News from netCommons

Release of netCommons' Hands-On Guide on Community Networks

panos — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 20:43:40 +0000

netCommons is proud to announce the release of "Telecommunications Reclaimed: A Hands-On Guide to Networking Communities"!

This book is a guide on how to build a community network, a shared local telecommunications infrastructure, managed as a commons, to access the internet and other digital communications services. It was written collectively by a group of community network pioneers in Europe, activists and researchers during a writing residency week held in Vic, Catalonia in October 2018. It was a time of hard work and fast writing, but also of discussions in a friendly environment.

Meant for a wide audience, the book includes practical knowledge illustrated by several hands-on experiences – a set of 32 real-life stories – as well as legal, technical, governance, economic and policy material extracted from netCommons, a three-year-long research project supported by the European Commission. Its goal is to guide the reader through a set of actions aimed at setting up and fostering the growth of a community network, but also, for policy makers, local administrations and the general public, to create the right conditions to let community networks bloom and flourish.

Download the book and read more!

Here are two versions for online readability:

And here is are the files for self-printing:

We will soon publish a link to order the book from a print-on-demand platform.

Many thanks to all those who made this possible, and in particular to ISOC and APC who supported the book production.

Credits

Editors
Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay, CNRS
Félix Tréguer, CNRS

Authors
Panayotis Antoniadis, NetHood
Ileana Apostol, NetHood
Virginie Aubrée, University of Trento, University of Paris Nanterre
Adam Burns, free2air
Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay, CNRS
Maria Michalis, University of Westminster
Jürgen Neumann, Freifunk.net
Ramon Roca, guifi.net
Félix Tréguer, CNRS

Contributors of stories
Benjamin Bayart, FFDN
Bruno Spiquel, SCANI
Pierre Crémault, Franciliens.net
Leonardo Maccari, University of Venice
Arthur Messaud, La Quadrature du Net
Mireia Roura, eReuse.org
Oriane Piquer-Louis, FFDN

Illustrations and layout
Sarah Viguer

Booksprint facilitator
Andreas Wichmann

Peer review
Christian Fuchs, University of Westminster
Renato Lo Cigno, University of Trento, University of Brescia
Bruno Spiquel, SCANI

Copy editing
Lori Nordstrom, APC

Publication production support
Cathy Chen, APC

attachment:

telecom-reclaimed-print-covers.pdf

telecom-reclaimed-print-p3-255.pdf

telecom-reclaimed-web-single-page.pdf

telecom-reclaimed-web-double-page.pdf

netCommons book ready for publication

panos — Mon, 18 Mar 2019 11:49:45 +0000

The netCommons book produced during the booksprint at Vic, Catalonia (the birthplace of guifi.net) is ready to be copy-edited and published by APC with the support of ISOC.

It will include beautiful illustrations by Sarah Viguer, made also during the booksprint.

We are accepting comments and corrections until March 24th, at info@netcommons.eu, based on the version published as netCommons deliverable D4.5:

https://www.netcommons.eu/sites/default/files/d4.5_v1.0.pdf

netCommons at IGF2018

panos — Mon, 28 Jan 2019 19:44:51 +0000

Community Networks had a significant presence in IGF 2018, one of the most important global events on Internet Governance and beyond. And netCommons contributed significantly in three of the most important sessions around this topic.

IGF 2018 DC Community Connectivity: When The Unconnected Build Connectivity (DC3): DC3 provides a common platform involving all interested stakeholders in a cooperative analysis of the community network model, exploring how such networks may be used to sustainably expand Internet connectivity while empowering Internet users. The DC3 session 2018 has been organised through email interactions on the DC3 mailing-list as well as through a face-to-face meeting, held at RightsCon 2018. Session panelists presented their contributions to The Community Network Manual: How to Build the Internet Yourself, which is the official 2018 outcome of DC3 and is a joint publication of the ITU, FGV and ISOC. Furthermore, the session stimulated discussion with stakeholders that are developing community network-related initiatives and that could become DC3 partners.

IGF 2018 WS \#279 Scaling community networks: exploring blockchain and efficient investment strategies: The goal of the session was to bring together multiple stakeholders from the Community Networks movement, including collaborators from academia and funding agencies, to discuss the future of community networks through the integration of new technologies --particularly Blockchain-- and the development of effective investment strategies for scaling-up. The establishment of Community Networks has emerged as a concrete alternative to address the challenge of connecting the unconnected. In recent years, a range of CNs worldwide have consolidated and demonstrated not only the viability of CNs from a infrastructure standpoint, but also from community management perspective through the establishment of sustainable business models.

netCommons also had significant contribution to the GISWatch 2018 book on Community Networks which was also launched during IGF 2018.

netCommons at the EU parliament

panos — Fri, 11 Jan 2019 19:54:37 +0000

On May 23, 2018, three MEPs, namely Julia Reda (one of the hosts of the \netCommons organized workshop), Jan Philipp Albrecht and Max Andersonn, organised an event at the European Parliament titled "Economic Landscape under the New Telecommunications Code: How will the New Co-investment Rules and New Obligations Affect Small Providers in the EU."

The whole workshop was recorded and made available online, and it was reported by the University of Westminster News.

