[-empyre-] art+|copyright|+money within the digital.nets

[Luka Princic <nova@skylined.org>]

hi.

a modest opinion from 'open audio' musican.

while i appreciate the posibility to talk about the copyright
issues and the conditions in which artists might find
themselves in the net.creativity void with antoanetta -
copyright officer, i think the discussion here evolves around
a bit more basic issues. which i find logical as they are the
ones i think are bothering a lot of us who work trough this
digital medium.

for me it was a pleasure to read Jeff's mail to which i agree
completely. i too believe that work/creativity should be and
in many cases is "driven" and "not paid". while i can
recognise and appreciate any other decision towards 'paid
cultural work' and working with goals to be recognised by
institutions and [oh, not again!] "art world", paid by state
that has the responsibility to provide equality and democracy
to each and everyone, i'm much more interested in creative
environments where all these issues are almost completely put
aside and overcome. and i'm quite sure i'm not the only one. 

i think that the whole open source and free software
movements are quite good proof that that kind of attitude can
actually work on quite large scales. i would also maybe point
to the fact (to which i was pointed at at R. Barbrook's
inspiring lecture) that the net was developed by scientists
with scientists' needs in mind: to share knowledge and to
quote and link (appropriate?). which is the property of
tcp/ip - The Protocol. :)

although the issues with copyright today are a tight and huge
knot - a conglomerate of number of issues - technical,
ethical, economic - i'll try to not digress too much.

i think copyright has become such an issue these days because
of a clash of two, in my opinion, oposing notions: creativity
and money/capital with great help of mentioned property of
net. this digital medium in its basic architecture is
concieved to avoid any obstacle - eg: servers down. because
tcp/ip protocol is the basic language of hardware we use
(network cards, operating systems, modems, routers) to be and
work on the Network, it is almost imposible to censor or in
any way restrict the 'flow' of information. and i won't
mention the pricelessness of copying, i think we all thought
about it thouroughly enough. 

this somehow all explains the dotcom bubble and the huge
amount of effort of industry to incorporate restrictions on
digital hardware devices which would consequentialy result in
playing/using/creating 'unapproved' non-copyrighted content
illegal.

in this context it is easy to see those two oposing extremes
who each fight for it's own 'rights' and 'freedoms'. or
should i rather say 'privileges'. in this clash and fur
flying around it's not easy to stay indifferent for someone
who wants to be creative and would like to render any sense
from what is going on. furthermore i think it's quite
understandable to stand on 'free,free,free' side and preach
nothing but 'fight for freedom'. which i think now is almost
the same elitist extreme as being on the side of corporate
monopolism and money driven economies.

this might seem quite far from main theme of current empyre
discussion, but here's my point: under bombardment with all
these clashes and furious battles between freedom fighters
and capital fighters a creative artist can quickly forget
that all is about creativity and expression and starts limit
itself by tools that are only from one side of the
battlefield. that's why i liked jeff's post: it puts all of
the polarities aside and calls for 'driven' work.

while i think that copyright law as it is cannot be patched
and applied to digital.networked creative space to
succesfully and properly protect intelectual property of
those who want it to be protected anyway, i believe the fight
between copyright and copyleft _attitude_, sharing and
restricting, free and proprietary should not render one's
reality to a limited toolbox in the name of one side of the
same coin.


just a subjective not-enough-indepth flow of thoughts from
slovenia-based musician currently in uk's capital.


ll.


 luka "nova" princic 
 nova at skylined.org | @beeblebrox:lndn | http://skylined.org
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 Only let the moving waters calm down, and the sun
  and moon will be reflected on the surface of your being. 
						  - Rumi