Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 7th June 2009
10 COMMENTS 
Martin Bryant, Co-founder, Social Media Café Manchester
Things could be about to get very interesting at the European Parliament. The Swedish news site The Local is reporting that the country’s Pirate Party is on course to win two seats in the European Parliament when results from this week’s elections start to come through this evening.
The party, that has copyright law reform at the top of its agenda, has seen a huge increase in support since The Pirate Bay’s guilty verdict in April. While success for the party wouldn’t mean file sharing would be suddenly legalised, it would mean that pirates would have a legitimate political voice in the European Parliament for the first time.
The Party’s growth shows just how unhappy many people are with the bullying practices of the entertainment industry. Whether or not you agree with increased rights for pirates, the Pirate Party has done something that most politicians fail to do; make young people take notice of politics by dealing with issues they’re interested in.
Meanwhile in the UK, a just as unusual party is eyeing success in tonight’s poll results. Jury Team is a party with no policies of its own. It’s made up of independent candidates who were selected via an online poll. Candidates are encouraged to campaign via Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and a personal blog.
How successful can a bunch of pirates and party with no policies be? We’ll find out tonight.
UPDATE: As it turned out, The Pirate Party won just one seat. Still, who would have thought that would happen when they formed three years ago?
Written on 20th January 2009
2 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
With a wonderful photo, elegant design and a neat little timer across the top right, IsObamaPresident.com changes to YES.
Written on 20th January 2009
4 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
It’s fair to say there have never been so many opportunities to watch the inauguration of an American President than there is today. It may also be fair to say, there has never been so much enthusiasm and interest in an inauguration as there has been for Barack Obama.
What we’d like to know is how you experienced the inauguration? I for one watched the event live on the BBC.co.uk website and in typical BBC fashion, the entire ceremony – from buildup to climax – went flawlessly.
Question: As possibly the largest new-media event of all time. Did you decide to watch it online and follow thoughts on Twitter of Friendfeed? Or did you stick to the trusted old media outlets of CNN, BBC, Sky and others…?
Update: Here are some peoples responses to the post on Friendfeed:
Written on 20th January 2009
30 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Only a few hours to go till Obama can strike away the “elect” bit of his title. An important reason for why he came this far, is his excellent use of Web 2.0 technologies during his campaign.
On Twitter he has 144,000 followers, not to mention the thousands and thousands of admirers on Facebook and other social networks.
To my co-editor Boris’ disappointment (and probably many other’s), Obama stopped tweeting after his historical election. Ever since he won the elections on the 5th of November he stopped updating. So Boris started a Twitter campaign, which was quite a success. Have you seen this message as well?
But now, at the eve of his presidency, Obama is back on Twitter. He asked you and me to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr by volunteering in our area. Let’s hope this Twitter strategy will be part of his presidency’s resolutions – if he gets to keep his Blackberry.
Anyhow, let’s encourage him by welcoming Obama back on Twitter. Send him the following message RIGHT NOW:
Clicking that link will produce this tweet:
@BarackObama, ask not what Twitter can do for you, but what you can do for Twitter! http://tinyurl.com/9yh3su
Update: Follow our little campagain live on Twitter Search.
Written on 21st November 2008
1 COMMENT
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
The Pentagon, headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, has suffered from an unprecedented cyber attack in the form of a virus spreading throughout the United States military network.
The Pentagon told Fox News “We have detected a global virus for which there has been alerts, and we have seen some of this on our networks. We are now taking steps to mitigate the virus.”
The official would not reveal the source of the attack however, so concerned are they that the Pentagon have taken the step of barring all commercial malware, removable media (thumb drives, CDRs/DVDRs, floppy disks) on all DoD networks and computers effective immediately.
Written on 3rd November 2008
4 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
After the huge copy-cat success of Nasza-klasa – a FriendsUnited rip-off -, a new (and original) project is aiming for Polish Internet fame. Nasz-parlament.pl (Our Parliament) invites its users to become members of an e-parliament, voting on current affairs and new bills.
In a way, Nasz-parlament exposes the Polish wisdom of the crowd. Maybe the “real citizens” active in the community strongly disapprove of Polish latest bills. As Sylwia Presley from Global Voices Online highlights, some members of the e-parliament strongly disapprove on say, a law about torture and terrorism:
I think it’s time to deprive humanity of the basic freedoms using a dishonest excuse of terrorism. We’ve never had any terrorist attacks in Poland. God save us from the lies ruling the West, where people are losing their rights and freedom after every said-to-be terrorist attack. (Bozena)
Last month, 636 members started 128 threads and posted 722 reactions.
Initiatives like Nasz-parlament stir up discussions about the people versus the expert. Tessa Sterkenburg addressed this discussion on The Next Web earlier, asking whether the majority is always right, or that experts know better. One of the examples she gives concerns the death penalty in the UK.