Two netCommons partners Maria Michalis (UoW) and Panayotis Antoniadis (NetHood), together with Ramon Roca (guifi.net) member of our advisory board participated in a panel with speakers including representatives from the European Commission (DG CNET), the BREKO --alternative fixed line providers, the BEREC, the EU ENISA (represented by Evangelos Ouzounis, Head of Secure Infrastructure \& Services), the small French provider Leonix, and the trade body DigitalEurope.

In terms of content, Maria Michalis and Ramon Roca joined their voices in the first panel to make three important statements:

The vital contribution that small and community providers can make to strengthen communication markets' diversity and the establishment of high-capacity networks, a contribution that goes beyond ``filling the gaps;"
CNs have for years been relying on co-investment;
It is crucial that CNs have a seat at the policy table, and important that they are mentioned in the legislation as possible participants in co-investment schemes as this would increase the legitimacy of the CN model.

In the second panel, Panayotis Antoniadis, stressed the importance of language and proposed the analogy between organic agriculture and CNs (the organic Internet) as the right mental frame that this discussion should be placed.

netCommons at UNESCO

panos — Sun, 25 Mar 2018 19:00:00 +0000

The netCommons project, together with members of its advisory board visited on January 30, 2018, the offices of UNESCO in Paris for a discussion on the potential impact of Community Networks for several Internet Universality Indicators.

Leonardo Maccari, Maria Michalis and Melanie Dulong de Rosnay did three presentations to the UNESCO staff with focus on the technical feasibility and social impact of CNs, the perception of CNs from interested people and the impact of the legal system on CN respectively. All three themes produced an informed discussion with the UNESCO working group on the Internet Universality Indicators which was extremely fruitful to enlarge the interest on CNs to a wider community, and to improve the indicators. The netCommons project was asked to participate at the consultation on the indicators, and to produce a formal feedback.

This was a superb achievement, since the Indicators will be used by UNESCO and other international bodies as the base criteria to evalaute national policies regarding Internet connectivity, and, most of all, their impact on human rights. CNs should have a say on this, as they represent the forefront of a movement of re-appropriation of communication means, with a strongly ethical component, and netCommons tries to make sure that their importance is reflected in the Indicators.

We worked on targeted suggestions, modifications and additions to the Indicators and our proposal is now submitted, and will be presented in more detail in a dedicated post.

Félix Tréguer receives the IAMCR 2017 CP&T Best Emerging Scholar Award

melanie — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 16:17:17 +0000

Félix Tréguer of the CNRS netCommons team received the 2017 Emerging Scholar Best Paper Award of the CP&T (Communication Policy & Technology) section of the IAMCR (international association for media and communications research) for his paper Alternative Internet Networks: History and Legacy of a “Crazy Idea”, based on the 3rd part of D5.1 on Alternative Communication Technologies Throughout History, which he presented in our netCommons joint panel at the Cartagena conference in July.

This paper looks at recent instances of alternative communications networks – namely two Internet community networks that emerged in the 1990's in France and Great Britain – to draw lessons for similar contemporary initiatives. We first consider the case of the French Data Network (FDN). Founded in 1992 and still in operation, FDN was the first Internet access provider available to the general public. It navigated regulatory changes in the telecom sector by becoming increasingly tied to the emerging digital rights movement and contributing to the emergence of a “critical Internet user” (Paloque-Bergès, 2015). Second, we turn to Consume.net, a collective associated with the London counter-cultural scene. From 1999 to 20003, Consume.net took advantage of the new WiFi protocols to subvert incumbent telecom operators’ hold on last-mile networks and promote a grassroots and locally-grounded approach to building and managing “wide area” networks (Medosch, 2014).

Based on existing literature, interviews with the founders of these initiatives as well as content and policy analysis, these two case-studies hold important lessons for today's community networks. While they confirm that community networks can emerge from diverse actors, with different motivations, political cultures, technical models or pricing schemes, they also show that these initiatives face two major challenges to ensure their sustainability: the articulation of local and global scales in connectivity needs, and the need to build advocacy capabilities aimed at influencing regulatory developments. But by tackling these challenges, community networks can become a strategic locus for reinterpreting traditional “mediactivism” in the digital era.

Félix Tréguer studies past and present power struggles surrounding the design and use of communication technologies by blending legal and policy analysis, history as well as political theory and sociology. He currently works on two research projects: one on communication surveillance and post-Snowden controversies (UTIC, CERI-Sciences Po), the other on community-owned telecom networks across Europe (netCommons, ISCC-CNRS). He is a founding member of the French digital rights group La Quadrature du Net. He is just completing his PhD at Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France.

Expression of Interest for a Junior Research Position: Legal and Policy Recommendations for Community networks

felix — Thu, 05 Oct 2017 13:57:57 +0000

The Department of Engineering and Information Science of the University of Trento is recruiting a temporary junior researcher in media and telecommunications law (at the post-doctoral, PhD or master level) for a period of 12 months to produce legal information and policy recommendations for community networks, as part of the netCommons project.

The interdisciplinary project netCommons (http://netcommons.eu/) focuses on the study of Internet community networks (CNs) in Europe managed as commons. Part of the project focuses on the legal framework of these communities, which mostly operate as informal, associative, cooperative or non-for-profit entities, and which bring together people with different skills to build and manage telecom networks, considered as commons.

