VR - Listen Later by Marck Thornton

Room: Stage 6Rikke Frank JoergensenOnline platforms play an increasingly important role as owners and managers of the online infrastructure and sociability. As such, they have the power to influence users’ human rights in ways conventionally reserved for governments. At the same time, human rights law is state-centric in nature, and holds no direct obligations for companies. When examining human rights protection in the online domain it therefore becomes paramount to explore the role, responsibilities and practices of these private actors vis-à-vis human rights standards and norms. One area of concern has been the platforms’ impact on online freedom of expression and privacy. For example the taken-for-granted context of the "personal information economcy" and the day-to-day decisions on which content to remove or leave up. While several of the major platforms engage in industry initiatives to foster human rights, these discourses tend to focus primarily on treats from governments with less attention to the human rights challenges that derive from their own business practices. Scholars have warned of a governance gap, where private actors with strong human rights impacts steer in the soft regime of guidelines and self-regulation, with no direct human rights obligations. The presentation will identify and discuss challenges related to human rights protection in privately governed spaces. In conclusion, it will argue that current responses are insufficient and new policy responses urgently needed.    Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com

Room: Stage 8Andrea Bauer, Boris Moshkovits, Shermin Voshmgir, Vinay GuptaToday Blockchain has become one of the most discussed value exchange protocols. It has not just the power to fundamentally transform the structure of our political, but also of our economical or resource-related system. Maybe algorithms of present and future Blockchains have the potential to become the constitutional foundations of how our future societies will be structured? Have we reached a paradigm shift, where democracy can be digitally mirrored and manage the balance between securing privacy, yet guaranteeing transparency on political decision making, lobbying involvement or budget allocation? Andrea Bauer and Boris Moshkovits (D.DAY network) will speak with Shermin Voshmgir from BlockchainHub and Vinay Gupta of Ethereum Project to discuss the potential, the challenges and the feasibility of different use cases on how to apply the Blockchain protocol in peer-to-peer governance. Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com

Room: Stage 8 Shermin Voshmgir Blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin, is considered by many to be the next big thing. A game changer that allows us to decentralize trust. Transactions on the blockchain through auto enforcable 'smart contracts' are faster & cheaper and arguably more secure than transactions that classically run through central neural authorities. Smart Contracts, dApps (Decentralized Applications) and DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) are the new buzzwords that can enable a society where we can have: Money without Banks Companies without Managers Governments without Politicians It may sound utopian, but it is already happening. But, and that is the focus of this talk, people are people, and technology can only auto execute what is programmed into it.  If the protocols & algorithm on the blockchain define the 'constitution', the underlying crypto laws of our future crypto economy, if they define the rules of how people will interact with each other in the future, what happens when the algorithm becomes outdated? It will have to be modified though consensus. But consensus on the blockchain is not easy as we can see from the challenges that bitcoin is currently facing.  So, if the protocols we define today are the constitutional foundations our future societies, if the coders of today are the lawyers of tomorrow, we will need to learn from history and the challenges of modern democracy, before we set out to build the next killer dApps on the blockchain. Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com

Room: Stage 8Jaya Klara Brekke, Elias HaaseWhat is the blockchain? This nifty piece of the Bitcoin protocol has in the past year or two opened up an entire new field of innovation beyond cryptocurrencies and claims to be apowerful force of disintermediation - in other words, a technology that will destroy the evil middlemen that are taking their share and preventing us from truly achieving a decentralised society of horizontal sharing and collaboration. But what exactly is being dis-intermediated? And is there in fact an equally strong re-mediation taking place, where algorithms replace registrars and network consensus takes over from law? In this workshop we look into the most important aspects of how blockchain technology works. Armed with a basic understanding we then tackle the how and why of decentralisation of power and its impact on traditional authority structures. Jaya and Elias are actively engaged in the world of blockchain innovation and are in the process of establishing a think tank to contribute independent research to the broader community.  Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com

Room: Stage LMaya Ofir MagnatMaya Ofir Magnat will explore the innovative trends of digital performance and intermedia in the theatre and performance art fields, while demonstrating from her own work. Digital performance enables its practitioners to interact with digital technology both in form and content, reacting to the technology-induced rapid changes in our social landscapes, while creating new stage language using screens, projections, online presence, avatars and other tools of the newly established digital domain. Magnat's digital performances ponder futuristic scenarios, striving not to be techno-utopian, while not delving to the dystopic. Magnat presents a balanced approach both toward our current society and things to come, accepting digital technologies as a necessity, while alerting us to our complex relationships with our digital devices. Magnat's main interest is in utilizing digital performance as a creative and safe space that enables performers and audience to imagine their future selves.   Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com