In 1995, a poll on capital punishment in the UK showed us that 76% of British respondents supported the death penalty the UK. Yet, I am very glad that the British government then decided not to re-instate capital punishment.
In this light it’s fair to ask: what do the Polish citizens know about these complicated political issues? They’ve chosen experts as representatives, now leave it up to them.
For now, I think I’ll ignore this discussion and look at it this way: Nasz-parlament.pl exposes the Polish wisdom of the crowd, which is bloody interesting. Every citizen can now compare the parliament’s decisions with the opinions of his fellow citizens. I wish I had that possibility in Holland.
Written on 17th September 2008
4 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Last month I already wrote a short post about Wiretapping Sweden, a documentary by Tomas Nihlén and Linda Pierre that concerns the ridiculous spy bill from the Swedish government.
The Sweden’s parliament approved these controversial new laws allowing authorities to spy on all Internet traffic and telephone connections, starting in January 2009. The wiretapping won’t be limited to physical borders, meaning the Swedes won’t just listen to the conversations of its citizens, but also to those from people all over the world.
This Swedish law is just plain backward, for Orwellian reasons. Not surprisingly, the Swedish blogosphere was furious and many bloggers heavily criticized their government. Yet the storm remained in Sweden and didn’t catch on in the rest of the world. Nihlén and Pierre want that to change and decided to make an English documentary to raise international awareness.
The Swedish blogger interviewed several experts and activists for the movie and cut it all into a witty piece of film making. It will premiere later tonight, but Nihlén was so kind to give us, The Next Web crowd, a preview. So click on the image below, give your password ‘thenextweb’, watch the video, read the blog, and join the Facebook group. Because this law is not limited to Sweden and might cross borders after a while. It concerns us all, so hey, let’s get this thing viral!
Written on 10th September 2008
1 COMMENT
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Just a reminder on the Wednesday morning that what we, millions of bloggers, do, isn’t that normal in the rest of the world. For many people, blogging whatever you want is an illusion. Like Mohamed Erraji, 29, who wrote in online newspaper Hespress that Morocco had been destroyed by a culture of handing out gifts and privileges by the government. According to him, begging has become a rewarding activity in the north African kingdom.
“It has made the Moroccans a people without dignity, who live by donations and gifts,” Erraji wrote.
The government took this as showing disrespect to the king, which is, according to Morocco’s press code, an offense. So Erraji was jailed on Friday and dragged to court on Monday, where he was sentenced to two years in prison and a hefty fine. He had no defense lawyer and the judgment only took ten minutes.
According to Reuters, Reporters Without Borders said the sentence was “worthy of the most totalitarian states” and demanded Erraji’s liberation. The government officials could not be reached for comment.
So while you and I start another day of blogging freely, somebody lives a captured life because of his writings. Just think about that every once in a while and consider to do a write-up on this as well.
Written on 10th August 2008
3 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
TorrentFreak reports that the PirateBay has been blocked by all major Italian ISP’s who forced to do so due to a court order. The deputy public prosecutor who asked for the PirateBay block is on a mission, as this is his second success in two weeks. He managed to shut down the largest Italian torrent site, Columbo-BT, on July 29th.
The pirates fight back though, they want all Italians to have access to their torrent service. Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunder told TorrentFreak that they “are working on setting up a really annoying system for them to filter. “Some of the ISPs decided to nullroute – so we changed IP so it works for them now some other decided to block the domain name so we added labaia.org, which means “the bay” in Italian.”
In a blog post, Sunder calls Italy a “fascist state” predicts that they’ll win the fight: “We have had fights previously in Italy, recently with our successful art installation where we had to storm Fortezza in order to get our art done. And as usual, we won. We will also win this time.”
Written on 5th August 2008
4 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Eight members of the European Parliament are pretty fed up with Internet censors like the Chinese government and some obscure dictators. In a proposal for a new European guideline – EU Global Online Freedom Act, representatives from Sweden, Holland, the UK, Portugal, Denmark, Finland, Austria, and Germany ask for a black list of countries that can’t stop themselves from censoring web content.
They believe every citizen has the right to publish information and opinions. Whenever their government violates this human right, the EU should punish these countries with export sanctions. Moreover, European tech companies won’t be allowed to supply software and hardware to support censorship practices.
The eight politicians also believe in a pro-active approach. Therefor, they asked for a yearly budget of €20 million to develop software that visualizes and promotes digital human rights.
I’m glad these European representatives make an effort to battle Internet censors. Especially since China, world’s next super power, keeps pumping money in their censorship efforts. China is even paying commenters to say the ‘right’ thing. Many diplomats expect China to start exporting their advanced firewall.
On the other hand, will the EU be brave enough to punish China for censoring online content? In the end, I’m afraid, the economic benefits will rule out the ethical ones. No country can’t afford to ignore, let alone punish, China.
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