Tasks will include analysing and answering legal questions faced by CNs, and the drafting of user-friendly legal information, recommendations and code of conducts for the internal management of CNs. Domains include liability, privacy and personal data protection, telecommunications and spectrum law, governance tools implemented within these groups (statutes, regulations, by-laws, decision making processes, etc.), and the consequences of the underlying technological and economic models.

Through regular interviews, this research-action will ultimately lead to the formulation of propositions for improvement of legal practices to ensure the proper functioning, sustainability and expansion of these communities, the monitoring of the implementation of these recommendations within voluntary groups, and the drafting of policy recommendations to preserve CNs as a commons.

A close collaboration with CNs located in France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Spain and the UK will be expected, as well as a regular collaboration with researchers of the CNRS Paris-Sorbonne Institute of Communication Sciences, coordinating the socio-legal and policy research of the project, and discussions with the other partners of the project specialized in computer science, economy and sociology.

Profile:

The candidate must hold a master or a doctorate in IT, media or telecommunications law obtained in one of the EU countries.
A prior experience in a non-profit entity or a law firm advising ICT communities will be appreciated.
A very good command of English (written especially) is also necessary.
A working knowledge of French, Italian or Greek would be a plus.
Travels within Europe are expected.

Interested candidates are invited to send their Expression of Interest to locigno@disi.unitn.it, before October 15, containing the following documents:

a resume;
a cover letter describing previous experience of legal practical, applied work as well as knowledge of ICT;
a selection of works (3 max.), either academic papers or briefs explaining a legal question to a client, assessing a legal risk, or preparing a legal defense.

Duration: 12 months, non renewable

Starting date: ASAP until end of 2018
Conditions: 1500 euros net monthly salary
Contact person: locigno@disi.unitn.it

The formal recruitment will follow the customary Italian procedure. Non Italian candidates will be guided through the process.

European Governments Seek Greater Oligopolization of Telecom Infrastructures

felix — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 07:50:02 +0000

3 October 2017 - In March, more than 31 European Community Networks (CNs) wrote an open letter to EU policy-makers, stressing the need for an adaptation of the European legal framework aimed at helping these citizen-driven initiatives flourish, thus supporting alternative, democratic and sustainable ways to meet the goals of broadband policies. But rather than opening the door to a much-needed diversification of the telecom ecosystem, European governments only seek to reinforce the dominant positions of incumbent players. As the EU gets closer to a deal over the future of European telecom regulation, the EU Parliament must resist the pressure and reaffirm its commitment to the public interest.

The European Parliament voted yesterday evening on the draft European Code for Electronic Communications, which will form the basis of telecom regulation across the EU for the next decades. The worst was avoided thanks to a majority of members of the Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) who resisted calls for a sweeping deregulation. The version adopted by the committee maintains enough room for National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) to regulate monopolistic situations and take Community Networks (CNs) into consideration, for instance by giving them access to optical fiber networks or promoting shared and unlicensed access to the radio spectrum, which can be essential to swiftly build affordable and flexible networks.

The Members of EU Parliament responsible of the text -- in particular the rapporteur Pilar del Castillo, known for being close to the Spanish incumbent Telefonica -- will now have to negotiate with the EU Council, which represents European governments. But these so-called "trialogue negotiations" have an obvious lack of transparency, making them very difficult to follow. This is all the more worrying given that the EU Council has drafted a very alarming version of the draft code, which aims at overhauling pro-diversity policies and at encouraging the oligopolization of telecom infrastructures.
On access regulation, the Council wants to see a 7-year period without regulation after new network deployments (such as newly rolled-out optical fiber networks). The national regulatory authorities would then have no way of imposing pro-competitive obligations on incumbents, giving big telcos all latitude to extend their oligopolistic positions at the detriment of CNs and other cooperative or non-profit operators. Should the Council proposal prevail, we will witness the disappearance of small alternative network operators.
On radio spectrum, the EU Council intends to preserve the Governments' control over this vital resource, which will allow them to pursue ill-advised policies benefiting the biggest operators and failing to make the best out of the radio commons. In particular, this will undermine the alleged efforts from the European Commission to develop and extend the shared and unlicenced access spectrum, which enables the development of cooperative or non-profit operators and boosts diversity in the telecom sector.

On institutional aspects, the Council wants to let Member States decide which authority shall ensure market supervision and users' rights. By allowing for the circumvention of NRAs, this could undermine any form of independent national regulation as well as any form of coordination at European level. In a policy domain that has for too long been prone to regulatory capture by private interests, we call on the Members of the European Parliament to defend the public interest by promoting pro-competition and pro-diversity policies. By resisting the pressure of European governments who seek to further entrench the power of the largest industry players over network infrastructures, our elected representatives can ensure that alternative operators and local communities have the adequate means to develop and innovate, offering forward-looking models and services to the benefit of all.

