Rick is the founder of the first Pirate Party and is a political evangelist, traveling around Europe and the world to talk and write about ideas of a sensible information policy. Additionally, he has a tech entrepreneur background and loves good whisky and fast motorcycles.
In the years 1791 to about 1850, laws were passed that abolished trade guilds as the permission-givers to run a business. But as we speak of "permissionless innovation" today, and…
Germany's ruling coalition has decided to abolish the liability for users' copyright infringements and other behavior when operating an open wi-fi access point. This weird and anachronistic liability has seriously…
Recently, there was a hearing in the European Court of Justice about the overall legality of Data Retention. Little is known about what was said - but we know who…
A Wikipedia study of readership show that people largely abstain from reading certain articles about terror groups after the NSA mass surveillance revelations of 2013, in fear of being redflagged…
The civil liberties of our parents are not being passed down to our children. Somehow, liberties are being interpreted to only apply to analog technology, despite this limitation being nowhere…
Russia's FindFace service, which has been in the news for identifying random subway passengers and for people using it to de-anonymize porn talent, continues to show the effects of an…
Last week, there was a story of how a photographer on the Moscow subway had taken photos of random people and identified them using their social media profile's portraits. We…
Егор Цветков (Egor Tsvetkov), a photographer in Russia, has taken photos of random people on the subway and connected them to social media portraits and complete profiles using face matching…
It was a little-noticed story in the Entertainment and Oddities section: The GCHQ is using its spying network to help the copyright industry prevent "unauthorized distribution of creative works" -…
Let's imagine a hypothetical telecom regulator getting picked as a new head of ICANN, and the consequences it might have. ICANN is the organization regulating much of the Internet's crucial…