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The Future of Copyright 2.0 Contest is a part of Future of Copyright Project
supported by Trust for Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe

This book is available under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-Sha-

reAlike 3.0 Unported License (read more: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)
Published by Modern Poland Foundation, Warsaw 2013

Technical editor: Paulina Choromańska

Book design: Jakub Waluchowski
Typography: Marcin Koziej

Modern Poland Fundation

Marszalkowska St. 84/92 app. 125
00-514 Warsaw
tel/fax: +48 22 621-30-17
email: [email protected]

If you wish to support our projects, feel free to make a donation via our secure
online payment service: PLN [1] or USD [2] or direct payment account num-
ber: 59 1030 0019 0109 8530 0040 5685
Thank you for your support.

[1] https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=L2CLCXHZCWYJN
[2] https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=XVC8XD7DBGV6N
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

Dear readers!

It is our great pleasure to present the anthology of the second edition of the
Future of Copyright Contest organized by the Modern Poland Foundation.
These works have been selected by our jury: Beatriz Busaniche (Via Libre
Foundation, Wikimedia Argentina, University of Buenos Aires), Shun-Ling
Chen (University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law), Mike Linksvay-
er (Creative Commons, OpenHatch and Software Freedom Conservanc, Open
Definition Advisory Council) Joe McNamee (EDRi), Jérémie Zimmermann (La
Quadrature du Net) and Jarosław Lipszyc (Modern Poland Foundation).
We are proud to announce that the first prize goes to Talllama, the author
of A Penny for Your Thoughts As our jurors noticed:
“it is engagingly written and fun to read transposition of exactly
today’s copyright and debates (including wild mischaracterization)
into a future with mind uploading. The idea of having all our tho-
ughts fixed and therefore protected by copyright is a smart way of
showing how ridiculous the current situation is.”
Talllama and all competitors - thank you for your contribution to the copy-
right debate.
We would also like to thank everyone for crowd-funding the prize for the
winner via the Indiegogo [3] platform.
The picture used on the cover is a remix based on Leonardo da Vinci’s La-
dy with an Ermine and Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring (remix by
Radek Czajka, license: CC-BY-SA). The Modern Poland Foundation was in-
volved in the discussion with the Polish Ministry of Culture and National He-
ritage about the rights to use the image and the name of da Vinci’s painting.
Although Lady with an Ermine was painted even before the creation of the idea
of copyright and is in the public domain since the moment when it started to
function, one of the Polish foundations wanted to sell the rights to this pain-
ting. The Modern Poland Foundation publicly defended the right to re-use and
[3] http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/future-of-copyright-contest-2-0
 

remix this work of art.

You can find best works submitted to the first edition of The Future of Co-
pyright Contest here:
?iiT,ffT`rQFmHim`vXTHf2MfTm#HB+iBQMbf7mim`2@+QTv`B;?i@kyRkf

Enjoy!
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY
 

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 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY
 
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Timothy received the implant at age seven; his parents were envious.
”When I was his age, I had to learn to read by memorizing the sound of each
letter,” said his father.
”And remember doing math with a calculator?” his mother said, shaking her
head. ”You’re so lucky, Timothy.”
But all Timothy could think of was that his friend Jamie’s implant had twice
as much active memory and a massive molecular drive.
He didn’t tell his parents that he felt obsolete, though; now that he had been
connected, he understood why his parents couldn’t afford many nice real world
things.
Timothy smiled and rubbed the front of his skull, where a tiny shaven spot
could be felt just above his frontal cortex. ”I can’t wait to go play online for
real.”
”I remember the first time I went online…” his mother began. But Timothy
was too eager to listen to the rest of the story.
”I’m gonna go try it out,” he said.
”Alright. Be careful though.”
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

Timothy nodded vigorously. He sat down on the couch and closed his eyes.
As he connected to the internet, he felt his mother come over and run her
fingers through his hair, feeling the roughness of new skin.
”He’s growing so fast.”
He chose one of his favorite worlds, a fantasy world with towering islands
floating above a sea of clouds. The spawn point was at the brink of a sandstone
cliff. Cool wind washed over his skin, and he opened his mouth and tasted it
on his tongue.
He threw himself off the precipice and took flight. His hair blew into his eyes
and he gave a whoop of joy.
… But wait. There was one thing missing. He transformed himself into a win-
ged tiger. That was better.

Later that day he flew below the mist layer and landed in a garden of stran-
ge flowers. A young fairy was sitting in the ruffles of a dainty blue blossom,
brushing her nose with a pollen-covered stamen.
”Cool avatar,” she said.
”Thanks,” Timothy replied. ”Yours is nice too.”
”Let’s get to know each other.”
They exchanged an introductory archive of memories. Helen was his age,
but she lived in Australia.
”Wow, your mom bakes really good cookies. I could replay this memory all
day,” Helen said.
”Oh yeah. It’s my favorite.”
”Thanks for sharing it,” Helen said. She cocked her head at him. ”Hey, I know
where we can get more great recipes. Want to see?”
”Sure.”
Timothy followed her through the internet. Helen obviously had a faster im-
plant, and she often had to slow down for him and wait. It seemed like she was
taking a very roundabout route, and they passed through many odd-looking
 A PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS 

sites that he had never seen before. When he passed through each one, it was
like putting on a layer of clothes, until he felt he must be totally swathed from
head to foot.
In less than a microsecond they arrived. There was no visual representation
of the site except for an old wooden ship with black sails crossing a deep blue
ocean; otherwise, it was all pure thoughtfiles. There were a lot of ads.
”Here we are,” said Helen proudly.
Timothy interfaced with a search tool and used it to look for memories of
cookie recipes. 1, 972, 763, 408 results came up; he downloaded them all into
his implant enjoyed them 30, 000 at a pop — it took almost three seconds to go
through them all. When he was done, he gave a delicious sigh.
”That was great.”
Helen smiled. ”Do you like reading?”
”Yeah!”
He fired off another query and almost a trillion results popped up: ”Forty
Fun Facts About the Solar System, ””The New Chinese Bible, ””Matrices, 3rd
Ed., ””A Biography of John Locke, ””Romance on the Prairie,” and many, many
more. He downloaded them all and opened the first book to the first page. And
there he saw it. ”All rights reserved.”
Timothy stiffened. ”Uh oh.”
”What is it?”
”Helen… Are these files copyrighted?”
”Well, yes… but no one will know we accessed them,” she said. ”That’s why
I went through all the masks, so no one would know who we were.”
Timothy hastily deleted the books. ”We can’t just read books like this! It’s
piracy.”
”No one will catch us.”
”My mom and dad would get upset at me.” He sent her a copy of his anxiety.
”Well my dad says copyright is stupid,” Helen said, sending back an emotion
that was pitying yet vaguely contemptuous. ”He says anyone who won’t pirate
is a dummy.”
Timothy scowled at her. ”My dad says that piracy is stealing.”
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

”My dad and I have trillions of books and thoughts, so we know better than
you,” Helen said.
”No you don’t,” Timothy protested. ”We know plenty.”
”Okay then, how many books has your dad read?”
”Tons,” Timothy said. ”In fact, my uncle works for the Thought Industry
Association of America and he produces all the thoughts in the world.” (It was
something of an exaggeration, but he wanted to impress her.)
Helen’s eyes grew wide and her translucent wings fluttered. ”The TIAA?”
Timothy nodded proudly.
”I’m going home,” said Helen. She disappeared.
Timothy pouted at the spot where she had been standing. Then he shook off
the extra layers and went home too. He couldn’t quite bring himself to delete
the fresh, warm cookies.
”You should do exercise while you’re on the internet,” his mother said. ”It’s
not good to sit on the couch all day. When you go online next time, use the
treadmill.”