Room: Stage JMd Mahmudul Haque MunshiThe age-old tension between Secularists and Islamists repeatedly erupted during the foundation of all major historical milestone in the Indian Sub-continent, with which Bangladesh is intensely related. Be it the partition of India, or the foundation of Pakistan or the independence of Bangladesh, during every shift of political power, the core point of debate and contradiction remains same- the supremacy of Islam as a religion, which is merely used as a component of blame game in political yard and thus to silence the voice of any opposition that comes in its way. The recent series of events since 2013, killing of the bloggers, continuous political tension between various political parties is only a sad repetition of history.   Alike the past, the massive Shahbag movement that started in February, 2013 by the secular activists is only a strong vent of the suppressed motif of secularists in the country. Killing, oppression and torture on the side of secularists and anti-islamists is nothing new in Bangladesh. During the pre-liberation period and in the Liberation war of 1971, Bangladesh has seen the legalization of rape, murder and mass-murder in the excuse of saving Islam, which, to a large extent still exists in our political arena. Even the microscopic secular portion of Islamic movements could not avoid the ferocity of radical islamists alike the secularists. Expression of anything that is not permitted as per the interpretation of the radical islamist group is considered as an act of enmity to Islam. The slightest contradiction with the political intention of the radical Islamist groups results bloodshed and gruesome victimization of the opposition-anyone who oppose the islamists view. Not necessarily the negative opinion and argument on religion gets attacked all the time from the radical islamists. Any comment, argument, act or expression at any point can be considered as anti-islamic and thus answered through violence, sometimes with the permission and support of the state-mechanism. As a journalist, blogger and secular activist for the last seven years, I can undoubtedly say from my own suffering and experience, that those who holds the secular view, or wh... Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com

Room: Stage J Anthony Zacharzewski, Rabea Willers Participatory budgets, collaborative platforms for crowdsourced policies, and citizens’ assemblies are being experimented with all over the world. However, politicians remain sceptical about these democratic innovations and do not always have the incentive or know-how to engage in open democracy. On the other end, grassroots democratic innovations struggle to scale up and reach out to citizens.  An alliance of European democracy innovators, brought together by the Council of Europe, is working on creating a networked incubator for participatory democracy, with city governments around Europe and beyond. The incubator will support initiatives - digital and offline - that aim at enriched roles for citizens and representatives, that make a significant contribution to the redistribution of political power, and that support inclusion and the broadest possible participation in democracy. It will help create, replicate and scale up democratic innovations, building open infrastructure to boost democracy for smart, inclusive and innovative cities, connecting innovators and cities, and helping them to replicate and scale ideas. In this workshop, members of the team behind the incubator will: Share their progress so far, and their hopes for the programme Ask participants to help them develop their ideas on what is needed and how the incubator can take ideas from small innovations to changing whole city systems Discuss the priorities for the incubator's work. Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com

Room: Stage 1Mark Surman Leaning on the thinking of communications scholar Harold Innis, Mark Surman reflects on the importance of the internet freedom movement in this age of empire. Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com

Room: Stage JNadine BarthelThis session presents the results of a study about global funding schemes for digital startups. Which programmes do exist and what are the results achieved. The tour covers examples ranging from established research incubators in Israel up to innovation and maker spaces in Tanzania. Which approaches and models are currently popular and which are the benefits and risks they bring along? The presentation will be followed by a discussion that involves the participants’ experiences.  Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com

Room: Stage TLudovic Blechner, Marco Maas, Linda Rath-WigginsThe ambition and intent of the Fund is bold: to spark new thinking, which could come from all over Europe from any kind of traditional publisher to startup or online only player and even individuals to give news organisations the space to try some new things and dare taking risks. Last October, we opened up the first application round. We will share lessons from round 1 and you will hear from two selected applicants that are working on new ways to tell stories and consume news. Come learn about the fund's rules, criteria, and the process to apply.     Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com

