Meliorism treats salvation as neither inevitable nor impossible. It treats it as a possibility, which becomes more and more of a probability the more numerous the actual conditions of salvation become.

- William James [1]

Introduction

This new category, created in June 2006, will focus on proposals to promote the P2P, Open/Free, and Commons-related agenda, in the existing political and institutional systems.

The P2P Foundation supports the emerging Coalition of the Commons, the Commons Network and is sympathetic to the proposals of the Pirate Party.

These pages will also include records on activist campaigns.

Policy Proposals

Charles Leadbeater on Three Key Policy Reforms for Mass-based Innovation

Capabilities in the information age. Philippe Aigrain

Challenges of the Global Information Society. Pekka Himanen.

Howard Gardner proposes a Cap on Inequality

Some Proposals for Patent Reform

Regarding Free Software

Why Software Should Not Have Owners, by Richard Stallman.

Free Software for the Whole World, by Hipatia.

In French

1. Philippe Aigrain on a new policy for the information age
2. The Levy report Economie de l’Immatériel

Region-specific

Europe

List of European Policy Consultants

Study on the Economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector in the EU

The Open Society Institute on User Rights, Copyright and DRM in the EU

South

Salvador Declaration of Open Access for Developing Countries

Open Access for Developing Countries

Selected Policy Resources

Political wiki initiatives that accommodate people with diverse political views:

1. Debatepedia, http://debatepedia.org/
2. Campaigns Wikia, http://campaigns.wikia.com/wiki/Campaigns_Wikia
3. Open Politics Canada, http://www.openpolitics.ca/

Support for Social Web project

Digital Pioneers, Netherlands

The Netculture Labs of the OS Alliance, Austria

Citations

Josef Stiglitz, on why drug patents are costing lives:

"Knowledge is like a candle, when one candle lights another it does not diminish its light.' In medicine, patents cost lives. The US patent for turmeric didn't stimulate research, and restricted access by the Indian poor who actually discovered it hundreds of years ago. 'These rights were intended to reduce access to generic medicines and they succeeded.' Billions of people, who live on $2-3 a day, could no longer afford the drugs they needed. Drug companies spend more on advertising and marketing than on research. A few scientists beat the human genome project and patented breast cancer genes; so now the cost of testing women for breast cancer is 'enormous." (http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/333/7582/1279)