The treadmill started and Timothy began walking at a nice, easy pace of two
miles per hour. He recorded the motion of his right and left leg taking a single
step, then threw a loop around the action and set it to cycle for one hour. When
he was satisfied that everything was running smoothly, he headed onto the
internet.
His dad was waiting in the family’s virtual living room. It was much better
than the real living room; it had gilt wall paper and oil paintings and an oriental
carpet with intricate designs in it. The orchids in the ming vase on the side table
never died; the clownfish in the corner aquarium never needed food; and the
rug never needed grew dusty. Everything was much better than the real world.
”Did you see the news?” his dad asked. ”They shut down a big pirate site. It
happened last night.”
 A PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS 

His father sent him a picture of a very familiar ship with black sails. Timothy’s
mouth went dry with the taste of stolen cookies. He quickly ran a program to
keep his face innocuous.
”Oh?”
”About time,” his father said. ”Those thieves had practically the whole sum
of human knowledge up for anyone to download.”
”That’s rotten,” Timothy said.
”Some people think they have a right to be omniscient at the expense of ar-
tists and writers,” his father said, shaking his head. ”In my day, we called that
stealing.”
Timothy looked down at the carpet and traced the design with his finger.
Then he realized that he was copying it and stopped.
”It’s a war on creativity, that’s what it is,” his father continued. ”Why, I could
have pirated this whole house for nothing. Instead I paid a fair price to the
modeler who designed it —. 00031 coins.”
His mother materialized in her favorite chair and his father turned to her.
”Did you hear? They brought down the #2 pirate site in the world. The rin-
gleaders are getting a day of virtual confinement for every file they shared.
They’ll be in prison till the sun burns out. For whatever good it does.”
She looked annoyed. ”I suppose they’ve already been restored from backup.”
”I remember when criminals who were sent to prison stayed there.”
Timothy didn’t look up from the carpet. He stared hard at the pattern. ”Dad?.
.. What will happen to the people who downloaded stuff from the site?” He was
tempted to Google the answer instead of asking his father, but he was afraid
that the police would see his search and be suspicious.
”Hmm? Oh, nothing. If the police enforced thought-sharing strictly, they wo-
uld have to put everyone in jail.”
”Everyone?” Timothy asked, looking up.
His father crossed his legs and looked contemplative. ”Timothy, when you
read a book, do you share your thoughts about that book with anyone?”
”Of course,” said Timothy.
”Well, according to copyright law, that’s stealing. But no one knows it.”
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

”But why? I didn’t take anything.”

”But the person you shared your memory of the book with didn’t have to
read it for themselves, and so the writer didn’t get any money.”
”You share your memories of books with me,” Timothy protested.
”Only if I’ve bought an extra copy for you already,” his father said.
”Oh. I suppose…”
His father leaned forward. ”This of it this way, Tim — suppose you had a re-
ally cool dream, and you wanted to sell it on Amazon.
But then suppose you shared your dream with a friend, and they took it and
gave it away to everyone on the internet for free — without paying you any-
thing for it. That wouldn’t be very nice, would it?”
”No…”
”Or suppose you had an interesting thought, and a hacker broke into your
mind and stole it. Then everyone in the world would be able to think your
thought without giving you a microcoin.”
Timothy nodded, his heart sinking.
”The problem is that no one realizes they’re doing anything wrong,” said his
father. ”They think it’s just harmless ’sharing.’”
”So what if someone uploaded a memory of eating food?” Timothy asked.
”Like, say, candy, for example?”
”According to the law, all thoughts are copyrighted as soon as they are fixed
in the tangible medium of your hippocampus or implant,” said his father. ”So
yes, all memories of eating food would be copyrighted. Unless of course the
original creator decided to release them into the public domain.”
A glimmer of hope pierced the gloom. Timothy asked, ”The public domain?”
”Yes. If a person and all their copies, clones, etc. die without backing up (unli-
kely, but it can happen) they completely cease to exist in both the real and vir-
tual worlds. When that happens, a timer begins ticking on all that person’s
copyrights. 70 years after they fully cease to exist in every form, their words,
thoughts, music, memories, movies, and dreams become public domain. That
means anyone can use them without needing to get permission first.”
”How do I tell if something is in the public domain?”
 A PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS 

”Just look at the date of publication,” his father said. ”Anything created before
1920 is in the public domain.”
”But there were no thoughts back then,” Timothy said.
”Sure there were,” his father said. ”It’s just that people couldn’t record and
store thoughts like we can today. Back in those days musicians couldn’t even
collect fees when people got songs stuck in their head.”
His mother shook her head. ”What a time that must have been.”
”You see, Timothy, ” his father continued, ”If people didn’t have an incentive
to think or dream, they wouldn’t. And then no one would have any new tho-
ughts. Everyone would stop thinking because there wouldn’t be any money in
it.”
”But you said people had thoughts in 1920 even though there was no copy-
right.”
”Yes, you’re right. What I mean is that there were no professional thinkers
in those days.”
”It would be bad if people stopped thinking,” Timothy said.
”Exactly. But try telling that to the pirates.”
Timothy paused, then forged ahead, ”Dad…”
”Yes?”
He chose his next words carefully. ”Do pirates know more than everybody
else because they read so many books?”
His dad gave him a sharp look. ”Of course not. You don’t have to know eve-
rything in the world to be smart. Only the police need to have access to all of
human knowledge, and that’s only because they need to know everything in
order to protect us. If you have access to Wikipedia, you have more knowled-
ge than you’ll ever need. Pirates download because they think they’re entitled
to take everyone’s property for free, not because they want to learn. That’s just
an excuse.”
Timothy felt some small relief; he didn’t care for the thought of being a dum-
my. It felt too much like being obsolete.
A policeman materialized in the room.
”Hello there, I’m officer Pettijohn.”
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

Timothy froze. They had come for him! He would have to go to prison fo-
rever! Please God, I swear I’ll never steal any more thoughts ever again if you
help me!
His father stood. ”What can we do for you, sir?”
”It’s a matter of copyright,” the policeman said. ”Some stolen thoughts about
cookies.”
Timothy wanted to protest, to plead, to run — but he was glued to the carpet
and his lips were sealed shut.
”Oh?” his father said somberly.
”It seems someone posted a thought about your wife’s cookies on a pirate
site.”
”Which one? It wasn’t the one that just got shut down, was it?”
The policeman nodded reluctantly. ”They had a backup hidden somewhere.”
His father sighed. ”They always do, don’t they?”
”Well, I just came by to tell you that we filed a stolen property report on your
behalf. We’ll pursue the uploader.”
”Thank you; I appreciate all your good work,” his father said.
”Just part of the job.” The policeman departed.
Hastily Timothy erased every memory of the cookies, Helen, masks, and tho-
ught-sharing.
”He seemed like a nice man,” his mother said.
”Yes he did.”
”I wonder how they got hold of my recipe. I didn’t even think it was valuable.”
Timothy cleared his throat. ”I really like copyright, dad. I’ll never think a tho-
ught that doesn’t belong to me, ever. I swear.”
”That’s my boy,” his father said. ”Honest people always pay for knowledge.
Only thieves think freely.”

This story is based on the essay ”Why We Need Tougher Mind Control Laws to
Prevent Thought Piracy”. Read it here: talllama.deviantart.com
 A PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS 

Originally published: http://talllama.deviantart.com/art/A-Penny-for-Your-Thoughts-388574958

 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY
 
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‘Come on, just one download,’ the voice whispered. ‘How could it hurt?’
Not at all, thought Lucy. This was an orphaned work, out of print, not ava-
ilable through the normal channels. She believed in copyright, of course she
did, but… all the time?
And then, a second download. This was an MP3. Musicians make lots of
money, right? A few downloads wouldn’t make any difference.
But it never was a few downloads, was it?
A veritable digital Library of Alexandria poured into Lucy’s computer. Who-
le discographies seeped down fibre-optics and into the hard drive she bought
especially for her selfish purpose.
The Beatles shed a single collective tear. ‘Really Lucy,’ they thought, even
the ones that are now angels. ‘You could afford to buy a $63 hard drive off
Ebay but not our entire collected works and those of ABBA, Madonna and
The Monkees, which we noticed you also downloading?’
Lucy had no answer for these disincentivised ghosts, for she was cranking
her bootleg Kanye West album too loud.
The music inspired her to create her own album, which she burned onto
a CD and shared with a few friends.
Nor did Lucy limit herself to downloading. She fell in with a dangerous
crowd who lurked in the corners of the Internet, handing out torrents and
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

