A company full of crazy people? A Group of nutters? If you think that Semco is something along these lines, you’re not entirely wrong. However, it is not by chance that unconventional ideas are created at this company. They are created and managed within an open management model, different from conventional models and this is exactly what we want. You can now find out more about the Semco Way.
The European Services Strategy Unit is committed to social justice through the provision of good quality public services by democratically accountable public bodies implementing best practice management, employment, equal opportunity and sustainable development policies. It is an independent, non-profit organisation, which continues the work of the Centre for Public Services, founded in 1973. It provides publications, a PPP-Database, a book about alternatives (“Dexter Whitfield: Global Auction of Public Assets: Public sector alternatives to the infrastructure market & Public Private Partnerships”), and more.
A leaked draft of the new Czech Copyright Act was obtained by Pirate News at the beginning of August 2010, after the Ministry of Culture has initially declined the request of Czech Pirate Party to have access to the document three days after the draft was sent out for feedback to organizations affected by the proposal. The draft presents a storm of “improvements” which grant millions of euro from public sector budgets to collecting societies. Read more
The people behind google-critical Google search front end “Scroogle Scraper” also run Wikipedia-Watch. Stressing their weird humor they point out weaknesses and lapses of the wikipedia principle – and thereby maybe of the more general principle of commons based peer produktion.
Power structure research is an approach to the study of power that highlights the unequal distribution of resources upon which power is based (e.g., wealth, political office, control of the mass media) and the importance of formal and informal social networks as the means by which power is concentrated and institutionalized. Read more
…by supposing to turn something into private property: Read the summary of the article “Resolving the Tragedy of the Commons by Creating Private Property Rights in Wildlife” to have another example for the the bullheadedness of the bourgeois mind:
During humanity’s relatively brief existence on this planet, it has relied on the bounty of its flora and fauna for his existence. For most of history, this exploitation had little impact on the earth’s resources. Only in recent centuries has man’s exploitation of wildlife begun to have a deleterious effect, even though there is increasing evidence that primitive societies had a profound impact on many species. Overexploitation of wildlife is not a peculiar characteristic of Western civilization, nor is it a consequence of commerce.
The Times newspaper’s website has lost two‑thirds of its audience following the implementation of a paywall, according to data published yesterday – a dramatic decline, but not as steep as many had forecast. Read more: Techdirt and Guardian
International experts claim ACTA („WTO Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights“) to threaten global access to affordable medicines. Read more
Provoking: Female care work seen as a “Common”:
“The roots of sexism and racism are the same: a situation where you need workers without rights. Enslavement is essential to this process of accumulation and these have not been one time events; these developments became structural to capitalist society. In the last twenty years you can see similar developments. A globalisation based on land expropriation, migration, an increase in the impoverishment of women, mass prostitution, baby markets etc. As a result of present globalising drives, there has been an explosion of violence against women. Over the last fifteen years there has been a return to witch hunting, in Ghana for instance. The redefinition of the social position of women turns the woman into a kind of compensation for the man’s loss of power. The woman is a new common, seen as the new nature, like water etc, something everyone can go and get.” Silvia Federici, 2006
The “Missouri School” of critical agrifood studies has provided an effective framework for documenting and understanding the structural dimensions of the global agrifood system and locating important nodes of power. This has directed attention toward the negative impacts of industrialization and corporate concentration on agricultural producers, local communities and economies, and the environment. Using these critical insights, pressure on the dominant agrifood system by civil society organizations has resulted in important changes to production and marketing strategies and related public policies. We broaden this discussion by using social movement and livelihoods theory to explore the position of limited resource and minority producers in the southern United States. This analysis helps us to identify spaces for local responses in community-based cooperatives and other organizations. Read more (pdf) or see Southern Rural Sociology 2009 TOC
Don’t carp, carpenters!
Don’t wait, waiters!
Let’s put the team in teamster!
Every steelworker a steal-from-worker!
Every hoodlum a Robin Hoodlum!
Raise the bar, baristas!
Raise hell, bellboys!
Wage war, wage slaves—
April 15 is Steal Something from Work Day!
AdSense, the advertisement company behind Google, is comprised of several products. The most popular are AdSense for content, which allows publishers to generate revenue from ads placed alongside web content, and AdSense for search, which allows publishers to place a custom Google search engine on their site and generate revenue from ads shown next to search results. Since AdSense for content and AdSense for search offer publishers different services, the revenue shared with publishers differs for each of these products. Read more