Co-signatories

Aquilenet

Association Viviers Fibre

BlueLink Foundation

Chaos Computer Club Lëtzebuerg

Fédération FDN

FDN

freifunk.net

Frënn vun der Ënn

guifi.net

Ilico

Instituto Bem Estar Brasil

La Quadrature du Net

netCommons

NetHood

Ninux

Open Technologies Alliance - GFOSS

Renewable Freedom Foundation

Sarantaporo.gr Non Profit Organization

WirelessPT.net

IAMCR2017: Delving into the history and policy of Community Networks

felix — Tue, 19 Sep 2017 14:01:49 +0000

In July, four netCommons members attended the annual conference of the International Association of Media and Communications Research in Cartagena, Columbia. During their panel entitled “Drawing Policy Lessons From the History of Alternative Media and Networks”, the team was able to present their first findings on the history and policy of alternative networks and reflect on contemporary stakes for Community Networks (CNs).

Maria Michalis from Westminster University opened the panel by looking at European broadband policy. Offering a historical account of the process of liberalisation of telecom infrastructure in Europe since the 1990s, she showed how after an initial period of pro-competitive policies, the current trend is one of concentration and “regulatory holidays” for incumbent players. In this context, she points out how little room there is for alternative models like Community Networks, which are only taken into account by policy-makers insofar as they can “fill the gaps” left by dominant players (see also deliverable 2.2).

Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay from CNRS then took the stage to show how CNs fit into her “peer-to-peer legal theory.” She focused on the deeply ingrained tensions between the law and communications technologies by starting with the example of pirate or alternative radio networks from the 1960s and 1970s. Mélanie shows how, during the early phase of technological deployment, technology may circumvent the law before being subject to normalization, or even repression. Against that fate, she puts forward the concept of “peer-to-peer law”, based on the belief that the commons can help rethink traditional legal frameworks built around individualistic categories. By doing so, she argues, we might be able to move towards more distributed and democratic models of legal regulation (read more about this in this and that publications).

In his talk, Dominique Trudel focused on “The Independents”, a heterogeneous group of local and regional cooperatives that emerged in the United States in the 1890s to challenge AT&T's monopoly over telephone networks. While doing so, these groups offered various local models for the appropriation of the new technology, turning the telephone into a popular medium. Soon, however, they would suffer AT&T's multi-layered retaliation and, by the end of the 1910s, the “Independent movement” whithered. As Dominique explains, one of the key strategy of AT&T's founder Theodore Vail then was to argue for an old common-law legal notion of “common carrier” to legitimise what was a privatised monopoly. The same notion of “common carrier” would again become central more than a century later in the American debate on Net neutrality, in which it is subject to ideological and a-historical analogies still to the benefit of incumbent telecom players (see for instance a recent article by historian Richard John).

Finally, Félix Tréguer delved into the history of alternative networks by looking at the first generation of Community Networks founded in the 1990s through two case-studies: one on French Data Network, a landline Internet Service Provider founded in 1992, the other on Consume.net, a WiFi-based wireless network built in London around 2000. While both networks confirm that CNs can emerge from diverse actors, with different motivations, political cultures as well as technical models and pricing schemes, they also show that these initiatives face two major challenges to ensure their sustainability: the articulation of the local and global scales in connectivity needs, and the need to build advocacy capabilities aimed at influencing regulatory developments (if you want to read more on the history of alternative networks, Dominique's and Félix's presentations were drawn from the netCommons deliverable 5.1).

Back from a great conference, the team intends to build on this work and move towards clear legal and policy guidelines for European Community Networks. That's the task ahead for the coming months!

netCommons organizational models shared in GAIA WG - IETF99

leandro — Wed, 19 Jul 2017 14:54:57 +0000

As part of the IETF99 meeting in Prague, the GAIA IRTF WG met (July 19). Leandro Navarro presented a brief outline of the joint work that resulted in D1.3 "Report on the Governance Instruments and their Application to CNs (v1)".

The IEEE Internet Inclusion Advancing Solutions

leandro — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 15:18:18 +0000

netCommons was at the IEEE Internet Inclusion WS in Washington, D.C., during two days of events on 24 April and 25 April.

Roger Baig from netCommons and guifi.net is chairing the "Community Networks" working group. Together with Leandro Navarro they participated in the event. This is part of a series of multistakeholder events have outlined definitive opportunities to accelerate progress in meaningfully connecting the estimated 60 percent of the global population that remains unconnected around the world.

In the final summary reports Vint Cerf mentioned the importance of community networks in addressing this problem and how important is to work to remove obstacles that prevent the development of community networks are crucial to give people the opportunity to expand and join the public Internet.

See you at the Battlemesh v10

leonardo — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 15:05:00 +0000

The first week of June in Vienna, there will be the tenth edition of the Wireless Battle of the Mesh (WBM). WBM is the most important international community-organized event that gathers all the activists of community networks around the Europe, and lately, also from outside Europe. During the event the developers of the most used open source routing protocols set-up a testbed and "battle" to understand which protocol performs better. It is a great chance for all the devels to debug, exchange ideas and improve their software, but it is also a great chance for all those interested in community networks to enter in contact with other people and exchange experiences.

The netCommons project endorses the event and contributes to it with hardware that will be used to set-up the testbed. People from netCommons will be at the WBM, and we invite everyone interested in community networks to join us in Vienna!