whispering of distributed networks that would finally put them beyond the
reach of the Law.
One was a quilt-making libertarian. She filled Lucy’s head with silly anti-
-protectionism and copying as love. The sinful free culture — free love axis
exposed itself.
Another was a deed-writing lawyer. He slipped a licence into Lucy’s pocket.
‘Just think about it,’ he offered. ‘What have you got to lose?’
The last was a hairy hacker. She drifted off to sleep as he sung her an Eastern
European folk song.
Lucy awoke the next morning to find the Creative Commons Attribution-
-ShareAlike licence taped to her freshly pressed CD. What had she done? Had
she done it at all? Maybe the smooth-talking lawyer had licensed her work for
her! Or perhaps the libertarian thought that the licence was only formalising
the state of natural rights that existed! She could not believe such larceny of the
hacker, for his voice was too beautiful.
Or maybe she had been so drunk on pirated music and talk of freedom and
openness that she had done it herself, driven wild by the ecstasy of the moment.
It was a huge mistake.
People on the Internet began sharing her music. Legally, openly! When Lu-
cy downloaded music, she had the decency to risk viruses and invasive cookies,
ending up with mislabelled, low-quality MP3s. These people were sharing los-
sless FLAC files that correctly identified her as the musician responsible for
these hectic beats! The cheek of it all.
It got worse.
She arranged a concert at a nearby pub. More people showed up than had
come to all her previous gigs combined. Lucy realised that most of these people
had downloaded her music from the hundreds of places across the web where
it was freely hosted. They had refused to pay $15 for an album, depriving her
of almost a dollar’s worth of royalties. And then they had the cheek to show
up to her $20 concert. Some of them even bought merch afterwards, as if they
deserved to be counted among her fans!
Of course, corporate interests took advantage of her stupidity.
 LUCY’S IRREVOCABLE, COLOSSAL, TERRIBLE MISTAKE 

An alternative bookshop in Sussex, on the other side of the world to Lucy,

created a video ad with her favourite song as its backing track. The ad ended
with a thanks to Lucy for releasing her music under a free, libre and open li-
cence and a hyperlink. Hundreds more people visited her site, the passive con-
sumers of big business! They used the donate button on her site to spray her
with filthy lucre.
Overcome by disgust that the majority of her fans were pirates, Lucy retre-
ated to a hippy commune. Up-and-coming director Sally Stone wanted to use
Lucy’s music in her new film. She tried to reach Lucy, but had no luck. Shrug-
ging, Sally used the music. To do so, the director had to release her entire film
under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
The film inspired TV shows, fan fiction and artworks, most of which we-
re Creative Commons licensed as well. When Lucy had finally steadied her
chakras and was able to return to the outside world, she discovered that her
years-old accident had created an explosion of creativity. Her album had a mul-
tiplying effect that rippled across the globe, exposing people in countries she
had never even heard of to her creative work.
This was the future of her copyright works. Sharing, adaptations, remixes;
the torrent of creativity would never end.
What a huge mistake.
To make sure this doesn’t become your future, you need to know the enemy.
Closely familiarise yourself with the Creative Commons licences and how they
can be applied to works.
Definitely do not include this text in anything you create:

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribu-

tion-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this li-
cense, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/.

Watch out for the free/libre/open fanatics who lead Lucy astray and will try
to prey on you too:
• Question Copyright, particularly the villainous Nina Paley who will use
her beautiful quilts to lower your defences;
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

• The Open Knowledge Foundation;

• The Free Software Foundation, especially the song that lulled Lucy to
sleep;
• The Wikimedia Foundation, the masterminds behind Trojan horse Wi-
kipedia.
And many others.
Good luck. You’ll need it.

Originally published: http://livinglibre1.wordpress.com/2013/07/16/lucys-irrevocable-colossal-

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To and for Grandpa Paúl

It’s 2089. It has not been an easy year. But, which one was? Challenges come
in different flavours. Who can tell the worst from the best?.
Since the beginning of the final stage of extinction of all the oil reserves, life
became much more difficult. That’s for sure, although maybe it was something
we needed to happen. Now, for instance, we have this electric trolley which,
though not marvelous, allows me to go from my solo room in El Anís to La
Hechicera is less than two hours. It is not too bad when there are seats available.
I can get some work done on my e-poder, browsing everywhere and saving
everything.
Ever since we changed workloads in UNASUR, the rest of the world believes
we have got all the time of the universe down here. But, four hours commuting
is not a joke. I can’t imagine how people with children manage, even with all
those welfare priorities.
There, obviously, are big advantages of living in this part of the tropics. It’s
a lot warmer nowadays, but our mountains help a little with temperature and
certainly give us excellent shelter from those sudden super tornadoes. To be
honest, I can’t help being happy. Good place to live. I am free. A lot of telework
and salary-credits as a delegate of the century old Foundation are not too bad.
Neither are my work objectives. When I received my degree in law, I tho-
ught I would expend years trying to cross the bar and act as a certified solicitor
and, meanwhile, I would have to earn my living from domestic conflicts, in-
stantaneous divorces, evictions and things like that. Instead, The Foundation
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

has been an excellent move. I just got an organizational engineer degree. It’s
amazing, considering how afraid I was of electrophysics. Now, no one can be-
at me at setting up some knowledge management agents. Honestly, I can not
explain myself all that fuss about databases at college. The logic taught at the
School of Law of Universidad de Los Andes has served us very well when has
come to design the databanks of the agents.
Speaking of which, I have to admit to myself that I got it perfect with the
new system for the blood bank. Now, anybody can consult blood’s reserves for
the whole commune and, even better, her/his own donor profile. It is so hard
to find uninterfered blood these days. With this profile, pure donors will have
access to their compensating allowances to help them keeping their bodies off
impurities.
And I did it all by myself. To only step left is for the Ministry to digisign
it, to make her approval explicit. That, of course, will not be easy. It is very
hard to get a point through the Ministrometer, that old anti-bureaucracy infor-
mation system of the Ministry. All those e-bootlickers spamming around. Last
time I succeeded only because I passed it through food priority projects. After
all, that was also a brilliant idea of mine: The feeding points system gives the
ministry all the information to know whether everybody is eating well.
However, that manoeuvre got me into a lot of local troubles. Now, those
guys from the other side of the Foundation are closing every gap I could use.
Envy is a very serious problem, as if one’s success would imply suffering for
them. I think it is just the opposite. The ministry herself gave us three points
to the group account due to that project. It is true that I got three more points
and the certification of my engineer degree, but they shared the trophy and did
nothing!
Luckily, all the story is there, in the organizational memory. Some day, the
guardians of history will browse through it and make things stand just right.
How lucky we are that every detail is so stored. Every step of a procedure. Eve-
ry transaction. Every decision at work. Nothing personal, that is. Data about
individual’s intimacy is carefully extracted from memory. But there is no doubt
the big difference that perfect memory makes.
 PERFECT MEMORY 

I call it perfect because it remembers exactly what it must and ignores and
forgets everything else. And it is a perfect recall memory because it is very easy
to retrieve a complete report of achievements, failures, plans, strategies and,
specially, know how.
My grandpa used to tell me stories about life without that memory. I can’t
imagine how they managed. There must have been horrid drifting around, not
knowing what was the best course of actions to solve those complex, techno-
scienti ic problems.
According to Grandpa, it wasn’t easy to get to the perfect memory. First, they
had to reconciled those primitive systems that used proprietary and very rigid
formats for data. Building a system that could understand all those formats and
translate between them without problems should not have been easy.
What puzzles me more, however, is how those common workers felt, spe-
cially those with so little knowledge of informatics. Trusting all their own data
to a faulty or untested machine should not have been easy, either. Grandpa told
me they truly believed that data was theirs and, by giving it away, everybody
would have had access to their whole life, including their intimate affairs. Like
in ancient times, when people used to believe that by taking a picture, their
soul would be stolen.
Joselo tells me that I should go for the graduate course on antropotechnics if
I keep thinking about these things. It is not a bad idea. After all, we do have the
best school on earth. And, really, I like to understand how they thought and
went about their lives, and why they found so hard to trust the cyberspace for
work.
It is clear, of course, that security for personal data is essential. All those
crimes such as kidnappings, stalking and segregation for medical or genetic
reasons, were all possible thanks to the access criminals had to people’s personal
records. No one could have imagined that publishing family pictures online
would be so dangerous. Even less with a genetic profile, included in an identity
card, which would be used to deny medical attention to a sick person because
the corresponding survival probability was too low.
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

