Re: [DMCA-Activists] Re: Eric Grimm re: Zittrain: Call Off the Copyright War

[Horror Vacui]

Richard Stallman wrote:

> As for whether people will write without pay, we do not need to
> speculate that they will.  In the Free Software community there are
> half a million people who volunteer to write free software.  There are
> also at least hundreds who are paid to write free software--paid, that
> is, without preventing people from copying and redistributing what
> they write.  After just 3 years, the free encyclopedia Wikipedia is
> now 1/3 the size of the Encyclopedia Britannica.  At least in the area
> of works that are used to a job, we know now that restricting users
> from sharing is simply unnecessary.

I can't help wondering that this is used as an argument at all. Probably 
it takes to be a lawyer not to blush when, again, on behalf of copyright 
raiders, you have to argue that people wouldn't write, sing, paint, 
dance, photograph etc. if they weren't paid for it. On the other hand I 
don't know about the workings of something I'd call "incorporated minds" 
- weirder things are happening, possibly some of them even believe it.

I find this argumentation, besides other things, to be an insult to the 
mankind. Those people obviously consider us all sheep who can be steered 
conveniently by the principle of stick and carrot: take away the carrot, 
and they'll just revert to their plant-like existance, with as much 
incentive to do anything except eat, sleep and breed as a rain-worm. 
They are claiming to be the maecenas, a kind of common-interest 
organisation for the benefit of the humanity that just happens to earn 
money thanks to some obscure side-effect. Hardly ever you can hear them 
talking about profits, shareholder value, return of investment - the 
things one expects to hear (and find nothing objectionable about) from a 
multinational corporation, it's always about "providing revenue channels 
for artists", "defending the interests of the creative", "providing 
incentive to creativity" and other slogans sounding nice enough to be 
taken up by a broader mass, or parroted by those who have an interest 
into things staying the way they are. Almost any debate on the subject 
tends to be not only idiotic, but also thoroughly detestable, because to 
defend your standpoint you have to deal with your adversary's arguments; 
the sole attempt to do so sometimes makes me feel as if I were covered 
with dung all over. I can't really speak freely on the subject. Alone 
thinking about it can sometimes leave me enraged and speechless, 
helplessly wondering whether nearly everybody except myself is insane 
for discussing it in this way, not seeing the blatantly obvious. This, 
of course, is one of the symptoms of a zealot. Zealots differ from 
"normal persons" in their lack of self-reflection, and in the lack of 
interest to analyse the situation in more depth than necessary to 
surface efficient arguments to prove their standpoint. Trying against 
odds to be just a normal person, I've against all reluctance tried to 
find arguments in their favour - without much success.

The argument of "defending the interests of the creative" as a primary 
motive of the copyright raiders can be done away with without 
discussing, whether it figures among the motives at all can for the sake 
of fairness be discussed, but it's deceptive (and as I said above, 
disgusting). What really needs to be discussed is the overall situation: 
what are the effects, what's desirable, what's beneficial.

First of all: money IS an incentive to "be creative" - the argument is 
technically correct. If you have some talent and see a chance to make 
money out of it, you'll probably go for it, and there's nothing in the 
world speaking against that. If the talent were the sole measure of how 
much money you can make, there'd be nothing wrong with earning huge 
amounts of money with it. This is where this kind of "incentive" gets to 
be a problem: it's cumulative. Enough money to pay the rent is the 
incentive to work, lots of money is a huge incentive - enough to make 
many people do anything, virtually anything - steal, rob, murder, cheat. 
Or do something similarly gruesome, make music for instance. The fact is 
that this incentive - money - has become practically the only one, not 
to be "creative", but to create marketable content. Those who benefit 
from companies "providing revenue channels for the creative" are, almost 
as a rule, not worth it, nor they are creative. The darwinist workings 
of modern world have soaked through into nearly everything, you have to 
be successful to survive, and since it's ultimately about companies, the 
sole measure of success is money: overturn, return of investment, stocks 
value, shareholder value, blah. Now transfer this principle to something 
like music. To survive on the "music market" you need something that 
will sell widely; what will sell widely is something that sufficiently 
satisfies the taste of as many people as possible; what satisfies the 
taste of the majority is usually the lowest common denominator - all 
this can be summed up in a single word: mediocrity.

