[Updated: December 22, 2005]
Introduction.-
The mere mentioning of this book’s title makes people nervous. Many people, very nervous. Why?
It is a common case of behavioral conditioning. For well over three hundred years we (the people) have been told that we can not copy other people’s intellectual creations, and that doing so, specially especially for profit, is punished by the law.
But WHY?
There are many books that explain the coming about of “intellectual property” laws. I would personally recommend (for that particular subject), Lawrence Lessig’s excellent “Free Culture”.
Clear as it is that those laws came about to provide an artificial and arbitrary monopoly for publishers, we should be revising (or even derogating) those laws, since our “advanced” societies reject interference in the free market model of economy, and monopolies are particularly targeted as a very dangerous and damaging institution. Yet we are not only not doing so, but we are allowing big multinational corporate lobbies and uninformed (or even corrupt) politicians to make even more stringent provisions to those laws, against public interest, market well being, diversity, and even civil liberties.
Why?
Even more, paradigm changes brought about by the digital and networked society have created a bigger split between the old and the possible ways of doing business with, of accessing, and even of creating culture. Yet those most directly involved oppose most attempts to try to adjust to the new reality and even to make even more profit from it.
Why?
And in the meantime citizens, customers, voters, people all around the world contemplate passively (for the most part) how their rights are eroding, and how their possibility of accessing more and more diverse and better culture is becoming less and less due to those laws, even when technology allows them otherwise. It is as if a kidnapped victim, upon liberation, and when shown the light of the open door, shook his head in disbelief and decided not to move.
Why?
We, all of us, are risking the future and pace of human knowledge and culture advancement. The stakes are high, very high, and they have nothing (or little) to do with money. It is our future, our values, and our society (complete with freedoms and rights) what is at stake here. But when someone tries to force the debate and pressure the media, politicians, industry and creators to have a meaningful and constructive debate, he or she is chastised. From peer support negation to community discredit, media harassment, legal threats, and even loss of job, I should know. I have suffered all that and more because of my outspoken attitude towards this problem (I will now not call it “debate”, since there is no debate happening right now). But I will not cease in my attempt to bring this issue to the public awareness and to make politicians accept that a new way of tackling these issues is not only possible but most desirable.
Yet, instead of writing a book pointing to all the problems that we are suffering today regarding “intellectual property”, and explaining all those “why”, I will go one necessary step forward and write one more thing about the needed change:
HOW.
