Despite the -12C  temperatures, piles of snow and traffic being ground to a complete halt in Kiev, we still had some 80 people making it to the meeting!

You can see the photos of the event in the kiev gtug picassa album and the presentation was recorded as well (skip ahead 30 seconds to get to the English part:):

While this is by and aimed at Spain, the threat to the legal system that they are responding to is also taking place in many European countries and there is even talk of a pan Europe-America proposal that unifies this across the different territories.

The declaration and thoughts in it are powerful and universal enough that I felt it was more then worth re-posting it here:

1 .- Copyright should not be placed above citizens’ fundamental rights to privacy, security, presumption of innocence, effective judicial protection and freedom of expression.

2 .- Suspension of fundamental rights is and must remain an exclusive competence of judges. This blueprint, contrary to the provisions of Article 20.5 of the Spanish Constitution, places in the hands of the executive the power to keep Spanish citizens from accessing certain websites.

3 .- The proposed laws would create legal uncertainty across Spanish IT companies, damaging one of the few areas of development and future of our economy, hindering the creation of startups, introducing barriers to competition and slowing down its international projection.

4 .- The proposed laws threaten creativity and hinder cultural development. The Internet and new technologies have democratized the creation and publication of all types of content, which no longer depends on an old small industry but on multiple and different sources.

5 .- Authors, like all workers, are entitled to live out of their creative ideas, business models and activities linked to their creations. Trying to hold an obsolete industry with legislative changes is neither fair nor realistic. If their business model was based on controlling copies of any creation and this is not possible any more on the Internet, they should look for a new business model.

6 .- We believe that cultural industries need modern, effective, credible and affordable alternatives to survive. They also need to adapt to new social practices.

7 .- The Internet should be free and not have any interference from groups that seek to perpetuate obsolete business models and stop the free flow of human knowledge.

8 .- We ask the Government to guarantee net neutrality in Spain, as it will act as a framework in which a sustainable economy may develop.

9 .- We propose a real reform of intellectual property rights in order to ensure a society of knowledge, promote the public domain and limit abuses from copyright organizations.

10 .- In a democracy, laws and their amendments should only be adopted after a timely public debate and consultation with all involved parties. Legislative changes affecting fundamental rights can only be made in a Constitutional law.

The announcement:

Strengthen your blog’s community: Google Friend Connect now available for Wordpress

And the installation guide is available at: http://code.google.com/p/wp-gfc/wiki/Installation

It’s not often I get to speak at a conference in my home country, The Netherlands, we just don’t have that many of them! So you can imagine I’m quite thrilled to be speaking at the Kings Of Code in Amsterdam June 30th. I’ll be covering the what the social web means, how OpenSocial can be used in this context, and touch on the various development methods like gadgets, REST API’s, Friend Connect and oh, I’ll cover Shindig too of course.

So if you’re in Amsterdam June 30th, I hope to see you there!

Update: Here’s the slides of the presentation