Is it copyright or copy right that will give our culture and our mind freedom?

I will say that some kind of ownership and patent rights have gone oversteer! Yesterday products were patented, currently processes are patented, which leads to that tomorrow will our lives and patterns, i.e., what you can do or not do to, be patented. In short, this means that the ownership mechanism has come to a dead end. It’s okay to own the rights to a product or a service, but to owe the rights to a process touching an absurdity and is a frightening evolution. What will happen tomorrow then? Will life itself or breathing air be patented! I cannot see what is not going to be patented, and thus is both complete absurd and undemocratic, and also an utopia, both in the ownership and usage perspective. Who will control it? And what is the penalty if I breathe “unapproved” air in a “non-approved” field for example? No copyright gives freedom!

An interesting theory emerged from a German historian 2010 involving Germany vs. England in the 19th century. In England there was copyright laws that led to monopolistic restrictions and high prices of intellectual material, which then automatically were restricted to the nobility. In Germany were vast amounts of knowledge spread at low prices and to large populations, because they had no copyright laws! This lead to that more people received training and knowledge, and thus, the industrial boom in Germany was a fact! The absence of laws gave the Germans freedom!

Another very interesting perspective comes from China and is about copyright vs. copy right, comes from a discussion with a young designer, that can’t understand how Westerners do not understand that all and everybody copy all and everybody! In China, it’s about doing it right, to develop it right, to copy it right. All development leads forward. To copy right gives freedom!

Additional interesting area is the social media landscape. The “new” media has moved the ownership from the individual to the public, some argue. Others say that as soon as the “capital” understood the mechanisms, they will be at full speed to take the lead again. Who is right? Today the social media landscape is a quagmire in ownership terms. As a new player on an old field, the majority of the players (the old) don’t understand the power and possibilities of the new. Likewise, the social media landscape is a perfect symbol of a social anthropological description: a number of enthusiasts and techies will find new opportunities, some innovators find the idea and inform the masses and also both sympathise and begin to use the option – the success is a fact and socially accepted. The democratisation of the new media landscape is bigger, wider, heavier and more powerful than any other “own”. Social media gave us freedom!

A very interesting question is what comes after the Pirate Bay (which turned 10 years the 10th august 2013). The Pirate Bay and its predecessors were some of the democratisation soldiers for developing, spread and give the culture freedom. The file-sharing culture had given us Spotify, Netflix and many, many more. File sharing gave us freedom!

Windup:

Above different democratisation processes led to development and freedom, while regulations were prohibitive. We are moving from a fairly homogeneous society to a total fragmented one, and media houses and various movements will exist side-by-side, sometimes working together, sometimes acting angry combatants. This fragmentation is postmodernism freedom in a nutshell, and the winner is the culture, because its liberated and is set free by several democratisation processes. Freedom for the culture.

This article is written by Claes Foxérus and was first published at Second Sight in 2013.