Open letter to EU policy makers on community networks

panos — Thu, 16 Mar 2017 11:00:02 +0000

Joint press release

March 16th, 2017 — Today, more than 30 European Community Networks, joined by over 35 supporting organizations from around the world, are sending an open letter to EU policy-makers. At a time when the European Union is paving the way for a major reform of telecommunications policy, the letter makes a number of recommendations to ensure the continuous development of these citizen initiatives, which provide an alternative, democratic and sustainable way to manage telecom infrastructures and meet the goals of broadband policies.

Community Networks are network infrastructures built by local communities and organizations in a bottom-up and democratic way. Given the shortcomings of current telecom policies -- such as the repeated failures of market actors to cover the communication needs of underprivileged populations both in rural and urban areas -- CNs are being increasingly considered as an alternative way to provide affordable Internet access for all; see, for instance, discussions at the Internet Governance Forum 2016.

They actually offer much more than affordable Internet connectivity of superior quality, including citizen engagement, resiliency, education, innovation, and the basis for claiming our digital sovereignty over global corporations dominating the digital economy (the principles underlying these initiatives are summed up in the Guadalajara Declaration). Especially in Europe, we are seeing a continuous growth of some of the most successful federated community networks in the world like Guifi.net, Freifunk.net, FFDN and many others.

Yet, Community Networks have been systematically overlooked by policy-makers, and their values and models are being jeopardized by various policies. Today, CNs are asking for minimal and well-deserved support from policy-makers to be able to continue their activities. This open letter is signed by 31 European Community Networks, representing over hundred thousand active members, node owners, and serving even more individual citizens, SMEs, and organizations. It explains the different threats that those networks are facing and provides recommendations regarding the legal and policy frameworks that are appropriate for sustaining a diverse and democratic environment in the telecommunications sector.

The letter will be sent to the European Commission, EU member states delegations as well as members of the European Parliament. We hope that these institutions will follow suit by showing willingness to engage in a debate over the policy items covered in the letter.*