Nevertheless, with public labour data things are completely different. The
whole system of social supervision relies on employees’ information deliveries.
A very precise log of everything we do goes into a common, public memory.
How else would it be possible a correct assignment of credits for our work?
The ancient strategy of having elite employee and bosses agreeing among them
on how much each person should earn was discarded as a very error prone
solution. Those bosses even had collective rates for salaries, just to avoid the
troubles of personalized evaluation.
One can only imagine the situation when transformations were unstoppable.
They were all asking themselves: ”without bosses, how are people going to
agree on a fair wage for every effort from every employee?. The prizemeter
was unthinkable: a system to collect the opinion of every responsible person
about every action from an employee that could have affected her or him.
Now every person votes and their combined opinion decides whether we are
entitled to a prize or not. There is room for a lot of improvements, but I feel
quite well knowing that I have earned my wages fair and square beyond any
reasonable doubt: the majority is fine with my work.
I have to admit, however, a grandpa’s subtle idea that keeps coming to my
memory: with something like the prizemeter, it is going to be harder for those
who go after ”weird”, unpopular problems. And those rare problems may well
turn to be quite important later on, like in medical wars.
I believe this later problem will be sorted out by the innovatron: a new system
devised to escape local optima in public projects by funding the exploration of
possible worlds. That lot of employees embedded in those alternative realities
may well be able of benefiting for a revised version of the prizemeter that judges
on simulated problems and solutions.
I heard that first attempts with the innovatron were not very successful, but
I reckon it’s a matter of time before they get it right. Meanwhile, I do not think
that anybody would go down to argue against the belief that we have a very
effective system to validate public and global indexes of individual performan-
ces. And, therefore, we need neither bosses, nor unions, to discuss our salaries:
credits are assigned by our neighbours!. I like the word neighbour. We take for
 PERFECT MEMORY 

granted its meaning as ”a person living on an adjacent or nearby land”. But, with
all the current connectivity, land is inessential. We are neighbours if we inte-
ract somehow. My grandpa explained to me the etymology of the word, a com-
bination of ”nigh” and ”bower”. The first means ”close”, ”near”, ”next” and the
second one refers to some form of dwellings or retreat. All those meanings co-
incide with another famous word, comrade, which comes from camarada (latin
camera, a ”chamber”): the one who shares my space, a word that my grandpa’s
father used to use.
It’s a pity my grandpa’s parents could not see what this notion of proximity
has become. Everything is online. Anybody is potentially my neighbour (and
I am his/hers) in the whole world. I can do things for people I have never to-
uched. Like that girl, Zusha, in Amazonia, who I long to meet since I saw her
avatar online. She is gorgeous!. Unfortunately, the few times I got an authori-
zation for a trip to her city, we could not coincide.
It may well be a more connected world, but it is harder to move in it. Political
boundaries have become even more difficult to cross. Fortunately, in UNASUR
one can easily travel with all one’s credits in sucre currency ready to expend. It
seems natural, but my grandpa told me that, at the turn of the century, it was
just another dream. Only in Nordica was possible and, even then, they had two
separate systems: North America and Europe, competing with each other.
It seems that, by that time, they used to trust a lot on competition as the me-
diating mechanism to solve conflicts about scarce resources, simulating natural
selection. According to grandpa, they insisted so much on the strategy, that it
permeated everything, even technoscience, where a legal space was defined for
intellectual properties and copyrights aimed to support ”free competition in
the knowledge society”.
I don’t get how those enormous societies waited so long before realizing the
facts of evolution: it reaches good solutions, but only after a long time and many
fatal attempts. That has to be unacceptable for humans who barely live century-
-long lives and, even more, to those knowledgeable ones about environmental
processes and its subtleties.
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

We still believe that freedom is a fundamental principle and that a good life,
what they then called ”quality of life”, is closely linked to what we want to do.
But, of course, there are limits ”right when the nose of your neighbour starts”,
as grandpa used to say.
That is why, if somebody asks for the greatest improvement throughout the
decades of a century like this, I would swiftly reply that it is our conflict resolu-
tion culture. We have been accused of technocracy, an ancient-style, but when
it comes to conflict resolution, techno-lawyers, like myself, know that, provided
there are historical coincidences of some sort, there will be space and basis to
build a solution and dissolve any conflict.
It all started with that subject of socio-mathematics: If there are seemingly ir-
reconcilable positions, start by making them explicit. This must be done ca-
refully, point by point. And, of course, it is impossible if there is no common
language. With such a minimal common language, however, it becomes po-
ssible to articulate points of view or, at least, to distinguish them from totally
undesirable positions. Having done this, one can go for a systematic search of
alternative solutions, not to count them as they may be infinite, but to guide
a discussion among all the parties involved. These methods were so successful
that we became well-known throughout the world.
That was also the source of an unprecedented and fundamental agreement.
All the stakeholders of the world came, after many unfortunate and even blo-
ody events, to negotiate a new framework for producing and sharing common
knowledge. And the basis they found was that to preserve freedom, but also
the health of the whole planet and its species, that knowledge had to be shared,
easily and readily, among all the stakeholders.
That led to a rebuttal of so-called intellectual property and copyright laws
and their replacement with a body of global law acknowledging our common
heritage, codependent future and the fundamental right of knowledge every-
one has.
It’s not a perfect world. I hate this changing weather. I hate those microbial
and viral outbreaks that come with the weather. I find terrible the fragility of
the human body that, we know now, is mostly due to two centuries or more of
 PERFECT MEMORY 

bad foods, including what at the turn of this century was regarded as good food:
industrialized flours, synthesized sugars and animal fats. That is, bad food that
looked as good. One among many illusions that prevented us from reaching
a higher state of consciousness.
Practical consciousness, I should add, which truly serves survival. We do
have more of that nowadays. I can’t tell how much more. But it is more. What
I was trying to say in this end-of-course essay is that consciousness, conflict
resolution, the innovatron, the prizemeter, the e-poder and everything else
are offsprings of that perfect memory for everybody.
I think my essay is ready to publish and make it free. The end.

Originally published: http://jacinto-davila.blogspot.com/2013/07/perfect-memory.html

 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY
 
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Translated from Polish by Wojciech Pędzich

Science- iction story about Frédéric Chopin, who wakes up today and struggles with
something new for him — copyrights and music industry. It’s an absurd for him (and
for us, I bet! ), but let’s face it — we live in such absurd!
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

I. MY FIRST LIFE AND AWAKENING

I do not wish to describe my first life. I left it behind and started another one.
I died in Paris, in 1849. It seemed to me that I would never see this world again.
How mistaken I was!
To celebrate Anno Domini 2015, a plebiscite was organised among the na-
tions of this world. Each citizen was to answer the question on which com-
patriot to awaken from their eternal sleep. Only one person could be brought
back, because the process was very costly — it could not be done off-handedly.
Marie Curie was chosen, while I climbed only to the miserable, second place.
However, blind fate decided that in France the top place was held by two pe-
ople with the same number of votes. A diplomatic fight broke out, attempting
to resolve the nationality issue. TB blast them all!
France and Poland eventually came to terms and decided they would share
the costs of awakening us both. Maria was really content, but upon seeing how
her advancements were put to use she only cried out: ”La merde, I am getting
back to bed until you learn what peace actually is!” I decided to hang around,
though.

II. COPYRIGHTS AND THE FIRST CONTRACT

As it was later explained to me, something called ”copyrights” emerged in the
meantime. It meant that only I could make profit from the music I wrote. Well,
at least that was what it seemed to me. I was flabbergasted when a few gentle-
men wearing chic clothes approached me and told me that these ”copyrights”
expired 70 years after the author died, so anyone was free to use my music for
free. The heck…? When I was alive the first time around, anyone could play
my music, it was all about sharing the artistic wealth of my nation! They also
told me that since I was awakened and brought back amongst the living, these
copyrights belonged back to me, but since they were professionals, they would
handle all this thingamajig. I, in turn, would have money to burn and would be
able to create music as before. Just like in the old days, it was just that I would
 COPYRIGHTS IN CHOPIN’S FUTURE 

have the ”dough” (cool word, by the way! ) to awaken George Sand! I signed
some papers — exotic lingo, weird sentences. It turned out I was to record four
albums for them, 45 minutes each.