"But there is still place for real artists", someone might argue. Surely 
the industry has enough money to allow themselves to publish something 
that won't sell so well, simply as a service to the society? This kind 
of thing has happened earlier - it was not at all unusual for a 
publisher to have two separate lines, one for the profit, and one for 
the soul. But nowadays, it has become a rough world. Publishing is not 
any more in the hands of enthusiasts that also happen to be good 
businessmen, who would allow a part of their capital to return less than 
maximum in order to have a good book out. The market is so competitive 
that even something that you can make money with is considered a loss if 
it doesn't match the return of investment in other fields - non-related 
fields. Put before a choice between Britney Spears and, say, Nirvana, 
the record companies not only would take Britney Spears, they'd also 
attempt to create ten of her kind rather than "making a loss" with 
Nirvana, which is really a net gain but - compaired with software 
industry, for instance - simply not enough.  The only way real artists - 
like Nirvana, for example - can succeed is if they  "happen"; if they 
happen, they create an excellent profit but it's unpredictable. Quality 
does sell, but it takes a great amount of luck to get to that point and 
even then it doesn't sell as predictably well as rubbish. Nevertheless, 
Nirvana was a success - you'd perhaps expect the record companies to 
have learnt a lesson, to risk a bit and give a chance to similarly 
"unlikely to succeed" bands, introduce more diversity. No, they called 
it grunge, hyped it and tried to create ten another Nirvanas. They can't 
see beyond their nose - and we let the blind lead us.

Copyright industry provides incentive - to the wrong people. Artists, 
the real ones, are a bad investment. Their primary (sometimes the only) 
interest is the art they're creating and they won't let themselves be 
controlled easily (provided they have any success this side the grave). 
They follow the dictate of the art: a successful novelist will suddenly 
start writing plays or poetry, a top-photographer will start drawing, a 
rock star will start writing operas, they'll cut an ear off, pump 
themselves full with drugs and die, blow their brains out or simply stop 
doing anything because they lack inspiration. Generally, they won't care 
about deadlines, profits, marketing investment, they'll do what they 
think is right and often enough won't even give a damn about what the 
publicum - targeted consumers - expect from them. How much better is 
someone who's in it for the money! If you have a cute puppet to sing 
meaningless lyrics written by some nameless slave to tunes from some 
other nameless slave, if he/she will follow coreographer's and 
director's instructions to create a perfect soft-porn video, if he/she 
can (nonwithstanding being the incarnation of sin on the stage) play the 
role of a decent youth so moms and dads will approve, there's little 
that can go wrong. If some nameless slave decides he'd rather paint than 
make music, you can sack him and employ another one, even if the puppet 
goes bananas (really starts to believe to be an artist, for instance), 
it's easily interchangeable - you have the same team work with a new 
puppet and fill out the gap seamlessly.

Oh, yes, they provide incentive. To produce soulless soul imitations. To 
breed gangsta rappers trying to shock the audience with what's been a 
commonplace for ages, using a contractually set number of "unfit" words. 
Tenors providing alibi-material for those who'd like to believe or make 
believe they like classical music. Young naive girls to please young 
naive girls, dirty old men, dirty young men and the moms of the world 
alike, all for different and uncompatible reasons. Novels whose only 
substance is suspense. Films so meaningless and silly that anybody from 
a 5 year old to his half-blind grandmother will sit through it and have 
a scene to tell about afterwards. Films consisting entirely of 
special-effects with a sprinkling of sujet as an excuse. Singers who 
can't sing, musicians who can't make music, actors that can't act and 
writers that have nothing to say. And, annually, yet another boy-band.