Room: Stage 2Fiona Krakenbürger, Julia Kloiber, Arne SemsrottAm 2. Mai 2016 versammeln wir uns in Berlin-Kreuzberg, um die Offenheit der Regierung, Verwaltung und Behörden zu besprechen. Hunderte Aktivisten und Aktivistinnen engagieren sich täglich für eine offenere und transparentere Regierung. Während wir sprechen, sind sie mit Digitalen Agenden, PDFs und Gesetzesparagraphen konfrontiert - und doch war die Community noch nie so aktiv wie heute! In den vergangenen 12 Monaten wurden Kontakte geknüpft, Netzwerke aufgebaut, Open-Data-Portale gelauncht und zahlreiche Informationen befreit.  Wir sehen, dass dies die entscheidende Dekade in der Geschichte der Transparenz ist und wir eine einzigartige Rolle in der Geschichte spielen. Wenn wir vor die Wahl gestellt werden, uns entweder der Tyrannei der Verschwiegenheit zu unterwerfen oder für mehr Transparenz zu kämpfen, wissen wir: Wir wählen die Transparenz! Das letzte Mal, als wir hier zur Lage der Offenheit und Transparenz gesprochen haben, haben wir die Hoffnung geäußert, dass eines Tages alle Bundesländer ein IFG und jede Stadt ein Open-Data-Portal haben wird. Manche dieser Träume sind in Erfüllung gegangen, andere werden niemals Realität werden. Und doch, tief in der Seele der Open-Knowledge-Aktivistin ist der Wille stärker als der Zynismus!  Über die unermüdliche Arbeit der Community und die politischen Zusammenhänge, Strategien und Entwicklungen wollen wir in diesem Vortrag berichten!  Es geht um:  Informationsfreiheits- und Transparenzgesetze und neue Gerichtsurteile dazu E-Government-Gesetz Die Digitale Agenda Neue Projekte rund um Open Data und vieles mehr! Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com

Room: Stage 3Sarah T. Roberts, Max Hoppenstedt, Christiane Benner, Steven HillThe less glamorous side of working digitally looks less rosy: a return to laissez- faire industrial working conditions, insufficient social safety nets and subjugation to maximum efficiency. In this panel, we will look at the partially hidden world of the Mechanical Turks, who strive to keep the internet the way we, as users, know it - free from barriers and interferences. However, similar to the early Labor movement there are aspirations among digital workers to organise. This panel will address questions posed to labor markets and capitalism concerning new forms of labour: How does Clickworking change the immaterial working world How did the first members of Mechanical Turks come together in digital spaces? How can we build a fair system in the future? In which fields of work is Clickworking possible, useful, ethical? What are its prerequisites?   In cooperation with Hans-Böckler-Stiftung. Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com

Room: Stage 3Stephan KasulkeMost enterprises and individuals are excited about the new opportunities in the age of digitization and the Internet of Things. Everything is already or will be software based - factories, hospitals, railway stations, telephony, vehicles, air control to name just some. And even in the private life, pupils can't do their homework anymore without a working internet connection. However, with this mega trend also the total dependency of every individual on a 24/7 working telecommunication and IT is growing massively. What happens with autonomous cars, it the IT doesn't work? A traffic jam? Or worse?   Presented by T-Systems. Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com

Room: Stage 8 Anwen Roberts, Jens Ohlig The enclosure movement was a process in Great Britain that did away with collectively owned and managed land and privatized it, which started in the 16th century and was completed by the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The end of the commons is often regarded as the beginning of capitalism. Our talk is a parable (featuring fun facts about sheep) on how we can see this enclosure movement today on the Internet. Will the Open Web be cut up into little privatized plots and allotments? Who are today's landlords? Is Internet.org a wolf in sheep's clothing? Are we in the middle of a transformation that is irreversible? We'll look at examples of how the commons is eroded – from Net Neutrality to copyright-wing extremism and sheep farming in Farmville.    Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com

Room: Stage 1Laura Sophie Dornheim, Peter SundeThe first online ad aired on HotWired in 1994. It generated click-through rates of about 40 percent, and it allowed content producers to earn money - just like they did with print advertising. A little more than 20 years later, click-through rates dropped to an average of 0.06 percent. It’s neither a surprise nor a revelation to say that users are annoyed with 30-second preroll video ads and pop-ups. Annoying ads are ubiquitous, almost useless and sometimes even nefarious.. The effect? Advertising generates less and less money for the content creators, who try to compensate by putting up ads that are bigger, louder and blinkier than ever before … in an attempt to grab the attention of their readers. But no one goes to a site to see the ads – we all go for the content.. So when ads got too obnoxious, some users decided to block them all together. Many publishers see that as cheating: they create great content and display it for free, but they don’t see a dime from users with adblockers... Adblock Plus decided to facilitate a compromise with the "Acceptable Ads" feature. Based on user-generated criteria, nonintrusive ads are whitelisted and bring back some revenue for the publishers without upsetting users. Flattr tried another approach, enabling users to directly pay for content they liked. As soon as a content creator and a user have Flattr accounts, it doesn't take more than one click to make such a micropayment. But neither approach quite solved the riddle. When the two teams met each other, perhaps lamenting the broken Internet over a beer somewhere, they realized that they share a common agenda: empowering web users and creating a sustainable solution for great content. So they started to work together to find a real solution, something that blazed new trails, rather than retreading the same old tired solutions. Wanna see what they came up with?   Presented by eyeo. Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com