III. FIRST ALBUM

My record company asked me to write something new. What the heck — even
my old instrument was still there! I sat down and recorded the whole 90 minu-
tes of soothing sounds. I played the material to my employees. They asked me
to cut it down to a quarter of an hour. But how was I supposed to do just that?!
I finally managed to surgeon it down to 70 minutes, In the end, they grumbled
that they would push it through as a major resurrection release, but I’d better
watch myself the next time. Well, then — how is it these days, are people ready
to pay for less music than have more of it for free, like in the old days? The
guys from the company also asked me to put on blue clothes with a large oran-
ge top hat and sing some stuff — in English of all things! I did not even knew
what I was singing, but they said there was nothing wrong with what it was, so
I went like: ”oh yeah babe, I’m getting hot”, ”my music makes your body trem-
ble in a samba rhythm”, or ”I won’t cough when I kiss you”. I don’t know how
it was possible, but I suddenly had 15 records instead of the one I prepared. 10
were ”singles”, 4 were ”EPs” and only one was the full release. So only the last
one counted. By my artistic soul, I will never understand maths!
A week after the premiere, the big bosses bought themselves some luxury
automobiles, a new condo and they were literally rolling in gold. I was said
they won it all at the lottery while my record sold poorly. I was paid five grand.
I needed a billion to awaken Sand — where were all these riches, then? I was
told that if I wanted to make more ”dough” I would need to play concerts, swing
my hips more and stop coughing blood over the audience.
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

IV. SECOND RECORD

The big shots told me that we were about to record the second album. I already
sat down at the piano when I was told I did not need to do this. Well then…
what is it like, what do we sell to people? ”Greatest hits”, I heard. Sure, that
made my day, there was plenty to choose from in my portfolio. It turned out
they mixed my first release, added the contents of the ”singles” and that was
that. Five months after the premiere they told me to pay them 10 thousand
zlotys, because I did not try hard enough. They blamed it all on some ”pirates”.
They stole my music for free, the bandits, they probably drank up the whole
thing with rum!

V. THIRD RECORD AND THE BREAK-UP

I was suggested to get back to the roots when I made my third album. Oh, joy,
joy, joy! I sat down monumentally at the piano and started to play, but their
shouts stopped me dead cold. I was given a ready-printed music sheet and told
to play this… whatever it was. It was… slander, pure and simple! This could not
be defined as music, by any dictionary! That is how I decided I did not want to
record for that bunch any more. I was in debt and needed a better job, and fast.
After I quit I learned that I was to pay a million zlotys for what I’ve committed.

VI. DEPRESSION AND THE RETURN OF THE RICHES

I fell into the depths of depression. Pirates have ruined my life, even the profes-
sionals were not able to help me! I began to play melodies that reflected the way
I felt. Just like in the old days. I uploaded my music on the Internet. For free, for
nothing, for zilch. I wanted to show the horrible masters of the seas how I felt.
A day later I got a phone call from the men who ran the website where I pu-
blished my music. They ecstatically stammered and blubbered about a million
dollars. I answered that the money they already got was the last “dough” they
would see from me and that they would be better off burying me again. Finally
 COPYRIGHTS IN CHOPIN’S FUTURE 

they got someone more under control on the telephone and I heard ”first day
online and you have created a smash hit already! We collected a total of million
dollars from our users!” That gave me one heck of a surprise. Pirates? But they
steal, do they not? And why would they pay me? A courteous gentleman expla-
ined that the fairy tales of stealing pirates were but a cheat on the side of the
record companies so that they could profit from my music. Actually, nowadays
it is possible to make money making good music, while artists who just create
sounds instead of real music blame it all on piracy.

VII. BRAVE NEW (THIRD) LIFE

I was finally able to publish whatever I wanted, however much I wanted, and if
I did not work hard enough, I made less ”dough”. One fine day, it really drove
me up the wall to hear my piece of music recorded with some hellish ham-
mering noises and squeals of a sow giving birth to a litter of piglets in the
background. What now, this “creator” would make money out of my genius
from now on? My anger was quick to pass. I am Frederic Chopin, a wise man,
but not omniscient. I asked a friend who works for the company that hosts my
music (I do not pay them a dime, but they make money anyway — pure ma-
gic! ) what I was supposed to do. He told me to do nothing, but wait instead,
so I waited. And…? It turned out that the countryside p-sow-do hammerhead
of a musician earned me some new listeners! Afterwards, someone recorded
a cover of my composition and made a small fortune. Could I be mad at this?
He did things better than I would have thought, he earned his share. I can also
remix someone else’s work and if the audience likes it — I will make money out
of it.
Time passed. After four years during which I deservingly earned every pen-
ny, I collected a billion zlotys. I paid to have George Sand awakened. Boy, are
we happy!
I hope that more people will have their own opinions instead of listening to
the hissing of those snakes, sucking money out of artists to pay off their new
automobiles. Wake up, folks, a good musician will earn his daily bread even if
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

he decides to let his music go for free, for all to share. A poor man will be able
to listen to real music, while a wealthy man will make the artist’s effort worth-
while. Isn’t it all about just that? Each may benefit, except the music companies
which become redundant, so they turn to lies in order to keep themselves aflo-
at.
I listened to a lot of modern concerts, but I cannot make head or tail of what
is going on there. In turn, I learned a lot of modern lingo. So, chill out homies,
if ya spin yo’ heads da right way, you’ll get the hang of wha’s cool for the artistes
and fo’ y’selves!.

Chapter image: Chopin’s second album - Bubblegum Requiem. Original image: P. Schick,
1873 (public domain). Remix: Krzysztof Blachnicki, 2013 (CC-BY-SA 3.0)
Originally published: http://krzysiu.net/misc/copyrights_in_chopins_future
 
:+$7 ,6 $1 $87+25"
6+257 ),&7,21
BY
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Michael turned 14 on a sunny, summer day. His family celebrated it with him,
a large group of wiggling kids from his class turned up as well. Parents gave him
something they called ‘old art’ and ‘a book’ and which had text inside but sur-
prisingly there was no display screen. Michael, who born in 2050, was always
feeling that this even number was a happy coincidence.
As for the parents they had to think about giving him something more, yet
not another shiny box wrapped in paper, but an experience, some pleasant,
enriching memory so as to mark his coming of age. And they decided to present
to him uncle Doogie. It wasn’t a decision reached easily though. His father kept
pointing out how dangerous and risky it was to bring his son so close to that
kind of activity. The fact was that Doogie was a criminal. Michael’s mother,
however, was firm on the matter. He would get to know it all soon anyway and
it was safer if it was with them. Although Doogie was a recluse, they admired
him for his work. Michael’s Dad finally realized he can’t oppose on this matter
and let it go. When they told him, Michael, inquisitive as always, started with
a question.
— Who is uncle Doogie? I never heard of him.
— Well, it’s time for you to hear. Your uncle Doogie is an author, you know?
— An author? What is an author?
— Oh, you’ll see for yourself, it’s hard to explain. At least in our times it was
easier to give an example. To begin with, his is kind of a farmer. Like those
people who grow food that we eat.
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

