Charbax.com

So I’ve been posting my ideas on here and on Martin Varsavsky’s blog regularly, I’m still not sure if my ideas and suggestions have generated any significant debate or if any were regarded as good by anyone looking at FON or working from within. Here are some of my previous threads:

FON should release auto-meshing Foneras: http://boards.fon.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4346

Cheapest NAS ever (special Fonera 2.0 hard drive enclosure): http://boards.fon.com/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4842

When is Fonera 2.0 coming? Mon Jan 29, 2007 http://boards.fon.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2627

Fon Liberator IDE/SATA.. Wi-Max Fon routers? Wed Sep 27, 2006 http://boards.fon.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2080

So now that I read that FON is AGAIN doing something awesome in the Fonera 2.0n product, at only 79 euros coming in a couple of months. I feel the urge to post here again my latest ideas for making FON a much more tangible revolutionary product and community:

1. FON should be free WiFi. Allow Foneros to opt-in to enable free ad-supported WiFi access on their FON spots. That voluntary opt-in free WiFi access can also be throttled to only be limited at a certain bandwidth, the bandwidth can be in the category of third priority (behind Fonero owners own activity and behind Paying or Roaming Fon Aliens and Linuses).

2. FON needs to implement worldwide WiFi Roaming much more efficiently. I want to login on ALL worldwide hotspot networks using my FON username and password, and thus PAY using my current and latest FON WiFi income (taking from whatever I would have earned on my home WiFi). FON absolutely needs to implement WiFi Roaming in much more clever ways. For example, how much bandwidth do you provide at your Fonspot, gives you more or less access to roam on FON and OTHER WiFi hotspots worldwide. If I provide lots of bandwidth to Boingo, Neuf, Free, BT or other such customers, I want to be allowed to roam for free or cheaper on their networks as well.

3. FON mesh networking, absolutely, this is needed. Sorry, but FON cannot wait for ISPs to start thinking this is a good idea. FON should sell cheap Fonera 1.0 meshing routers for people to buy and be allowed to install just only in an electric outlet, which expands instantly the original FONspots reach and gives that new Fonero a cheaper, free or better access to that original FONspot. Basically, for customers accessing FONspots, let them click “Buy FON mesh router now 19 euros, install it at your window to expand the reach of this FONspot and you will get _these_ advantages” (advantages which can include perhaps free, or cheaper FON access, or better bandwidth less ads if already free, all based on the performance of that mesh access point).

4. Fonera 2.0n is green colored. Now is the time to make sure it can absolutely provide following perfect features based on its announced much more powerful embedded processor:

4.1 Unlimited amount of BitTorrent and Emule downloads/seeds should be supported. Turning it immediately into a reliable pc/laptop replacement for all p2p usage.

4.2 Gigabit/s local lan speeds, it should start to be fast enough for managing Terrabytes of local personal file backups and synchronizing terrabytes of personal files with cloud backup storage as well.

4.3 Support for unlimited amount of local USB hard drive total-switch-off-over-usb (see Cheapest NAS ever), this will provide NAS local and Internet-wide storage using 1000x less power since USB hard drives should absolutely only be turned on using usb-auto-power-switching only when they are absolutely needed.

4.4 Google Chrome OS, Chrome Browser, Firefox should start getting plugins, extensions, gadgets, that handle user interaction with their Fonera 2.0 box. Any click on .torrent files within the browser (any of desktop/laptop/mobile phone browser) should automatically launch by default the torrent download on the Fonera 2.0n box. Any other downloads should right-click and download onto the Fonera 2.0n box from any http or from other types of download systems. Clicking on BitTorrent or podcast RSS feeds should add the subscription to the Fonera 2.0n box. Completed downloads should be sent from Fonera 2.0n through IM or other type of ping to the user and instant link to stream the original file (considering there should be enough upload bandwidth from the Fonera 2.0n to support it).

4.5 Fonera 2.0n should automatically become the router box to have together with the best VOD set top box systems. HD VOD BitTorrent RSS feeds should auto download to Fonera 2.0n USB hard drive, and play locally to the HDTV through local network and available $100 HD VOD set top boxes.

FON should quickly be synonymous with biggest free wifi community (for all not just Foneros), at for example max 512kbit/128kbit speeds for free with ads (show relevant location based Google ads somehow) and simply let people pay for more bandwidth.

I recently got a nabour who simply decided not to have any password on his regular WiFi access point, since then I nearly don’t get any customers anymore for my FONspot. Why would they pay or use my access point when they can get free Internet on a nabours unprotected open wifi spot.

