media overload. What should I include? What are your best tips to stay on top of the pile? I appreciate your feedback.

VC money still necessary to stand out 05 december 2008

Paul Graham has (as usual) a very interesting read about why VC's may soon not matter.

The current generation of founders want to raise money from VCs, and Sequoia specifically, because Larry and Sergey took money from VCs, and Sequoia specifically. Imagine what it would do to the VC business if the next hot company didn't take VC at all.

VCs think they're playing a zero sum game. In fact, it's not even that. If you lose a deal to Benchmark, you lose that deal, but VC as an industry still wins. If you lose a deal to None, all VCs lose.

This recession may be different from the one after the Internet Bubble. This time founders may keep starting startups. And if they do, VCs will have to keep writing checks, or they could become irrelevant.

His point is very, very good. But what about performance? Or startup competition? It's not as easy as "Ok, our curves are sky rocketing, and we're ramen profitable - we don't need no stinkin' VC money!"

It's about optimal performance. Can you reach optimal performance without the VC money? If there are more startups there is also more competition. You have to be noticed in the noise.

Consider this chart:

Cash burn over time. 

Optimal Performance is about growing as fast as your market and customers allow you. If you burn too fast you waste money. If you don't have enough money you can't reach your optimal performance. Huh?

Well, we're in the disruptive Internet business right? That is: We're changing and adapting customer behaviour. But customers adapt slowly. Back in the bubble I used to work for Red Message.  $20M investment by Goldman Sachs in 2000. The went bankrupt, but there are businesses today thriving on the very same idea. Many of the companies back in the bubble burnt through their cash faster than their customers adapter their behaviour. They were all Over Spending. Other examples include Boo.com and Letsbuyit.

Hardware, software, marketing and distribution are all ten to hundred times cheaper now than back in the bubble. But customers are still slow to adapt.

So what am I saying? Well... Sure, with ramen profitability and curves that make any VC open their fat wallet you may not need them. But are you performing at your optimal curve? I doubt it. You're likely Under Performing, even though you may not know it. Even if the tools available for marketing and CRM are cheaper, if you want to reach a global audience chances are you'll use traditional (old) media. Newpapers. Journalists. Catching their attention them takes time and money. Maybe less than before, but still.

Optimal performance is very hard. It's about spending your money where it impacts the changein behaviour and faster adaptation of your customer. And that is very, very hard. No cheap hardware-, software-, marketing-, CRM-, distribution-, whatever-model in the world will help you there. You may just want to watch your curves, listen to and understand your customer better etc. etc. It's all soft, ad-hoc, and less measurable. And finding your optimal curve takes monkey. At least more than ramen money.

So while many things are cheaper, taking VC money to perform at the optimal curve is still necessary in order to stand out in the noise, and outcompete the competition.

What do you think? If my logic is fuzzy, it's because it's friday and I need beer.

Boxee brings the TV revolution 03 december 2008

The last few weeks I've been trying out a new service. In short, Boxee empowers your living room TV. Basically it composes of two parts: An application to view movies, locally or over the Internet and a community which lets you share what you've watched with your friends, much like Last.fm.

The application is pure gold. It scrapes your harddrive and selected network resources for video, pictures and music. Through a sleek interface you can then easily browse through your content, play movies, listen to music or play photo slideshows. But it doesn't stop there. The guys at Boxee has connected the application to various online content, be it Jon Stewart on Comedy Central, mixing mentos and coke on YouTube or a sucky 70's martial arts movie (public domain through a built in torrent downloader). In all it's a very full application.

The community is still a rough diamond. Clearly this is where Boxee will have the most impact. Having tried other full TV oriented applications like Joost, Boxee has the potential to build a much more interesting community. Since I can provide my own content to the recommendation engine Boxee has the potential for being as useful as Last.fm for content discovery, something that really, really sucked while using Joost, YouTube, et.al.

Using Boxee makes two things obvious to me: 

First, it's all about the content. And Boxee provides the content for you, through your collections, the internet or your friends recommendation. No more dull moments.

Secondly, community is so powerful. The Boxee dashboard is a fluid view of what your friends have watched and recommends, and a great way to finding interesting content. Add some intelligent matching to this and no more being slave under the TV guide. 

Boxee is alpha, but already useful. I'm missing some features like seamless integration with iTunes and iPhoto. However my general feeling about it is that Boxee might very well be the one killer application for the living room computer. It's very powerful and has so much potential. I'm just in love, and hoping that it keeps developing as quickly as to date.

Visit the Boxee website at: www.boxee.tv. Leave a comment if you want an invite.

Defend Net Neutrality and score 26 april 2008

I really didn't know what to think when I saw this. Net activist Tanya Devereaux is offering to de-viriginize anyone who has shown an effort to support Net Neutrality. It's both pretty cool and pretty fucked up. :-)

As much as I think this is a total hoax, I really think it's a great way to bring attention to the issue. Much too few people actually know anything about Net Neutrality and we all know that nothing sells as quickly as sex! Go Tanya!
(full disclosure: Yes I did apply, and I'm neither a virgin nor interested, but I just had to find out more about this).

So, what's the fuzz about? Net neutrality? Huh?