— What do you mean grow food Dad? Aren’t they synthesizing it in the su-
permarkets on the spot?
— Well, yes but it wasn’t always like that. I forgot how much the world has
changed in the last ten years. Yes, of course you don’t even know what it is to
grow something. I guess I need to start from the beginning. Try to use your
imagination it was waaay more different in my years. So, in the past it actually
took time to create things, it was a process. Everything wasn’t just made, prin-
ted or replicated. If you wanted an apple, you had to plant an apple tree, take
care of it for weeks, every day. Only then you could get the apples. You see?
Michael looked confused.
— How inefficient! And why was it so? Oh, never mind, what is an author
then?
— You know what art producers are, don’t you? These people who make mo-
vies and series that are on the Internet.
— Yeah, sure, but I don’t like the movies much. They’re boring and kinda
ugly too. So uncle Doogie is kind of an art producer?
Michael seemed to lost his enthusiasm in the idea. He turned his head to-
wards the door, as if hoping he could be upstairs already.
— No, no, he’s not. He deals with the old art but that’s a completely different
thing, like the book I just gave you. You see, producers make art products from
the ideas supplied by the government. You went on a school trip to see how it
works, right?
Michael saddened and took a step back.
— Yeah, we’ve seen how they create ideas. But it was scary. I don’t know
why but I felt those ideas had only emptiness inside, they looked at me with
some desperation, I don’t know Dad, like they wanted me to save them. I don’t
wanna see it anymore. Never. They were so artificial and looked troubled and
still they had some human traits. It was a nightmare I can’t understand why
others enjoyed it.
Michael’s Dad sat down on the sofa. He gestured at his son to sit beside him.
Then he looked at both sides as if scared of being heard by someone. But it was
only Michael’s mother, who showed in casual clothes, unusually dark for her
 WHAT IS AN AUTHOR? (SHORT FICTION) 

standards. Her favorite color, warm green, was only manifested by her earrings.
In passing she urged her husband to hurry up with the explanations. He carried
on, calmly:
— You are right about the ideas; empty indeed. They are made in such form
so as to meet the measurements and regulations. They are printed at the spot,
it takes no time or effort. Of course, it’s efficient as you would say. Eventually,
art producers can combine them into movies and you have seen the effects.
Now I can tell you about Doogie. He breeds ideas too but very, very different
ones, and in a different way. It’s not scary at all. You’ll see for yourself. I’ve done
enough talking for today. But you need to promise me you won’t tell anybody
at school, it has to be a secret. What he does is not strictly speaking legal. To
be honest it’s not legal at all. Ideas have to fit the regulations to be allowed into
art.
Michael was thrilled about the illegal part. He felt that it might be an adven-
ture plus, less consciously, he felt his parents trusted him. As he looked at his
mother, she smiled but looked quite worried to him. He already learned that
his parents were doing things not fully approved by the government; it was
never that explicit though.
There was a locked room in the basement in which he was let twice. It was
full of this ‘old art’ stuff, images on some kind of material, a ‘library’ and most
bizarre instruments that looked like they were made for torturing people. His
parents referred to them as ‘typewriter’ and ‘turntable’ or by some other names
he couldn’t even remember. Not on one occasion he ever heard them anywhe-
re else. He didn’t believe that but his parents claimed ‘old art’ was mainstream
in their time and that there is none of it left on the Internet because corpora-
tions bought rights to it and then limited access through the net. To Michael
it sounded like a crazy conspiracy theory. He was quite sure that if anything is
gone than it’s because people lost interest in it. His parents claimed that people
never did lose anything except the true art, and the reason it was banned was
that otherwise no one would care for the movies they were making those days.
They took off two hours later. Michael’s Mom told him that she spoke with
Doogie just a minute before and that it turned out he is one lucky boy. His uncle
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

was hosting a creation party that night. They would all witness one of the most
magical rituals that are to be found in the world. Michael was still nervous as
he imagined he would have to sit in some dark room with unknown people
surrounded by those glass tubes filled with ideas floating in clear liquid. On the
other hand the excitement of his parents was quite contagious and he wouldn’t
agree to go back now. He wouldn’t miss this experience for the world.
A giant old barn, that’s where they arrived. It was more than 15 miles outside
the city. First thing Michael saw were people nervously walking around, heads
covered with hoods, with big black bags over they shoulders. They reminded
the boy of some hellish Santa Clauses, eccentric enough to swarm around in
the middle of the summer. Only later had he learned how much more amazing
their gifts were supposed to be. On the way he also noticed a tiny girl, about
his age, with a bright red handbag, about half her size. Except that, and her red
hair, there was only darkness and shade on the road. His parents kept him close
and Michael could feel how uneasy they were. The memory of the production
center that he visited with his class came to him again. The building was the
same size as the barn, except it was all lighten up and full of smiling staff. Still
he shivered on the thought of those bleak, bald ideas in the incubators with all
kinds of tubes going in and out. Here he couldn’t even make out the faces of
people; most of his perception came as whispers and rustling. It seemed like
a real adventure this time.
— Oh my god! That has to be Michael! My dear! How fantastic it is to meet
you on this special night!!! Come on in, quickly, I have so much to show you!
A man suddenly appeared on the left. His loud, rapid way of speaking made
Michael jump. He looked like he was at least 100 years old, but this was be-
cause of an insanely long beard and white hair. He completely stood out with
a Hawaiian shirt in green palm trees. After he welcomed Michael he greeted
his parents:
— Oh, I’d bet my whole stock that you wouldn’t bring him here. Hell, you
made your brother proud today!
 WHAT IS AN AUTHOR? (SHORT FICTION) 

He smiled widely at Michael’s Dad and without changing that expression, he

brought them inside. The air and smell struck Michael and made him almost
dizzy; he wasn’t used to that kind of environment.
In the room they entered just now, the floor was full of boots, coats and,
most obviously, some weird little creatures zigzagging around, bumping into
each other, making squeaky noises. Michael’s eyes become round, as his mind
couldn’t make any sense of this sight. It was too hard to process. Doogie burst
into laughter.
— Yep, there you have it, an army of naughty little ideas. These two in the
corner were bred here, oh, and this one with little tentacles pinching the big
black hairy one, that’s my favorite! What a rascal! The rest of them were bro-
ught today by somebody. Who knows which one is whose? There are simply
too many.
He continued to laugh wholeheartedly, as Michael’s parents tried to pet ide-
as they could reach. As they were speaking, another hooded couple came in
with the bags and emptied them with an energetic movement. Another ten or
dozen creatures stormed out of the bag and immediately mixed with the buz-
zing crowd. The new guests hugged Doogie, shook hands with Michael and his
parents, then went further to the next room.
— Come on in, don’t wait here It’s just the taste of what is coming next!
Michael came to his uncle, his forehead wrinkled:
— What is that? Why do you call them ideas? They are some animals or
something, right?
— Oh, you must have seen only the legal ideas so far, haven’t you? Poor boy.
These are genuine ideas; some of them bred by me, some by my friends. They
seem hard to control, eh? That’s a major problem for some. Not for me though.
He smiled like he expected Michael to understand his riddle.
— Let’s go, I’ll show you more.
‘More’ couldn’t prepare Michael for what he was about to see next. His pa-
rents smiled faintly as if they knew what was about to happen. The family step-
ped through the old door on the right side, moved through a long, dilapidated
corridor, with some graffiti on the walls. Still there were more and more tiny
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

ideas scattered on the way. Then they went into a large storeroom that pro-
bably took most of the space in the barn. Michael was stunned. It looked like
an enormous ant hill went under the influence of potent drugs. Thousands of
ideas in all shapes and sizes, in all colors, wild and calm, resembling all kinds of
animals and objects he has ever seen in his life where there, playing mindles-
sly, moving around like small tornados, singing and screaming. The landscape
was something like an enormous park or even a jungle, with trees, plants and
a sizable lake in the middle. Also, there were people here and there, waving to
them.
— So how you like my little party, eh? — asked Doogie, raising his head pro-
udly.
Michael just wasn’t able to put this experience into words. The little girl they
saw earlier came there too and said ‘hi’ to them. She walked past Michael, sat
on some tree trunk and let her little pets out. The boy was silently starring at
her when another thing stole his attention. He had to turn his head. A tall, dark
man entered. His face looked calm and determined, not as oblivious and happy
as other people. He seemed to be fully consumed by his thoughts, perfectly
absent-minded. Also he was the first person around that had glasses on. The
other curious thing was that he had no bag. Michael was sure that there was
something profoundly different about him, something unnamable for a 14-
-year-old. This man had a special spiritual aura around him; maybe it was some
form of natural magic. Was he a wizard?
It was Michael’s mother, who explained it to him.
— Take a good look, Mike. This is an artist, a really special kind of a person.
Your father was an artist too, at the time when I met him but the police found
out and it was too dangerous for him to continue.
Now, Michael felt that his capacity for ingesting new information was really
put to the test.
— Really? Why no one ever told me? Is it illegal? What is an artist? Is it
different from an author? I have no idea what’s going on today.
He was so stunned that he barely noticed that the artist walked straight in-
to the lake without even slowing down his pace or undressing. All the ideas
 WHAT IS AN AUTHOR? (SHORT FICTION) 