FON = Free WiFi (when Foneros opt-in). Or activate that Free thing based on current performance of each FONspot. Simply put, if a current FONspot is very popular, earning a lot of money, do not touch it. While other less popular FONspots, you could if you want, just automatically activate FREE access now without even asking the owner for permission. Then only make it an opt-out thing for them.

6. Important opportunity for FON, advertising for high Bandwidth. FON could quickly have all the Fiber Internet providers using FON to advertise and sell their high bandwidths. Simply put something like this on Fiber-2-FONspots:

512kbit/128kbit FREE showing relevant localized Google ads regularly

1mbit/512kbit 1 euro per 1 hour
1mbit/512kbit 3 euro per day-pass
1mbit/512kbit 10 euro per week-pass

Let bandwidth be symmetrical 1mbit/1mbit when on Fiber connections.

10mbit/1mbit 1.50 euro per 1 hour
10mbit/1mbit 5 euro per day-pass
10mbit/1mbit 15 euro per week-pass

If on ADSL or Cable when upload connection can max out at 1 or 2mbit/s, then warn the user that the upload is only best effort and comes in second priority after the FONspot owners own activity, graph of current available bandwidth over the past few hours can be shown.

Let bandwidth be symmetrical 10mbit/10mbit when on Fiber connections.

100mbit/100mbit 2 euro per 1 hour
100mbit/100mbit 8 euro per day-pass
100mbit/100mbit 20 euro per week-pass

Again, bandwidth is shared among connected users, with priority given the FONspot owner.

Let Foneros modulate bandwidths that people can get based on how much bandwidth they actually have and eventually also set GB/user/time usage limits, and always making it possible for the Fonera to set it so he will ALWAYS get absolute priority on the bandwidth used when he uses it himself on his own private WiFi signal or otherwise locally.

I posted these suggestions on the FON discussion boards: http://boards.fon.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5781

Without the permission from Rick Falkvinge, founder of the Swedish Pirate Party, I hope he wouldn’t mind, I am here posting the email conversation that I had with him back in September 2007 over email:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Rick Falkvinge (Piratpartiet)
Date: Sun, Sep 16, 2007 at 4:14 PM
Subject: Re:(Case 7134) Concerts are not enough income for artists
To: Charbax

Hi,

sorry for the delay in responding.

Yes, I know about flatrate propositions. I think they are terrible.

The reason is that copyrights rest on three things being static:
1) what is PUBLIC (commercial) vs. PRIVATE (noncommercial) distribution;
2) what is AN CREATOR vs. what is A LISTENER; and
3) what is A MANIFESTATION vs. what is AN IDEA.

The first assumption has been evaporated, so some are trying to lick the wounds of the broken system by proposing that the culture-producing elite be compensated by what amounts to a tax.

The problems with this are many. First, nobody has managed to explained the obvious - WHO shall be compensated FOR WHAT, and WHY. No losses have been proven to artists, only to distributors which aren’t needed anymore.

Second, if you assume that there is damage, how the collected tax shall be distributed. I strongly disagree that there is any fair way of measuring this: when blank media (cassette) levies were introduced in the 70s, the measuring came from what was being played on radio. This does not work any more. Any measuring system that involves money WILL be gamed, and any institutionalized measuring system will quickly be technically obsoleted by new p2p technologies.

Third, even if there is loss to the existing system, and there is a fair way of distributing money, why would it be in society’s interest to do so? Everybody wants more money for less work; artists are by no means alone in this aspiration, but it’s usually against society’s interest to grant that wish. This proposal would amount to taxing and hindering a new and more efficient technology in order to subsidize and institutionalize a much less efficient one. It makes absolutely no sense from a macroeconomic point of view.

Fourth and most importantly, the proposal assumes the model of small culture-producing elite that distributes culture top-down to the masses. This is no longer true; in the words of Larry Lessig, we have gone from a “read-only culture” to a “read-write culture” where everybody partakes, shares, remixes, shares again, and where somebody’s work becomes the next person’s idea. This total shift collapses the next two fundaments of copyright. There is no division of creator vs. fan anymore; everybody is a creator. There is no division of manifestation vs. idea anymore; a manifestation becomes an idea as soon it is released.

None of the three assumptions that make copyright possible are true anymore.