PREAMBLE
We represent European Community Networks, a growing movement of organizations that operate local communication infrastructures, sometimes federated at the regional or national levels. These networks, most of which also provide access to the global Internet, are operated as a commons. That is, rather than being driven by for-profit motives, our key focus is on providing connectivity while striving for democratic governance, social inclusion, education, and human rights with respect to communication technologies.
Our organizations vary considerably in terms of sizes, types of network infrastructures and political cultures. Yet, despite this diversity, we are united by the common objective to build networks that meet the communication needs of humans (rather than those of objects and machines), through networks that are built and run by our communities, for our communities, focused on local empowerment, affordability and resiliency.
Today, we collectively provide broadband connectivity not only to tens of thousands of individual European citizens and residents in rural or urban settings, but also to organizations including small and medium sized companies, schools, healthcare centers, social projects and many more. In many cases, we have out-competed mainstream operators, by providing cheaper and faster Internet connectivity than incumbent players. Thanks to our infrastructures and through our various activities, we foster scientific and engineering experiments, we help local hosting and service providers come together to mutualise investments and share costs, we support digital literacy and data sovereignty through workshops and other educational activities.
Yet, despite our achievements, policy-makers at the national and European levels have so far mostly neglected our existence and specific regulatory needs. Worse, regulation is often hampering our initiatives, making the work of our participants and volunteers harder than it should be. This is why, as you start working on a European code of electronic communications, we decided to contact you and voice our ideas and recommendations regarding the future of the legal and policy framework regulating our activities.
1. Lifting unnecessary regulatory and financial burdens
We first ask you to review the regulatory framework and get rid of unnecessary regulatory burdens, such as fees or red-tape that are unnecessary or illegitimate when imposed on small non-profit entities. In Belgium for instance, the registration fee that telecom operators must pay to the NRA is at 676€ for the first registration, plus 557€ every following year (for those whose revenues are below 1M€, which is the case for many community networks). Even such small fees can hinder the growth of small networks that efficiently serve tens of households. In France, Spain and Germany, it is free, which might explain why the community network movement is much more dynamic in these countries. The proposed code for electronic communications aims to harmonize procedures for declaration fees (first registration) as well as administrative charges (annual fees). EU lawmakers must ensure that the fees and charges imposed by national NRAs are null or negligible for non-profit ISPs and reasonable and proportionate for micro and small businesses. Likewise, taxes designed for large corporate firms in the telecom sectors should not apply to smaller, non-profit operators.
2. Getting rid of third-party liability when sharing Internet access
Several laws seek to prevent the sharing of Internet connections amongst several users by making people responsible (and potentially liable) for all communication made through their Wi-Fi connection, and create legal risks for people sharing their connection. In Germany, rights-holders have used a "secondary liability" doctrine to chill the growth of the community networks movement. In France too, copyright law imposes a secondary liability regime that creates significant legal uncertainty for people sharing their network connections with other users. The so-called "mere conduit", inscribed in EU law since 2000 in the directive on information society services, needs to be guaranteed and expanded to small-area wireless access points. In the same spirit, contract clauses that forbid subscribers to share their connections with others should be prohibited. Promoting a right to share Internet connections is all the more vital considering the economic and ecological crises, as well as the rapid increase of populations that cannot afford access to the Internet. In this context, connection sharing can play a critical role in fostering a more equitable and sustainable use of telecommunications infrastructure.
3. Expanding the spectrum commons
It is not just Internet wireless access points that can be shared, but also the intangible infrastructure on which radio signals travel. Wi-Fi, as an unlicensed portion of the spectrum and therefore a commons, is a key asset for community networks willing to set up affordable and flexible last-mile infrastructure. However, these Wi-Fi frequency bands are currently very limited. Not only are they getting increasingly subject to congestion in densely populated areas, they are also exposed to new technical standards that use the so-called ISM frequency band (like LTE-U) that hamper the reliability of Wi-Fi communications. Last but not least, existing frequency bands for Wi-Fi (5,6 Ghz and 2,4 Ghz) have physical constraints that prevent them for being used for longer radio links. In the face of such challenges, a new approach to spectrum policy is needed. Policy-makers should expand unlicensed Wi-Fi bands. Other types of frequencies should also be made available either on an unlicensed (preferred scenario) or, if not possible, based on affordable and flexible authorization schemes. Such frequency bands for instance include so-called white spaces in lower frequencies (which allow for cheap and resilient long-distance links), as well as the 12Ghz and the 60Ghz bands (for which radio equipment is affordable and which can help us build high-bandwidth point-to-point radio links). Once made accessible to community networks, they can help roll-out and expand cheap and resilient wireless infrastructures.
4. Updating open-access rules in telecom infrastructures
Networks built with taxpayers money should also be treated as a commons and, as such, remain free from corporate capture. Today, their management and exploitation is often delegated by public authorities to corporate network operators. These entities usually adopt aggressive pricing schemes designed for incumbent players that make it extremely costly for small access providers to interconnect with these networks. Access to these publicly-funded networks for non-profit entities like community networks as well as small businesses should be guaranteed, at a reasonable and proportionate cost. Similarly, community networks often cannot have access to the private local infrastructures of incumbent players, despite the fact that these are the only way to connect willing subscribers. Indeed, in many European markets, the deployment of optical fiber networks is (re)creating monopolistic conditions on local loops through pricing schemes which preclude small actors from accessing these private networks. Policy-makers and regulators should ensure that every area is covered by at least one telecom operator with a so-called "bitstream" offer affordable for smaller players.
5. Protecting free software and user freedom in radio equipment
In 2014, the European Union adopted Directive 2014/53 on radio equipment. Although the Directive pursues sound policy goals, it might actually impair the development of community networks. Indeed, community networks usually need to replace the software included by the manufacturer in radio hardware with free and open source software especially designed to suit their needs, a collective process that improves security and encourages the recycling of hardware, among other benefits. Article 3.3(i) of the said Directive creates legal pressure for manufacturers of radio devices to ensure the compliance of the software loaded on these devices with the European regulatory framework. As a result, there is a strong incentive for manufacturers to lock down their devices and prevent third-party modifications of the hardware. We therefore ask policy-makers to provide a general exception for all free software installed on radio devices by end-users and operators (the latter being liable if their software lead to violations of the regulatory framework), so that users' rights are safeguarded.
6. Abrogating blanket data retention obligations
Community networks strive to safeguard human rights in communication networks, and in particular the right to privacy and the confidentiality of communication. While we welcome recent rulings by the Court of Justice of the European Union holding that indiscriminate retention of metadata violates the Charter of Fundamental Rights, we are concerned about several member states' willingness to circumvent these rulings to protect capabilities for indiscriminate surveillance. As EU lawmakers start discussing the overhaul of the ePrivacy Directive, we call on them to oppose any blanket data retention obligations and close existing loopholes in EU law to ensure that only targeted and limited retention obligations can be imposed on hosting and access providers.
7. Bringing direct and targeted public support
Countless other policy initiatives can help support community networks and the significant associated benefits they bring. Such policies include small grants, crowd-funding and subsidies to help our groups buy servers and radio equipment, communicate around their initiative, giving them access to public infrastructures (for instance, the roof of a public building to install an antenna), but also to support their research on radio transmission, routing methods, software or encryption. As many local authorities have found, supporting community networks is a sound policy option. As EU lawmakers move forward on the WiFi4EU initiative, we would like to remind you that we have pioneered various models for the provision of free public access points. We believe that public money invested in this initiative should primarily go to groups pursuing a bottom-up logic, seeding local groups that can foster the empowerment and cohesion of local communities, nurture competition, and meet the same policy-objectives at a fraction of the cost that would be charged by mainstream telecom operators.
8. Opening the policy-making process to Community Networks
Although we have often partnered with municipalities and local public authorities, we ask that national and European regulators pay more attention to our activities when drafting regulation. Community networks have both the expertise and legitimacy to take an integral part in technical and legal debates over broadband policy in which traditional, commercial ISPs are over-represented. Community networks can bring an informed view to these debates, allowing for a policy-making process more attuned to the public interest.

