Charbax.com

Problem Google needs to fix is that people will use it to store DivX and Mp3 files, so Google needs to make sure corporations won’t sue Google for facilitating piracy. So it should have a focus on monetizing video and music.

Google won’t have to store more than 1 copy of each DivX and mp3 file, so storage should be free for unlimited amounts of “public” files.

Features such as sending files to friends need to filter out copyrighted stuff obviously. Unless the copyright holders agree with Google to monetize it.

Youtube stores the original uploaded video files, so one should instantly be able to re-access them on Gdrive as well as instantly publish uploaded videos to Youtube. Again Google can filter out copyrighted material automatically by doing digital and analog fingerprinting technology and by knowing and verifying users real identities.

Thanks to OLPC, we have soon 50 million netbooks in rich countries. Intel and Microsoft’s profit margins per laptop are shrinking rapidly.

Thanks to OLPC, children have soon millions of cheap lower power laptops in poor countries.

Thanks to OLPC, the PC/Laptop industry’s interpretation of Moore’s law has totally been reshaped, every 18month now PC/laptops will be half the price instead of 2x more powerful and with 2x more bloatware.

Sure, I would have been happier, and so would most other Linux geeks if OLPC had shipped 100 million laptops to poor children by now, and not just 1 million units. Reason for that not happening yet in multi-hundred million scales though are several:

1. Intel will do anything it can not to be killed off by a non-profit laptop technology revolution. Including abusing of monopolistic situations and corrupting politicians.

2. AMD is not much interested in helping OLPC succeed in lowering the cost of laptops and PCs. Lower cost also means less profits and margins for AMD, and AMD has enough problems with profits and margins as it is.

Looking forward, to reach those 100 million poor children sooner rather than later:

1. OLPC needs to find an alternative to AMD as soon as possible. VIA is planned for XO-1.5 which could hopefully ship a few millions of units in a few months time, if VIA supports this move of OLPC creating a cheaper and lower power market using their processor. XO-1.5 could reach the $150 pricepoint soon and enable dozens of commercial netbooks using the VIA processor and also copying on the way OLPC is using the VIA processor.

2. OLPC needs to implement the worlds best ARM processor based laptops for XO-2 working with Google to implement the so called Chrome OS on those. Cloud computing can work also for places without stable internet access, HTML5 supports offline web apps and offline databases. OLPC needs to push Google to make it work on WiFi Mesh networks as well. XO-2 can start at $100 when released and reach the $50 price point, when manufactured using any of half a dozen ARM processor companies chips. All of TI, Qualcomm, Marvell, Freescale, Nvidia and Samsung, all those ARM processors should fit in the XO-2 design. Competition will bring the prices down faster.

Also, to reach those 100 million children, OLPC needs to have more than just a couple dozen engineers working on the whole optimizations of hardware and software for the project.

What OLPC managed to build in XO1 and XO-1.5 with 30 employees and the little budget that they could get is absolutely amazing.

But what OLPC probably needs for XO-2 to absolutely work and sell laptops soon at $50 to revolutionize education worldwide, is thousands of engineers and the support from Barack Obama and the European Union.

So OLPC’s political agenda definitely needs to be more targeted towards the politics of education and aid of the USA and Europe and with much more ambition to make things happen in huge scale as quickly as possible.

What I am proposing is an extra layer of p2p distribution. Why can’t you for example volunteer to store a bunch of products in your garage which people can come and pick up 24 hours a day. For that you get paid, or you can limit the “opening hours” to any amount of time any time you want.

What then happens, if when people buy stuff online, they instantly can go and pick it up 24 hours a day at p2p storage facilities. For a 2AM pickup, it’d obviously cost extra for the nightly service.

Everything would be secure, you don’t get name adress information of people that can provide you the goods until you paid for it, and there is no information if that person has more or less than 1 item in stock. Not even the need to disturb that person ringing on his door bell, the Android application would ring as soon as the customer is approaching the door, thus to be a p2p storage and delivery person, you don’t need to stop everything else that you do at home to be part of that, just store a bunch of things close to your door.

No transaction of money is done ever, the money is spent online, the commission is paid online. What people would do is eventually be able to rate the p2p kiosk experience as well as the buyer. Like ebay ratings but much more relevant and real.

Now add to that a layer of actual transportation of goods. The higher quality goods need to be transported in the absolute most efficient way, to both save on costs and save on pollution. There would be large storage facilities for goods where trains, trucks, airplanes drop the goods, from there the goods are spread out to the thousands of “p2p kiosks” at totally regular people’s homes or any participating consumer storage facility.

P2p delivery can also happen by any person volunteering to pickup goods and deliver them at specific places, could be on your bicycle, in your car, using your little transport truck. Basically you just tell your in-car Android GPS device where you are going, and it will tell you if you can make a few bucks by picking something up and dropping it off on your way.

Same thing as p2p taxi where if you want to carry other people on your backseat, simply tell the Android system, and you are transformed into a p2p taxi. Which will greatly save on pollution as well, since most cars are only driven by 1 person. Putting more people on the backseats of cars is a very easy way to save 50% car pollution and improve traffic conditions greatly. And it would cost about the same as taking public transportation, thus much cheaper than real taxis.

Now Google could organize all this if you want. Or some other huge private corporation. I think though it makes much more sense that the state is regulating all this, in terms of making sure there is interoperability across the whole infrastructure, especially when you start involving normal citizen in the making of this new type of optimized p2p infrastructure. You want safety, quality, trust systems, compatibility. If you leave this new type of organisation of the infrastructure only up to private corporations, there may be collusion of interests, monopolies, illegal trade, all sorts of other things that corrupts the system.