What would we have without this incentive? For instance, more ugly 
musicians. Has it ever occurred to you that "musicians" nowadays nearly 
all look like models? Looks have nothing to do with musical talent, yet 
you hardly ever get to see a normal-looking or outright ugly person - 
which are at least 90% of humanity - in the concerned media. If you do, 
it'll very likely be at least tolerable music that you're hearing (for 
example: Missy Elliot, Moby, Björk, Tricky...) Without the big money, 
the criteria of success would return to what they once were - and what 
they ought to be. Personally, I like musicians that can make music, 
actors that can act, writers that can write and have something to say, 
and porn stars that are sexy, but none of these qualities has any 
business outside their own category. I might buy a porn video featuring 
Sylvia Saint, but I don't see why I should see a movie featuring, or a 
CD by Jennifer Lopez,  only because she gives me a... you get the 
picture. I'd be completely helpless if someone asked me to explain the 
success of Jennifer Lopez as actress or singer without mentioning her 
arse, as would probably be anyone else. Yet, thanks to the system the 
copyright raiders would like us to accept, she is an "actress" and a 
"singer". I think we can congratulate ourselves on having the industry.

Copyright in itself isn't at all a bad concept. The rights of authors 
should be preserved. Those who create something that others think worth 
the while should also be able to get a reward they deserve and wish, 
including a financial reward - after all, it takes money to keep body 
and soul together. The idea of copyright is noble. The current 
legislation, along with the "copyright industry" represents the n-th 
level of perversion of this idea, which doesn't prevent them from 
appealing on the common decency that makes people accept the idea. To 
the extent it works, this is a very effective tactics. While they're 
talking about "the artists", "the creative", they know that the wider 
public will miss the whole picture and sympathise with the romantic 
image of, say, a half-starved painter in a paris atelier, painting with 
cold-stiff fingers something that will be worth millions after his 
death. The industry also knows that the broader publicum has no idea 
that the system they're defending wouldn't help that poor painter 
either, because broader publicum wouldn't buy his pictures, and he 
probably wouldn't bother to sell more then absolutely necessary to 
appease the hunger and ban the cold. Their mission then would be to 
"provide a channel of revenue" to the half-talented painter who can 
produce a large amount of cute worthless landscapes and portraits that 
can be sold to the broader publicum. I think that one of the main 
missions of us zealots right now should be to bring the damage of 
industrialised exploitation of copyright to our culture to their 
attention. Copyright, the way it is now, is primarily a vehicle to make 
money, and secondly it chokes the genuinely artistic and creative by 
providing incentive to the wrong people and flooding the "market". Or 
rather covering it like ice covers a pool of water , locking out oxygen 
everywhere except for the fisher's hole.

People will write for free. They will write for free even if they're 
starving. They will do that because they're humans; it's in our nature. 
They will do that even if they know that nobody will read it, will ever 
know about them. It takes no incentive; creativity and artistic 
expression ARE, because we are.

I'm not taking the cynical standpoint that we can or should exploit 
these attributes (among the most admirable in men) without giving 
anything in return. People who would write even if they'll starve are 
usually those worth reading. If there's less of those who write only 
because of money, the former are less likely to starve because they 
might actually get through. If there's a way of distribution that 
doesn't have to guarantee at least n sold copies, anyone can write and 
publish a book - great writers and those who think they are - and the 
public can decide. In the moment, there's no system of rewarding the 
writer (or the translator), nor there is established system of publicity 
for internet-published works; but as soon the grip of copyright raiders 
weakens (that is, as soon as people notice that the real show is in the 
internet), something of sorts will come up. In the moment, something 
like this is nearly impossible. The copyright raiders still have a firm 
grip on us all, with the effect that no band, no singer, no writer, no 
filmmaker is "big" without having succeeded in the still monopolised 
media. The symbiotism of media companies is still a gigantic, well-oiled 
machinery of propaganda, it's running at high speed and can take some 
blows before loosing momentum. As long as it is there to tell you what 
you like, other channels of popularisation have little chance.