Room: Stage 1Aric TolerThe conflict in eastern Ukraine was the first European war fought with the ubiquitous presence of the internet. With this war came a deluge of information, giving rise to dozens of amateur sleuths who compiled photographs and videos from social media to form coherent narratives. What may seem like an overwhelming amount of information that confuses narraties is what drives these new analysts, where all you need to be successful is a keen eye, Google Earth, and a Wordpress site. These citizen journalists and analysts work from every side of the conflict -- pro-Russian, pro-Ukrainian, neutral, and everything in between. This talk will profile some of these individuals and groups, looking at how they use available information in Ukraine and Syria to build narratives and verify--or in some cases, misrepresent--information for their own ends.  Two of Bellingcat's efforts to collect and crowdsource the verification of available photographic and video evidence will also be detailed. In one initiative, Bellingcat has used CheckDesk, a crowdsourced verification platform, and Silk, a data visualization platform, to collect, verify, and present data regarding Russian and Ukrainian military vehicles involved in the ongoing war. In the other, Bellingcat uses the same two platforms to collect information on airstrikes from U.S.-led coalition forces and the Russian military in Iraq and Syria. This Syria/Iraq airstrike project looks to verify the locations of the strikes, determine the true target of the strike (for example, when an "oil refinery" is actually a water treatment plant), and, if possible, determine how many civilian casualties were reported. Ideally, traditional newsrooms will adopt some of these techniques in their own reporting methods, valuing the collection and verification of undertapped social media evidence to discover trends and tell another perspective in important events. Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com

Room: Stage 2Geoffroy de Lagasnerietba Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com

Room: Stage 3Jürgen Knirsch, Stefan Krug, Volker GassnerSeit Jahrzehnte setzen sich Millionen von Menschen gemeinsam mit Organisationen wie Greenpeace für hohe Umwelt- und Verbraucherschutzstandards ein, etwa gegen Gentechnik in pflanzlichen Lebensmitteln oder für eine Kennzeichnungspflicht bei Kosmetika. Wie sehr die daraus entstandenen fortschrittlichen europäischen Standards durch die laufenden Verhandlungen in Gefahr sind, zeigt die Veröffentlichung von #TTIPleaks. Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com

Room: Stage 2Thomas Lohninger, Barbara van Schewick, Cathleen BergerThe SaveTheInternet.eu coalition has been following the net neutrality legislation in Europe since the early beginnings. After the European Parliament decided in October 2015 to adopt ambiguous rules on net neutrality the decision about the future of the internet is now left to the regulators and judges. Europe finds itself at the end of a two year legislative process, but in some ways were are almost were we started.  This talk will explain how citizens can have a say in the upcoming BEREC consultation about the new net neutrality rules in Europe. We will highlight the dangers and hopes for the internet of tomorrow.  Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com

Room: Stage 2 Renata Avila, Joana Varon, Nanjira Sambuli, Alan Mills Never before a small sector had so much power over the entire World, to monitor the present and predict not only future behaviours of individuals but entire populations. The problem is more alarming when we consider how the two sectors are merging in joint ventures, in a quest of global domination, penetrating every government, every citizen movement, mediating every act of any connected person’s life. Beyond tensions of privacy and security, the alarming tension whose emergence we are witnessing is the one between control and freedom, not only of the individual, but of entire populations and regions. And this is indeed affected by regional and global politics. Some criticise it as a form of “digital colonialism[1]” But very few countries, outside those who had to react in time to the threats out of necessity[2] or lack of alternatives, seem aware about this new form of dominance, which is very seemless, without exercising any violence at all, but at a deep and exponential increase we never ever witness. Our talk will adress such concerns and offer a path to develop national and local Digital Sovereignty strategies.    [1] Knowledge Commons. “Digital colonialism and the Internet as a tool of cultural hegemony” http://www.knowledgecommons.in/brasil/en/whats-wrong-with-current-internet-governance/digital-colonialism-the-internet-as-a-tool-of-cultural-hegemony/ [2] See Radhika Miller. Cuba rejects Windows, opts for technological sovereignty. Liberation. (2009) https://www.liberationnews.org/09-02-20-cuba-rejects-windows-opts-techn-html/ N.A. Influenced by restrictions imposed by the US embargo and language barriers.  Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com