I would link to the Masterful John C Dvorak for some very clever guessing: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-googles-new-os-more-than-just-a-bluff?siteid=

I do not believe John C Dvorak is 100% right in his funny column, though I do believe he is right when he says that this is all a super clever public relations trick put on by Google and that all of it is just the Google OS coming up. John C Dvorak is mostly right about most things that he says.

I believe it will be released open sourced in a couple of months, with the first ARM Cortex A8 and Tegra based laptops.

Android 2.0 and Chrome OS is the same thing. It doesn’t matter what Google says and what bloggers think. There is only one way Google is working towards:

- Making full Chrome browser work on ARM embedded laptops even better than on x86 based laptops.

Now, you might know me as the contiunous x86 basher, I kind of am. But what I believe Google wants is more competition in both hardware and software space for PCs and laptops. This is what Google OS is all about.

The reasons Google might caution Google OS on ARM fans to wait for are a few technological breakthroughs which Google might need before the worldwide availability of perfect $100 Google laptops can happen:

1. ARM Cortex A8 needs to be fast enough for a full browser. If it’s not, then Google needs to wait for broad availability of ARM Cortex A9 starting early next year.

2. Google and the whole ARM community needs to optimize browsers, flash, HTML5 features on DSP and GPU cores of laptops, especially ARM laptops, so that $100 laptops can run a FULL browser and cloud computing experience. Nvidia, Qualcomm, Freescale, Texas Instruments were promising hardware acceleration for the browser, Flash and HTML5 at Computex, but they didn’t really show it yet. I believe they can make it work as a 2003 X86 based browser (something like a 512MB RAM or less system), though that may not be enough for the full mass market to adopt the first version, thus Google might prefer to wait for full launch for it to work better than 2009 x86 browsers.

3. Google wants better connectivity. Google is strongly hoping to start implementing White Spaces worldwide as soon as possible, this will enable free unlimited wireless Internet for all (and destroy all ISPs and telcos in the process). Optimized Connected standby features for ARM devices might only really start working perfectly early next year. First generation ARM Google OS laptops might not have LED lights that turn on instantly on incoming emails, feeds, pings, IMs, VOIP calls and other such crucial presence and social networking web apps which Google needs on the Google laptops for it to really feel like revolutionary products compared to the established systems.

4. Political aspects of this might start being put into places early next year as well such as real competition on HSDPA connectivity, maximum prices of $20 per month pre-paid data-only plans for most of the world and no more contract-plans and other voice and SMS plans forced onto consumers by monopolistic telcos. Also political decision on net neutrality, white spaces, sustainable energy consumption of consumer electronics and servers and crucial for Google to succeed on this global cloud computing plan.

I see it as inevitable, that Google will create Google OS, a super tiny embedded Linux open source OS less than 50 Megabytes for the whole highly optimized OS, and that in a couple of months we will start seeing it ship on $150 ARM based laptops with all types of screen sizes (large screens and keyboards aren’t much more expensive than small ones, consider $50 upgrade for 15″ and full keyboard instead of 10″ and tiny netbook keyboard).

Those $150 Google laptops will be running ARM chips by half a dozen competing ARM processor manufacturers and manufactured by all the major laptop manufacturers in the world. Effectively putting out of business all of Microsoft, Intel and Apple. Together with most of Silicon Valley. That is for the better. For the first time billions more people will have access to this technology very quickly and we will all for the first time really find amazing new ways to use the technology.

As for technical details on Native versus Cloud apps. I believe natively you will have everything needed for a full computing experience. Basically it’s not just the browser, it’s not just flash support, it’s not just HTML5 including native code plugins for the browser and 3D in the browser, it’s like providing you the hypervisors, user interface APIs, clever caching and seamless interface optimizations, which will enable you to not only have a full 2009 x86 style computing experience, it will plug you into the full cloud, in fact giving you infinately more computing power for all the most processor intensive tasks that the biggest professionals would want to use. You can definitely encode videos using grid server encoding, I have been doing that for over 2 years for all my HD video encoding needs, just have a fast enough upload to upload your source files from your camcorders. Google Gears type database and web application caching not only lets you do things while offline, it can turn all web applications into feeling exactly like native applications, they respond instantly without having to wait for any online service to stream the user interfaces back at you. The user interfaces will be locally cached on the machine, only processed data is streamed from the cloud, and clever pre-loading algorithms mostly will not make you feel any difference than processing everything using a local X86 processor. In fact, things will feel much faster cause you will be able to have the power of an unlimited amount of cloud servers to render, process and encode any of your media intensive tasks.

Ryanair and Easyjet are full of Corporate World types, who just enjoy that they can save money on flight tickets. Sales of Business class tickets on any airline company are tanking. Saving money and getting smaller, better, cheaper laptops is absolutely a universal thing, not only for the mass market, also for corporate types.

You will get £100 Google OS Laptops, running 15-20 hours on a 3-cell battery, fully sunlight readable with the Pixel Qi screen, highly optimized with built-in HSDPA always-on connectivity, connected standby features (rings or blinks an alert light from full standby on incoming emails or calendar alerts), all Google OS laptops will be based on ARM Processors.

Basically Chrome OS = Android 2.0 optimized for Laptops. It will absolutely take over the world, as the absolute best OS for ARM Laptops, instantly putting Microsoft, Apple and Intel out of business.

I posted this as a comment on http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/15/google_chrome_os/comments/

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.

You can see my 50 videos from Computex at Taipei posted on the Internet between June 1-7th at http://techvideoblog.com/category/computex/

I also did some coverage from the Archos event in Paris on June 11th where they released some new products at http://archosfans.com/2009/06/

Many of my videos from the Computex show in Taipei and from the Archos event in Paris have been featured on the worlds biggest technology news blogs such as Engadget, Gizmodo, Slashdot, CrunchGear and many more.

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.