Cheers,
Rick Falkvinge (Piratpartiet)

—–Original Message—–
From: Charbax
Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2007 04:52:47 +0200
To: Rick Falkvinge
Subject: Concerts are not enough income for artists

>I just saw your cool video presentation at Google.
>
>Have you seen the french Global Licence proposition. It’d be a 10€ tax that
>would fund all artists based on popularity and quality of their creations
>and performances. (15 million french Internet users x 10€ per month =
>1.8billion euros per year for artists if this tax was limited to only
>people
>using the Internet, or if it’s a global free culture tax on all citizen then
>it would be 60 million french people x average of 10€ from taxes per month
>would be = 7.2 billion euros per year, much more money than what artists are
>paid today in France)
>
>I think a lot of artists want to earn money for their creations and the
>industry of arranging concerts is so archaic, maybe even more archaic than
>the copyright industry (I’m not saying meeting people in real life is not
>cool, the way it’s currently managed is a mess, we’d need last.fm google
>maps blogs forums to make it better). As for selling band t-shirts is also
>kind of archaic since people want to download the PDF and print the T-shirts
>themselves.
>
>Monitoring popularity and quality of all music, movies, pictures, software
>even text I think is possible by simply using the computers and the Internet
>for what they are for, counting usage, monitoring use, rating and more Web
>2.0 usage without ever having to remove people rights to privacy as the
>usage monitoring can simply happen on a voluntary percentage of all users
>which provide good enough popularity and qualitative statistics.
>
>–
>Charbax,
>Nicolas Charbonnier
>

To which I replied:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Charbax
Date: Sun, Sep 16, 2007 at 7:30 PM
Subject: Re: (Case 7134) Concerts are not enough income for artists
To: “Rick Falkvinge (Piratpartiet)”

Thanks a lot for your reply!

> No losses have been proven to artists, only to distributors which aren’t needed anymore.

Well I think the loss to artists has been the culture and copyright industry until today. It has never worked for artists. I want a system that works much better for artists, and I don’t think telling them they can earn money from concerts and selling T-shirts is going to improve the artists situation.

> how the collected tax shall be distributed. I strongly disagree that there is any fair way of measuring this (…) Any measuring system that involves money WILL be gamed

I believe the Internet and computers provide the perfect tool for measuring this. We just need a good software and a neutral government doing the measurments. It’s like saying neutral website statistics aren’t possible, well I do think it would be possible, just install toolbars such as the Google Toolbar, but instead have it be something like the Last.fm audioscrobbler (which people will install voluntarilly) and have a neutral entity such as the government or the European Union check every users identity and control each users statistics against automation and unusual behaviour, so I think people who will try to game the system can easilly be detected like this.

And also add to that something like Razorback to measure activity on p2p networks, have the state host the Trackers and have every user connecting to the Tracker be identifiable through this same voluntary Last.fm/google Toolbar kind of approach. Where users are checked for their identity only in the purpose of measuring popularity of files and never to be used for any other purpose (such as invading peoples privacy, or using the collected data in a court against the user)

> This proposal would amount to taxing and hindering a new and more efficient technology in order to subsidize and institutionalize a much less efficient one.

I am not exactly following you on that point. Is there anything new and more efficient then p2p filesharing and legalized HTTP  streaming and downloads?

Today people are taxed so the government can maintain museums and pay artists in art schools and artists that do exhibitions, public performances, movies, music, everything already somewhat is partially paid for through taxes. I just suggest there should be more weight on the tax-supported art then to leave it at being a commercial activity paid for by centralised investors that take away the rights and the freedom from the artists so that they can make more money.

> There is no division of creator vs. fan anymore; everybody is a creator. There is no division of manifestation vs. idea anymore; a manifestation becomes an idea as soon it is released.

So are you saying there is no need to pay the talented artists so that they can make a living spending their whole time making this art?

I am suggesting many more artists should be able to make a living then today where only a few top artists can make a living and where most of the cultural industries revenue is never even touched by artists.

I’m just suggesting a reorganisation of that revenue and a large expansion of that cultural revenue. I think the artists deserve a much larger revenue than they have today. So to me 5€ per month average per citizen is just a start amount to show how huge this tax would actually mean, 5€ per citizen would expand the global artists revenue by many times compared to what it is today, but that amount could easilly grow when people will realise how much good it brings to be able to support so many new artists, many more then have ever been able to make a living out of their work, ideas and performances.

Also, I think it is certainly possible now much more then ever to find out which person was the initial creator, the artist that initially got an original idea. With digital and analog fingerprinting technology, much more then ever, now we can have a fair means of letting everyone be creative and share their ideas not being afraid of their ideas being robbed and having the knowledge that they could get paid if their idea turns out to be original, useful to the society and appreciated by many people.