On the whole, the copyright industry are doomed. Once, as the media were 
difficult to produce and distribute, they had a function. Nobody 
questioned the necessity to pay for books, records and so on as long it 
was the only way of distribution - after all, you payed for something 
real, a thing that had to be produced by an intermediate instance. The 
more this is not the case, the more the copyright raiders have to cling 
to increasingly abstract concepts to justify their existance, and the 
more abstract the concepts are, the harder it gets to convince people of 
them. In not too long a time they'll have lost their raison d'etre, but 
that doesn't mean they'll disappear; they're doomed, but that doesn't 
mean they won't find a way to haunt the world afterwards. This is 
exactly what they're trying to achieve by "sponsoring" governments and 
"lobbying" for legislations: they're cementing their position before the 
foundations are gone. If we let them have their way, we all will suffer 
the consequences. The role of the governments (who were originally 
intended to serve the people's, not the money's interest) is detestable. 
The way everything is happening isn't good at all. As Umberto Eco said, 
respect of the laws, contrary to the popular belief, isn't secured by 
law enforcement, but by a broad consense. We pay taxes not because we'd 
have to go to jail otherwise, but because there's a consense that there 
are certain communal expenses that have to be shared. Models of 
societies and regulations can't be effectively and durably be dictated 
from above. In order to have a society based on families, you have to 
have a majority that is willing to identify with the model and behave as 
families: mothers, fathers and children. </eco-plagiarism> The copyright 
laws are rigid, but they're rapidly loosing the base. File sharing shows 
that people are not willing to play by the rules, committing happily 
what is technically a theft, but according to their common sense harms
nobody. Yes, it harms the industry, and it harms the "artists", but 
obviously they're refusing to be convinced of their necessity. The whole 
business has reached a fantastic level of abstraction, too abstract for 
the man on the street to understand it, wish to understand it or give a 
damn. They man on the street sees perfectly well that the "artists" he's 
allegedly harming still have enough money to buy his entire posessions 
thousands of times over, he sees that the music industry has enough 
money to hunt the Napsters of the world, pay enormous amounts of money 
for marketing and still make a mind-boggling profit - and he simply 
refuses to sympathise. The people have discovered sharing, and they like 
it. The broad consensus is not on the side of lawmakers and their 
"sponsors". They can make laws against the consensus, but by doing so, 
they're building up pressure.

The times are a-changing. The structures we had until now are no longer 
appropriate. Throughout the history, every significant technological 
progress has also entrained a revolution of sorts, because the old 
structures - economical and political - were overcome. The very 
significant techological progress of our days is the democratisation of 
distribution channels, the democratisation of information, and the 
thoroughly networked world. We're not isolated any more, we can 
cooperate across the globe, we can work on projects that benefit all, we 
are able to see the humanity as what it's always been: one whole, a 
global community, and there's no petty interests to stop us from 
participating, good will provided. I think there's a revolution ahead. 
From time to time we outgrow the world we've created for ourselves and 
have to change it, just like a snake does with its skin. The old 
regulations that were appropriate once are still beneficial for the 
ruling class, but the people feel they are unjust and opressive. The 
rulers of course won't cede their positions without resistance, they 
will try to keep the system, try to secure it with bolts, planks, duct 
tape and finally their own weight, so when finally the pressure blows 
the hatch, it blows them away too. Bang - a revolution. All past 
revolutions have been bloody and promised more than they fulfilled, but 
nearly all have brought at least some improvement. No revolution is a 
pleasant business (the Chinese curse someone by saying: "May you live in 
an interesting epoch"), but it's a highly necessary one. Let's hope we 
can manage it this time around without bloodshed.

Huh, that was long. What was it that I wanted to say again?

Oh, before I forget: this e-mail is copyrighted. You've read it, you owe 
me 10 euro. ;-)


Cheers
Horror Vacui

P.S. Richard, in case you're reading: Thanks for everything.