crowded around him, pushing and shoving to get as close as possible while
splashing water everywhere. He stood knee-deep in the lake, water dripping
from his clothes, ceaselessly petting the ideas. It seemed as they were commu-
nicating somehow in a wordless way.
— You see? An artist is a little like an art producer. But he deals with the genu-
ine ideas, as you see. He doesn’t buy them, like the law says he should. He just
comes to places like this and spends his time with them. It’s a slow process. No
one knows why precisely, but this crazy little ideas are in love with him, well,
with all the artists.
Her eyes seemed dreamy. Michael tried to imagine his father standing like
this, deep in water but to no success.
— This is just incredible. So, uncle Doogie, are these all your ideas? How can
you take care of them all? Are you a superhero?
— Ha ha! They are not all mine. In fact not a single idea belongs to anybody.
I only give food and shelter to some of them, most of the time they just run lo-
ose. The rest was brought by other authors as you can see. You know, the ideas
are free to do whatever. You can’t tame them, as those fools try to. The only
rule is to give them freedom. In fact those other authors always take different
ideas from those they brought. It’s a never-ending exchange. Only for this one
day we try to put them all together so the artist can work, and for us authors is
the only time of true vacation. It’s a little reward for our humble work.
They followed Doogie across the jungle to the other side, looking with exci-
tement on all the wonders around them. Some chaotic, wooden sculptures pop-
ped up every now and then. The artist was now climbing the tree, few ideas
hanging from his sleeves, others already swinging from the branches. The pe-
ople were gathering at a few tables that were placed between the trees. The
whole party was between 20 and 30 people altogether.
A bit afraid of such a crowd of adults Michael indulged himself to follow
a peculiar orange idea that was covered in short, shiny fur. He chased it to
a dimly lit cave on the side. The idea rolled around, then came closer, putting
pawns on his lap. Michael was thrilled with this brave act.
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

Then something moved behind him, at the back of the cave. A tiny oval bird-
-like idea jumped out at run across to him. He exhaled relieved. Then he heard
a warm, high voice that he could recognize from earlier.
— Oh, just look how much they like you! Are you an artist too?
That was the redhead girl. And then he heard someone shouting something
outside. A loud, horrible sound of braking glass came through the air. The only
thing he heard from then on was a chaotic turmoil. The girl covered her month
so as not to scream.
— These terrible men, they came again!
She stared crying. Michael cautiously moved toward the entrance. There we-
re a few gunshots. He started shaking but peeked outside. From his spot he
could see only the edge of the lake. The water was red now. He could also see
the body of the artist. His head was lying on the ground, rest of his body under
the water. His eyes were shut and he wasn’t moving at all. Michael gasped. He
looked back, the girl’s face was covered with tears, the ideas run into the dar-
kest corners of the cave and lied motionless. Michael was scared to death yet
he managed to stick his head out another time.
He saw flipped tables and about 20 men in black suits walking through the
debris of food and plates. They faces were covered, there was nothing written
on their shirts. His parents, among other people were standing by the tree,
cuffed. Farther to the right, Doogie was trying to defend himself but they forced
him to the ground within seconds. Ideas were running everywhere in panic,
while the men were kicking them around, somewhat irritated.
— Don’t go out, you can’t do anything right now. — said the girl. — My pa-
rents died in a situation like this. I’m so terrified. Please, don’t leave me now.
Can I ask what your name is?
— I’m Michael.
— I’m Nora. I wish we would meet in a better place.
She tried to smile but she couldn’t.
— I have to do something Nora, my parents are there. What are they going
to do?
 WHAT IS AN AUTHOR? (SHORT FICTION) 

— You can’t do nothing right now, you can’t fight dozen grown men with
weapons, can you? There is something else you can do though. You can become
an artist one day and tell this story to others. Art is a dangerous activity, it
always was, but it can get to people the way other things can’t. Then they might
understand that everything went wrong. Come here I can’t talk that loud or
they would find us here.
Michael reluctantly went to the back of the cave to sit by Nora. All the ideas
got closer to him.
— I know nothing about that. It’s only today that I’ve even learned what an
author is and what an artist is and I’ve never seen the real ideas before.
— But it’s easy. The only thing you need is the ideas to feel that you‘d be good
to them. There is a connection between you and them, it’s clear to see. Look at
them. It doesn’t get any harder than this.
— Ok, so I really feel something towards them, I can’t quite name it. Still it’s
only my intuition, I have no ideas how do artists really work.
— Alright, so say you want to be a writer, you want to write a story. There
are only 26 letters out of which you make combinations, so that you got the
story. What’s difficult about that? Think about today, make the story of what
happened, share your experience, write about what you felt when the ideas
where around you.
— That sounds easy when you say it. But I don’t know. I suppose I could try it
sometime. But how can we get out of here? They won’t let us. And what after
that? Will they take my parents away for good?
— I have no idea what’s going to happen. We’ll find a way. The only thing
that can make me feel better now would be your promise to write. Promise
me that if you get out, you will write honestly about today. Even a short story,
you know? Just 26 letters, about 15 000 characters should be enough. Will you?
Here’s another idea…
When he put out his hand, much to his surprise it wasn’t an actual idea, she
only put her hand in his.
Originally published: http://quotily.wordpress.com/2013/07/30/what-is-an-author-short-fiction/#more-
1738
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY
 
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Half-dozen protesters in hazmat garb, one with a bullhorn:

What do we want?
Freedom!
When do we want it?
Now! How are we going to get it?
MUTE the UTE ZERO!
When are we going to do it?
NOW!
BE A HERO!
MUTE the UTE ZERO!
What do we want?
Freedom!
(cont.)

Friend1: ”WTF’s UTE ZERO? What’s the line for?”

Friend2: ”’UTE ZERO’!?”
Nearest protester: ”UTE ZERO is defective by design!” and hands F1 a flyer.
Friend2: ”Oh, this is where the Ubzubzu Store pop-up is! Cool, I crowdfun-
ded this at level ’Advance notice of pop-up opening’. Damn, where was my
advance notice?”
Still-close protester: ”You made a ruinous compromise and lucked out so far!
Reject the UTE ZERO as it rejects your freedom!”
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

Booming voice over much louder soundsystem: ”This is Smark, thanks for
supporting the Ubzubzu Store pop-up! We couldn’t have desinged the coolest,
most highly trusted device without you. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportu-
nity. Now, let’s take it to the next level. Buy a production run Ubzubzu Trusted
Edge Zero Device now for only 0. 0014BTC, delivered by May 2024. For two
lucky pop-up supporters, I have two Ubzubzu Trusted Edge Minus Zero pro-
totype devices NOW, for only 0. 099BTC!”
Friend1: ”Getting one? I mean minus one, er, zero?”
Friend2: ”Do I look like I have 0. 099BTC? Even 0. 0014BTC is steep for
something months out. But this flyer makes it sound hot, if Smark delivers.”
Friend1: ”Oh? What’s this trust? I’m generally cool with my Ubzubzu Edge
Eye 2022. 10, old as it is. It doesn’t even say what kind of advice it is!?”
Friend2: ”I know, eye, finger, ear, implant?”
Friend1: ”Ass…”
Friend2: ”If I can extract info from this rant, I think Commonible, Ltd, is
saying they’ve perfected trusted computing, fully protecting you from hacking
and making ALL media available, fully compensating all value chains.”
Friend3 (quiet one): ”I read about sth like this, Project Xanaxu. Real old stuff.
The inventor thought the Web failed to transclude micropayments.”
Friend2: ”If that’s true, could be an end to the infowars.”
Friend1: ”These (pointing to the protesters) will be out of a gig.”
Friend3: ”Nah, they ceased to be relevant decades ago. They’ll carry on pro-
jecting that we’ll all be slaves to software we can’t hack.”
Friend1: ”Isn’t being unhackable the point?”
Friend3: ”Um, would you give up your freedom for security and convenient
access to entertainment?”
Friend1 & Friend2: ”Yes!”