Just as with the patent system, the copyright system needs to be brought into the 21st century, and we need to use the computers and the internet to administrate intellectual propriety much better and allow for a free flowing sharing of ideas without forgetting who is the originator of ideas and who have the most talents, thus enabling and integrating many more creators then ever.

I still have the very same opinion on this flatrate culture tax proposition, the same opinion I have had probably back since 2005 or before that. We need an EU wide flatrate for all culture on the Internet. That tax should be levied at the ISP level or even better, it should simply be implemented on all EU citizen (based on each EU citizen’s income levels).

I certainly hope that Rick Falkvinge in Sweden has changed his opinion on this proposition since he replied my email in September 2007 with such dissapointing quote “I know about flatrate propositions. I think they are terrible.”

He then goes on to argue that there are no more artists, that there shouldn’t be a “culture-producing elite be compensated by what amounts to a tax.”

I think he is wrong on thinking that this tax would only have to go to any kind of elite. The whole point of the flatrate culture tax would be to monetize all cultural outputs on the Internet by all Internet users in a totally transparent and equal way!

An example of this might be, if you write a blog post and 500 people read it, you might earn somewhere between 50 cents and 50€ in culture tax based on how much readers liked your text and how much a share it constitutes of those readers usage of culture on the Internet. If you upload a video from your mobile phone to Youtube and 50 thousand people watch it, the culture tax might pay you somewhere around 500€ on top of whatever income you might get from Youtube displaying advertising. Again all based on how much culture is consumed overall by all users, based on how much people like your video (registered by user ratings), based on how original your video is (measured through usage statistics), based on how long time people spend on your video, based on how many people remixed your video and more stuff like that.

Without the implementation of a culture tax on a European level or on a Country level, I don’t think that any of the Pirate Party’s political agenda points will be considered by any other large amount of parlamentarians.

What will be a killer feature is when they filter filtered searches using an algorithm on the amount of likes users get for their items. This will filter out the good stuff from all the noise automatically.

For example:

- If I add some intelligent, precise, relevant items on my feeds that other users like on friendfeed, then my friendfeed activity should be rated more relevant than the random tweet that is going through all the feeds.

- Friendfeed should implement liking of comments on items, so a user can gain “points” by posting intelligent, relevant, precise comments in all sorts of real-time conversations on friendfeed.

- Real-time conversations on friendfeed should be filterable by relevancy of the comments. The interface should make it possible for thousands of users to be in the same chat room, yet still every user by default only sees the most relevant chat comment items, while the rest of the noize stays in layers further down which are hidden by default but can be shown as well.

- This will make it possible to type any topic of your interest on the friendfeed global search, then view a real-time stream of items and comments being posted about that topic. And even with thousands of users interested about the same topics and items, frienfeed should filter not only by friends, but also using those algorithms on general likes but also on likes by friends, friends of friends, friends of friends of friends, and stuff like that, including also based on likes of liked users, likes of liked liked users. And so on. To determine in fact a personal relevancy on the stream of news to each user and not only a general relevancy.

I posted this at http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/13/friendfeed-enables-peoplegroup-tracking/#comment-2747669

Google can just buy friendfeed back in a few months, once it’s working really well. And provide all sorts hosted micro-blogging of solutions based on the open-source Jaiku code.

Friendfeed is already much more powerful than twitter on many aspects.

It’s kind of the same way using Open Social and FriendConnect that Google is going to take over facebook. Even though all users are not going to migrate overnight, they can easily migrate in a few months. The more and more people will register accounts and import all their feeds in the Google products, the faster the migration of all the users will happen.

Though they need to improve friendfeed quite a bit for it to really make absolute sense. Though the ex-Google people who previously created Gmail, Adsense, are now working on friendfeed, if they make it right, friendfeed could replace IRC, IM and twitter. I would like it if it will be possible to filter the friendfeed chat room by users, to filter up highly rated users by the amount of likes that their entries get, and filter up quality entries in real-time. Especially it will be good to thus automatically moderate real-time discussions on topics when a lot of people are chatting about them at the same time.

- Obama should call Google up and they arrange for a basic subscription fee that gives access to all digitized books, in and out of copyright. With opt-out option for all rights holders. That basic subscription fee may be around $5 per month. Access to all the books would be without DRM, the rights holders can if they insist opt to use DRM, but by default all books should be without.

- Later Obama and Google should figure out to pay writers though taxes. If everyone pays an average of $5 per month, we would have enough mone not only to pay all writers, bloggers, journalists, there would be enough money right there for paing for all music, movies and TV productions. This would set a whole new opening of the art creation process, removing all the commercial aspects of it. Giving control back to the artist.

