David Bowie - Golden Years

Inspiring lyrics from the original Gaga

Abstract/Conclusion

The way public policy and the industry are trying to protect IP rights is at the moment still largely based upon the paradigm of the hard-code media. Not only is the effectivity of this strategy to ‘break’ the duplicating functionality of the web doubtful at best, where it is effective it will at the same time limit the possibility of people to share free-license information and to cooperate internationally with large outreach. The very essence that - in my opinion - makes the Internet such a wonderful and (historically) unique system. This is why I oppose the current anti-piracy policies.

Intelectual property was never really protected

In earlier times, all information was stored on hardcode-media. Meaning that the production of a new object was needed to be able to copy information. For example, a book had to be printed, a vinyl record had to be pressed.

At the dawn of domestic information storage devices (starting somewhere at the tape recorder), new objects didn’t need to be created anymore to copy. For example: a song could be copied from the radio onto a mixtape. This allowed for the first large increase of IP right violation, quickly followed by the first modern anti-piracy campaign.

Though, the scale of the unlegitimate duplication of information was still modest as copying was still (relatively) work- and time intensive, and the template file had to be in geographical proximity of the new medium to be copied (except for radio-tape copying, but therein was no choice of what to copy; you’d rely on the radio company and on good timing).

The advent of the personal computer further declined the number of actions and amount of time needed to duplicate electronic files, and with the onset of the Internet and various internet protocols/programs, such as Napster and eventually BitTorrent, the boundary between knowledge and object seized to exist.

The point to be made here is that public policy cannot protect IP as a concept on it self, it can only govern the production of goods (products) based upon protected IP. As the difference between the product and the information vanishes, so does the grip of public policy to control IP rights violations.

The internet is a seamless medium on itself, used by nearly everyone in one way or another that clashes with IP regulation. The most conventional way for public policy to address this problem is to stop the duplicating activities of the Internet, which can only be accomplished by shutting down the duplicating functionality of the Internet. Something which – how ridiculous as it sounds - is happening as we speak, with the shutdown of sites like MegaUpload, Fileshare and the conviction of the owners of Pirate Bay.
Public policy is in fact still using the metaphor of ‘a criminal business producing illegal DVD copies in its garage’. The fact that this metaphor has been stretched to encompass the entire online population’s activities on the Web as ‘the criminal business’ and the Internet as the ‘garage stocked with copying equipment’ is irrelevant in this case.

As big a shame as it might be that our ability to copy copyrighted material is being taken away from us, it sounds still honest in the ears of most people. And I for one couldn’t really care that much if tomorrow I couldn’t download new music anymore, how ever much I love (new) music.
Yes, there is the issue of big corporations making all the money and the artists making only very little, the discussion that information should be free for all, and the conviction that trying to control the breach of IP rights is just another form of censorship. All these things don’t really matter that much as this is the way it has always been.

The problem arises when someone wants to share its own material, its own free-license work on sites such as Megaupload or Fileshare.

There were millions of links to free-license files on Megaupload and Fileshare that (for a big part) make the Internet such an amazing place. These files can no longer be accessed.

At the moment this legal sharing functionality of the Web is being paralysed by the actions of IP right regulation, and signs tell us this is only the beginning. The actions of the IP regulation will, at the present moment and in the future, – to a greater or lesser degree - destimulate proactive sharing and cooperating on the Web and stimulate ‘couch potato’ behavior. As elaborated upon by Clay Shirkey:

http://www.ted.com/talks/defend_our_freedom_to_share_or_why_sopa_is_a_bad_idea.html

“I find my guard is down, the perpetual buzz of frustration and fear is gone. Perhaps because no business I’ve entered has been founded on a need to expand to fifty outlets by next year. No staff member has been primed to manipulate more sales from me than I intended to give. No cameras suggest I might flee without paying. No signs warn that I’m about to be affronted in a way liable to make me resort to threats, violence or abusive language. No unit of my space or time has been seized under a philosophy that the tiny fraction of people who respond by weakness or mistake to a trick are a valuable target group.

That work of bacteria in suits, involved in nothing but the business of themselves and of human decay, seems largely absent here.

I’m not part of a sales curve.
I’m not presumed a thief or a fool.
And a coffee’s not a lifestyle choice.
It’s a coffee.”

- Protagonist talking about his experience of Berlin. 

I don’t know whether the place described is real, or whether the writer (or the protagonist) is just basing this observation on drug-rigged perception, but it sounds to me like heaven.

This book is very special, not everybody will enjoy it, but there are some pure gems in there. I will post more snippets from the book as I progress.

OBLIGATORY!

Contrary to the suggestions of this blog, I really do love my dum-dum.

21st century Confucius