We thank you for your attention and very much look forward to engaging with you on these important issues,
First signatories (EU-based community networks)

020wireless (Netherlands)

AIL-Network (France)

Alsace Réseau Neutre (France)

Aquilenet (France)

Association Ribaguifi - Eresué 2.0 (Spain)

Asoc. SevillaGuifi (Spain)

Common Net (Italy)

FAImaison (France)

FDN (France)

FFDN (France)

Franciliens.net (France)

Freifunk.net (Germany)

Fundació guifi.net (Spain)

Funkfeuer (Austria)

Grenode (France)

Grifon (France)

Ilico (France)

Illyse (France)

Iloth (France)

Neutrinet (Belgium)

Ninux.org (Italy)

Open Network in Croatia (Croatia)

Progetto Neco (Italy)

Progetto Wireco Ciminna (Italy)

Rézine (France)

Sarantaporo.gr NPO (Greece)

SCANI (France)

Tetaneutral.net (France)

Tourraine Data Network (France)

Wireless België (Belgium)

Wireless Leiden (Netherlands)

WirelessPT.net (Portugal)

Wlan slovenija (Slovenia)

Supporting organizations (signing in support of the general approach and/or specific proposals put forward in the letter)

ApTI (Romania)

ARTICLE 19 (UK)

Bits of Freedom (Netherlands)

BlueLink.net - Civic Action Network (Bulgaria)

Brazilian Association of Digital Radio (Brazil)

Chaos Computer Club (Germany)

Chaos Computer Club Lëtzebuerg (Luxemburg)

Colnodo (Colombia)

Common Ground (Germany)

Commons Network (EU)

Dugnadsnett (Norway)

EDRi (EU)

EFF (US)

Electronic Frontier Norway (Norway)

epicenter.works (Austria)

Free Knowledge Institute (Netherlands)

Free Software Foundation Europe (EU)

Frënn vun der Ënn (Luxemburg)

GreenNet (UK)

hackAIR (EU)

Initiative für Netzfreiheit (Austria)

Instituto Bem Estar Brasi (Brazil)

Instituto Nupef (Brazil)

La Quadrature du Net (France)

MAZI (EU)

netCommons (EU)

netHood (Switzerland)

Network Bogotá (Colombia)

NEXTLEAP (EU)

NURPA (Belgium)

Nuvem (Brazil)

One World Platform (Bosnia Herzegovina)

Open Rights Group (UK)

Open Technologies Alliance- GFOSS (Greece)

P2P Foundation (Netherlands)

P2P Lab (Greece)

PIE News Project (EU)

Project Arig (Israel)

Rhizomatica (Mexico)

Renewable Freedom Foundation (Germany)

VECAM (France)

Xnet (Spain)

Zenzeleni Networks (South Africa)

For any inquiry regarding this open letter, write to: advocacy@netcommons.eu

*Translations of the letter in Portugese, Italian, French, Greek and Spanish are available here.

Digital Social Innovation Fair, Rome, Feb1-2

panos — Tue, 06 Dec 2016 08:42:34 +0000

The DSI Fair 2017 is coming soon and is offering a rich program featuring an international conference, focused workshops, networking and hands-on sessions. The line-up of speakers includes experts and practitioners, as well as policy makers and civil society players from all over the world.

netCommons will be there!

CfP - JoPP issue #11 on "CITY"

panos — Fri, 18 Nov 2016 22:20:58 +0000

Editors: Penny Travlou, Nicholas Anastasopoulos, Panayotis Antoniadis

URL: http://peerproduction.net/cfp-jopp-special-issue-11-city-abstracts-due-31-january-2017/

Call for papers

One of the welfare state’s key jurisdictions was to tend to housing and public space in benevolent ways. However, under the neoliberal dogma, commodification and gentrification threatens both the right to housing and the right to the city while in recent years, cities have become increasingly militarized and surveyed, resembling battlegrounds where freedom and democracy are under attack. At the same time, recent economic, political, and social crises have activated many counter-forces of resistance and creative alternatives for the grassroots production of food, health services, housing, networking infrastructures, and more.

The role of technology has been contradictory as well. On the one hand, the Internet has enabled some of the most remarkable peer production success stories at a global scale, such as Wikipedia and Free and Open Source Software, among many others. On the other hand, it has empowered huge corporations like Facebook and Google to fully observe and manipulate our everyday activities, and oppressive governments to censor and surveil their citizens.

At the city scale, technology offers opportunities for self-organization, like wireless community networks and numerous bottom-up techno-social initiatives, but also animates the top-down narrative of the “smart city” and the commodification of the “sharing economy as a service” provided by globally active platforms such as Airbnb and Uber. In this situation, peer production in space emerges as a vital bottom-up practice reclaiming citizen participation, and inventing new forms of community.

In this context, some core challenges arise:
– If we choose not tο rely on global players to provide peer production support at a local scale, how could different areas of peer production in the city, digital and physical, interact and support each other?
– What types of governance models can adequately support peer production in the city?

To address those challenges one needs to take into consideration the following:
– Lessons learned from the Internet and how they may be incorporated in the context-specific realities of the city.
– Knowledge-transfer methodologies across different localities.
– Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaborations (urban studies, media studies, sociology, architecture, cultural geography, informatics etc.).
– Possible collaborations and synergies between activists that fight for the “right to the city” and those that fight for the “right to the Internet”.
-Knowedge/experience transfer between non-urban settings (i.e. intentional communities, ecocommunities, the Transition movement, etc.) and the urban movements.
– Inquiry into research methods and methodologies to be developed and used for analysing ICT-mediated peer production in urban space.