- Artists should get paid by popularity and quality of their works. Measures quite simply using server statistics, file playback logs (voluntary last.fm scrobbler like plugins installed everywhere) and using a ratings system (Love/Block, just like Last.fm).

What needs to happen as soon as possible. Google needs to release a kind of Android platform for E-Ink devices. We need a $100 pocketable E-Ink ebook reader hardware available worldwide as soon as possible. With built-in HSDPA, WiFi, 700mhz free wireless broadband. With wacom or other touchscreen technology for easy navigation and for note taking. Including collaborative note taking and commenting for all texts.

The way Google works is quite simple:

1. The know what people click on, they know people clicking are real people and not machines, they know how long time people spend on each site. Basically Google monitors how interesting everything is on the Internet, it’s not like some Google robot is magically doing all the work.

2. Links only matter partially to determine the importance and relevancy of a page. What matters more is if people clicking on those links think they are getting relevant information when they get to the page.

The way Google monitors that is quite simple:

- Google Toolbar.

- Users are logged into their Google Account all the time so when interacting with Google services, they know. When clicking on search results, they know. If you then click on other search results or go back to Google services, they know you are probably not browsing that page anymore.

- Google cookies. 

- Google Chrome statistics.

Do I think it’s bad Google knows all these things about everyone on the Internet? I think it’s awesome, this is absolutely fantastic and I think it is great.

Why? I think someone has to do it. And if Governments around the world such as Obama or the EU are too lazy to do this work, then I trust Google is the best company to take care of this very important responsabillity. I trust Google isn’t going to do evil things with this, but mostly use it to bring more and more relevant search results.

Do I think Google Search is the end of innovation on the Internet? Nope. I think something like Google Searchwiki will take over: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/10/google-searchwiki.html

You see, I don’t care about HTML JPG designs, AJAX gimmicks, CSS styles, even worse Flash interfaces! I want my whole web in a totally standard interface that just consist of one typeface, one interface for the whole thing. I am getting sick and tired of all the design on the Internet, let’s make things simple. When I search Dvorak, I want his content, I don’t want to look at his stupid blog templates.

Yup, it’s kind of like the next level of RSS, but a new standard. And centralized. And no, it’s not going to be Wikipedia.

Here is what I think we should do:

1. Nationalize all banks progressively. Start with taking major equity, and move progressively towards all major banks being controlled by the state.

2. Introduce a new worldwide currency. This currency should be digital only, it should have a bunch of guidelines and should be managed in total transparancy. No financial speculation should be allowed. It should be the currency to serve humanity, to serve society. There should be very specific rules for people to be able to exchange their old currencies to this new worldwide currency. Eventually, all developped and emerging countries should all use that same currency.

3. Amend the worldwide human rights to include the right for food, the right for global healthcare and the right for global education. Those problems can be fixed and should be fixed very quickly using basic computerised models to effecively target all the food, healthcare and education to the places in the whole world that need it.

4. All countries should agree immediately to stop all pollution. Access to the new worldwide currency also requires full protection of the environment.

First episode of the new series on your Internet channel. These are going to be a whole bunch of videos of me talking about all kinds of relevant and newsworthy topics. First topic is Joe Biden, the new vice-presidential candidate for the Democrats. I try to give him some good advice if he wants to help Barack Obama win the election.

DivX HD 1280×720 3.5mbit/s: Play, Download (169mb)

Flash versions (high quality): Youtube

Flash versions: Blip, Viddler, Putfile

Intro music Blup by http://maf464.free.fr

- WiFi and HSDPA built-in to upload my HD videos directly to an FTP server without needing to use a laptop. API to interact with online services to then publish that video to video-blogs and Youtube.

- Live streaming using WiFi or HSDPA of the camera feed in a low resolution and bitrate all the while the camcorder is recording the HD quality to the Internal storage.

- Built-in 2.5″ hard drive (up to 500GB) as well as SDHC storage.

- Built-in bluetooth or VHF to use for cheap but high quality wireless microphones. Multiple microphones should work with one camera.

- USB keyboard support to enter filenames, description, tags for when publishing the HD videos directly from the camera to the Internet.

- Voice recognition service (could be online), can automatically transcribe title, description and tags from voice recordings made to be linked up with the main HD video file recording.

- On screen live chat from live video viewers in the same way as the Qik live chat works on the Nokia N95.

- Live video feed should be able to go to services such as Qik.com, Mogulus.com, Ustream.tv, Kyte.tv as well as live p2p streaming systems using live Bittorrent protocols, pplive or sopcast.