Net Neutrality is a lot like freedom of speech for bits and bytes. So far the Internet is open and free for everyone. My sending of an email to my cousin in San Fransisco has equal rights of delivery as His Majesty The Kings email to the Prime Minister, or a local prostitute.... Whichever.

Now, some powerful guys is thinking that maybe, since they pay for some of the Internet's equipment, they should have more rights of usage than others. That would mean that your bytes are no longer equal to the Prime Ministers or his Majesty's bytes. Unless, of course you can pay for yourself. Thus - no more freedom of speech for bits and bytes.

It doesn't really take a genius for anyone to understand that the freedom of the Internet is very important. It's what made it good. And of course it's worth protecting! (Tanya and crew expaining the issue).

So now do this: write your local European Member of Parliament, and tell them that you think Net Neutrality is very important! Here is how you find who to email.

PS.
Tanya is also offering 40 000 blow jobs. If one blow job takes 5 minutes (she might be very good, and boy is she going to get the practice) and Tanya can work 10 hours a day for 5 days a week she'll be working for a year and a half without vacation. That's a lot of charity. :-)

The problem with Craigslist 16 april 2008

Craig Newmark quietly announced on his blog the other day that Craigslist.org now covers 570 cities all over the world. \o/ Yey for Craig and his list!

But here is the thing: You can keep adding the rest of the world and it will not mean crap unless you actually get traction in those markets. Putting it up there does not count unless you actually launch and people come.

And craigslist as a user experience is totally and utterly crap. That's not news, but it is true. No integration a la web2.0. No design. Just simple bulletin board style listings. The content is what makes craigslist good. And that content is in the US. Not in Sweden, or much of the other 300+ cities.

So here comes my prediction: Craigslist will die and burn when someone builds a simple imitation and makes it beautiful and useful. Just my 2 cents.

What do you think?

Twitter 27 mars 2008

Jag har skrivit om Twitter.com tidigare, och att ni alla borde börja använda det.

Här är en mycket bra beskrivning om vad Twitter är och varför ni borde twittra med era nära och kära:



Ni hittar min twittersida här.

Piratproblematik i Storbritannien 12 februari 2008

Nu kommer även Storbritannien med i det snåriga problemet kring fildelning och Internet. TechCrunch.co.uk har en bra kommentar.

Problemen med med lagstiftning som kräver övervakning av användare är i princip oändliga.

Först måste alla användares samtliga nedladdningar övervakas, oavsett om det handlar om web, mail, ftp, MSN, osv. Om du inte övervakar samtliga kommer det snart komma smarta tjänster som tillåter piraterna att utnyttja de som inte övervakas.

Varje fall kan inte kan tas upp individuellt behövs ett sätt som dessutom vet om huruvida det är en illegal eller legal kopia som jag hämtar. Jag kan ju faktiskt ha rätt att hämta den.

Slutligen kommer användare förhoppningsvis gå över till kryperade överföringar, vilket förhindrar övervakning. Då blir enda möjligheten att blockera domäner, men vilken vilka nya gränsdragningsproblem stöter vi på där? Troligen åtskilliga till.

Nej, det kommer inte att gå bra. Antingen får vi en tandlös lag, eller så får vi en lag som kommer drabba fler oskyldiga än skyldiga.

Varför förneka inkomsterna?

Det verkar ju solklart att TPB i alla fall tjänat något på sin verksamhet. Och om man inte tycker att länkning är olagligt så är det heller inget fel i att tjäna pengar på det.

Så varför förneka så intensivt att det gjorts pengar? Till och med att man går med vinst? Jag förstår inte. Vore det mig skulle jag vara stolt över det.

Är det så enkelt att TPB-killarna är giriga och inte vill pröjsa till skattmasen? Kanske. Jag hoppas de gör bättring i så fall. Det är väl bara att stå sitt kast. Är pengarna i bolaget är det inte ens säkert att de skall beskattas än.

Dum får lida 08 februari 2008

(läs inlägg igår).

Inte helt oväntat fick SF.se svar på tal.

Det lustiga är att SF inte ger sig. Om man begår ett misstag i media, då är det nog vettigt att göra en snygg pudel illa kvickt.

Om sin kompetens kring Internet säger SF:

– Det kanske vi inte gör, men vi förstår vår affärsidé. Ibland måste man ta obekväma beslut, precis som vi gör när vi beslutar att stänga biografer. De kan upplevas som korkade, men man måste se helheten.

Underhållande inställning. Minst sagt. Välkommen till framtiden SF. Dags att vänja sig.

Uttrycket IT-handikappad dyker upp i mitt huvud.

Gränsdragningsproblematik för Danmark 07 februari 2008

En kort replik till en tidigare postning:

The Pirate Bay kräver att EU-kommissionen granskar det danska domslutet.

Det är värt att ifrågasätt ifall det skall åligga en Internetoperatör att blockera användares åtkomst till vissa sajter. Så görs faktiskt även i Sverige, fast då som ett barnporrfilter.

Censur skall aldrig tillåtas bedrivas av företag eller organisationer. Det kommer oundvikligen krävas av dem att de spekulerar kring gränsdragning. Sannolikt, för att undvika åtal m.m., kommer de då att hällre fälla än fria - vilket knappast bådar för god rättspraxis.

Vad tycker du? Berätta!