This special issue aims to explore a wide variety of alternative and innovative peer practices, like urban agriculture, food sustainability, solidarity economy, right to the city movements, cooperative housing, community networks, P2P urbanism tactics, co-design practices and more, that are directly reflected in the production of urban space. We are particularly interested in novel combinations of theory, methodologies, and practices that can contribute to peer production in the city and enable new synergies between projects and communities.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:
– Urban commons and peer production
– Case studies of innovative peer practices approached from different perspectives
– Comparative case studies on patterns of commoning and think-global / act-local methodologies
– The regional dimension: examples from the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australasia
– Political issues of autonomy, hegemony, labour, gender, geopolitical and post-colonial perspectives
– Alternative forms of education and learning tools for promoting self-organization and community
– Innovative governance tools for peer production in the city
– Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary methodological approaches
– Urban studies and the right to the (hybrid) city
– Open source urbanism/architecture
– Recycling/upcycling vs buying: making, consuming or prosuming the city?

Important dates
Abstract submission: 31 January 2017
Notification to authors: 15 February 2017
Submission of full paper: 15 May 2017
Reviews to authors: 15 July 2017
Revised papers: 15 September 2017
Signals due: 10 October 2017
Issue release: October/November 2017

Submission guidelines
Abstracts of 300-500 words are due by January 31, 2017 and should be sent to city@peerproduction.net>. All peer reviewed papers will be reviewed according to Journal of Peer Production guidelines. See http://peerproduction.net/peer-review/process/. Full papers and materials are due by May 15, 2017 for review. Peer reviewed papers should be around 8,000 words. We also welcome experimental, alternative contributions, like testimonies, interviews and artistic treatments, whose format will be discussed case by case with the editors.

*This special issue was initiated during the Hybrid City III (Athens) conference and developed further during the IASC Urban Commons (Bologna) and Habitat III (Quito) conferences.

European Commons Assembly

panos — Tue, 08 Nov 2016 20:38:40 +0000

The first European Commons Assembly is taking place on November 15-16 2016 in Brussels. Around 150 commoners will convene, discuss, showcase, and reclaim Europe in the European Parliament, in cooperation with the EP intergroup on Common Goods and Public Services.

netCommons will be there to advocate for laws and policies required to support the numerous community networks across Europe and in general the concept of network infrastructure as commons.

Edit: Watch the 7min presentation of Panayotis Antoniadis on examples of the "network infrastructure as commons" case study: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEWDstHb8Bg&feature=youtu.be&t=1h2m17s

Everything started a few months ago, when 28 activists from 15 European countries met for 3 days in Villarceaux, France in May 2016 to develop a shared agenda for the commons. Since then, a process of shared visions and strategies for the commons in Europe has continued to grow. Each week, new individuals introduce themselves into this commons community. All the participants are committed to the development of European Commons Assembly: a flexible but unified alliance of diverse activists, mobilized across issues to impact politics.

JoPP issue #9 on "Alternative Internets"

panos — Fri, 16 Sep 2016 19:34:57 +0000

Journal of Peer Production's issue #9 on "Alternative Internets" is out, and it includes a very diverse list of contributions, which each in their own ways point towards a more democratic and more inclusive Internet.

Three of these articles feature netCommons' partners including the editorial, a peer-reviewed paper on the Ninux.org case study and an experimental submission on legal policies of Internet platforms.

netCommons also funded the design and printing of a "preview" of the issue, including selected fragments from all articles in a 24page booklet [pdf], which was distributed during the 4S/EASST conference in Barcelona.

All content by JoPP is in the public domain and is available here: http://peerproduction.net/

Open position at the DISI

admin — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 12:35:00 +0000

DISI has two open positions to work on the netCommons project. We are looking for a Ph.D student and a Post-doc (or equivalente experience). The two people will be involved primarily in the work for WP2 and WP3.

Here you can find more details on the profiles we are looking at.

Here you can find the project description, with more details on the technical role of UniTN in netCommons.

attachment:

callforph.dresearchfellowship.pdf

netcommons_summary_enlarged.pdf

netCommons in Net Futures 2016

panos — Thu, 14 Apr 2016 23:12:00 +0000

The netCommons project contributes to Net Futures 2016 in Brussels, April 20-21st. We share with the audience the concept of commons-based ICT infrastructure as a complementary model for the future Internet, and give insights in the network and service provision by community networks. netCommons will exemplify commons-based ICT provision by highlighting the case of Guifi.net, recently distinguished by the European Broadband Award 2015, which with more than 30.000 nodes in Spain can be considered the largest community network worldwide.

The netCommons stand includes a multi-layer mockup of a small urban neighbourhood, and a rural one too, set up in three layers: passive infrastructure (a surface with place to deploy fibres/cables of different colours), another layer on top with the active IP network (routers, hosts, packets). On top the buildings layer with people and also wireless links (mesh for urban, and p2p for rural). Lego towers help to explain the different models.

The netCommons website is on-line!

admin — Mon, 14 Mar 2016 13:40:00 +0000

This is the official website of the netCommons project, we have been working on it for a while, and it is ready to represent the project. In the next weeks we will populate it with more content. So far you can find the description of the project, of the partners, and the list of future deliverables. We will update it with news, events, and blog entries from our partners. Please don't hesitate to send us suggestions.