EPO Workers Can Also Help Techrights
Keep us strong, protect our ability to publish fearlessly. Help us pay for the server, which also serves Gemini, Git, IRC and more (the Web is a perishing platform). We don't do "clown computing"; we value privacy and control (self governance).
The EPO-centric and Europe-focused articles in Techrights are a lot of work and lots of risk, for all parties involved, including courageous sources (we too receive many threats all the time; we've lost count of how many). We sometimes help mainstream media cover those same issues, bringing those to light and reaching new audiences in languages other than English. No wonder EPO management is so afraid of Techrights. Readers in the know say that "almost everyone" at EPO reads Techrights.
This year the in-depth EPO coverage turns 10. We hope the hard work and risk (still taken every day) are appreciated. This site covers not only patent issues; it's even more to do with workers' rights, and not only in Europe. We stick the fingers in autocrats' eyes and prevent them censoring us (they try this all the time, always in vain, so we try to make them pay for it, as it deters further attempts).
Running the site isn't free. Nobody donates hosting to us. We have to pay for it, without any discounts (prices rose 20% this past December with a one-month prior warning/notice), and we've converted every page (refinements still underway) to our own page management system, a static system, in order to lower costs.
Longevity of information will depend on simplicity (lessening dependencies) and total operational cost, which isn't limited to energy and space consumption. We don't outsource. We encrypt anything we can. We maintain as much control as is feasible on the Net. We don't have our own private ISP and datacentre, so it'll never be optimal. It's a networked world. We must network.
EPO workers who want to support the site or help cover the hosting bills (i.e. the cost of transmitting pages/videos to visitors) can do so anonymously/discreetly. Techrights is pro bono but is open to donations from people, whose identity it keeps strictly secret. Confidentiality is necessary for sites like ours. I wrote about this 14 years ago after the site had published 10,000 articles (we're at well over 40,000 now). Since leaving my job I do this 'full-time' (or double full time, over 80 hours per week), so any little helps.
Our goal is simple: Explain what goes on. Take on suppressed issues, i.e. issues that other sites and people won't cover or are reluctant to even touch. We limit ourselves to issues we understand well. █
“Injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”
--Martin Luther King Jr.