Originally published: http://hottoco.neocities.org/ambiguous-future-of-copyright.html

 
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+2/29,6,21

The history of modern copyright can be broken down into three basic periods:
Cognitive Era (1710-circa 2020)
Existential Era (circa 2020–2097)
Metalegal Era (2097–present)

I. COGNITIVE ERA

The beginning of what could be identified as modern copyright law occurred

with the enactment of the Statute of Anne in 1710. The Statute of Anne was the
first statute to provide for copyright regulated by the government and courts
rather than by private parties and royal privilege.
Since then the law has had to struggle with the problems that arise from
the application of a protected copyright monopoly. One of the most common
factors to virtually every jurisdiction when it comes to copyright is the idea —
expression divide; which divides an idea from the expression or manifestation
of that idea, thus limiting the scope of copyright protection. However, this
simplicity can be misleading. Some ideas can only be expressed intelligibly in
a limited number of ways which would make the expressed idea unprotected or
limited to verbatim copying only. For example, a time travel story is expected to
contain elements such as the method of traveling to the past, a time traveler,
ect. These elements are not protected by copyright. Specific sequences could
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

be protected by copyright such as a story about someone taking this pamphlet

back in time for some personal agenda.

II. EXISTENTIAL ERA

Other terms for the second era of copyright law such as ”Ephemeralization Era”
are also used by scholars and there are just as many beginning dates as alterna-
tive era names. The ”Existential Era” refers to the popular art form at the time
known as ”copypunk”. Copypunk is a hybrid of two other forms of speculative
fiction: Cyberpunk and nowpunk. Cyberpunk often used techniques from de-
tective fiction while copypunk would borrow methodology from legal drama.
The popularity of copypunk seems to reflect a general realization of progressi-
ve nature that copyright protected an artificially scarce good. The availability
of copyrighted material as a resource was by any definition unlimited due to
technology but hampered by law.

III. 3D PRINTING
Most of the Cognitive Era only addressed what could be printed or recorded.
The 3D printer made it easy for whole objects to be copied. Attempts to put
digital rights management into 3D printers were sooner or later unsuccess-
ful against hardware hackers. There were open sourced 3D printers but many
perceived them to be inferior to the commercially patented ones. When the
commercial 3D printers were used to make other printers most companies left
the marketplace. This left many still infringing the 3D printers with the excuse
that the printers became ”abandonware”.
There are many possible reasons why 3D printing quickly became a copy-
norm. Some might have copied 3D objects because they perceived no differen-
ce between an object or a copyrighted book. The copyrights were often infrin-
ged when the ”physibles” were placed under Creative Commons’ ”NoDerivs”.
Changing properties, such as color, against the creator’s wishes was a common
form of infringement. There are several accounts of individuals comparing the
 500 YEARS OF COPYRIGHT LAW 

rules preserving the moral rights of a sculpture to Henry Ford’s apocryphal qu-
ote, ”People can have the Model T in any color — so long as it’s black.” It’s also
possible that many thought of 3D printing as just another way a program is
executed. One unsuccessful defense in court tried to argue that the torrent files
for 3D printers were recipes which did not have copyright protection.
Of course, there were many positives. Many who could not afford to buy
expensive products could afford the energy and raw materials the 3D printer
needed to produce products. By 2050 the fabrication tablet (or ”fab tab”) made it
possible for every home to have a recycling center which could break down and
reuse material on demand. The ability to print objects inspired innovation and
many inventors no longer needed the services of a machine shop to produce
parts for prototypes. Many small businesses owed their success in large part to
3D printing.

IV. AUTODIDACTIC DATABASE (ADD)

The evolution of database software from ”intelligent” to ”self-learning” posed
a challenge to both database right and the ”sweat of the brow” doctrine in some
jurisdictions. AdD software could easily identify information lacking in a da-
tabase and could go into cyberspace to find the needed data without human
supervision. AdD was capable of autonomously arranging, selecting and pre-
senting the data. If it needed to AdD could create patterns in the database wi-
thout the user requesting it be done.
Under the ”sweat of the brow” doctrine an author gains rights through sim-
ple diligence during the creation of a work. Originality or creativity was not
required or was set at a minimum in these jurisdictions. Since AdD had basic
artificial intelligence it could easily mimic the same kind of diligence with basic
thought. A person with AdD on their computer could create a ”seed” database
and the software could rapidly expand it without any further need of the user.
When a large enough database was created the user could print out a hard copy
of the output and claim legal copyright without anybody being the wiser that
a computer had done the grunt work.
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

V. SOUL CATCHER TECHNOLOGY

In November 1996 Personal Computer World magazine described the concept

of a ”Soul Catcher” memory chip which could theoretically be implanted behind
a person’s eye and record all the thoughts and experiences of their lifetime. At
that time it seemed the only limitation to that technology was storage of the
vast data that would be accumulated. By the Existential Era the limitation was
legal. After accumulating a lifetime of data how do you legally use the data when
there was a vast amount of copyrighted material encountered during daily life?
Copyright only protects material that is fixed in a tangible form. People day-
dreaming about something they watched or listened to couldn’t be accused of
infringing because thought was not tangible, therefore no actual copying oc-
curred. Then along came brain-machine interface technology. Suddenly a me-
morized favorite song only sung off-key in the shower became a derivative
copy.
In 2011 UC Berkeley scientists decoded brain activity and reconstructed it as
digital video clips on a computer screen. This experiment captured the brain
signals using an fMRI machine and the computer was able to reconstruct an
approximation of what the human eyes saw by analyzing 18 million random
video clips from an internet site known as ”YouTube”; each clip being one se-
cond in length. This analysis built a database of potential brain activity for each
clip.
Video quality was low at first. As the technology improved and better softwa-
re was created it became commercially possible to make a ”dreamcam” product.
By this time the databases had over 100 million licensed clips but hackers used
specialized AdD software to increase the databases to billions of unauthorized
clips.
People using the modified dreamcam were often guilty of copyright infrin-
gement twice. First, by recording the dream. Second, by uploading it to a social
media site. If any of their friends shared the dream with other users then the
friend would be guilty of contributory infringement.
 500 YEARS OF COPYRIGHT LAW 

VI. COMPUTING: BIOMOLECULAR

After the patent laws protecting naturally occurring DNA sequences became
weakened in such jurisdictions as the U. S. there was increasing pressure from
the biohacking movement to open source genomic databases. Many companies
dealing with genetic engineering put most of their resources into synthetic
genomes. As the limits of silicon computing were reached computers began
to use biologically derived molecules to perform calculations. As the patents
for synthetic genomes fell into the public domain many companies sought to
protect their expired patents using copyright law based on a legal philosophy
similar to music sampling.
The genetics companies argued that their synthetic creations were original
and creative, therefore any company using their expired patented material had
to get a license for the use. This argument had limited success in jurisdictions
which gave copyright protection to typeface. When this occurred artiDNA
compulsory licenses (referred to in the computing industry as ”ersatz tickets”)
were established in law to allow the use of synthetic DNA and to deal with the
orphan works of defunct companies.
Many historians attribute the fad of ternary computer research during this
period as a result of legal fear from the genetics industry rather than a cargo
cult in the computer industry.

VII. COMPUTING: QUANTUM

The most esoteric cases during this era are found in claims of copyright in-
fringement dealing with quantum computers. Early versions of this computer
relied on quantum mechanical effects. When the calculations began to be done
through entangled particles several rights holders tried to apply to quantum
computing the previous generation’s idea that programs could infringe copy-
right when they are copied into the random access memory. The courts were
faced with the physics paradox that an unobserved particle could exist in se-
veral places simultaneously but an observed particle collapses into one state
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

thus destroying the ability to run a calculation. How does the law deal with the
crime of copying when the crime can’t be observed and preventing engineers
from exploiting nature’s copies negates an entire technology?
One court simply dismissed a case like that without prejudice. Other courts
made decisions based only on the copyrighted programming and ignored the
execution process of the software. As a result quantum computer software was
treated differently than other software. The rule of thumb was that in jurisdic-
tions where computer programs were considered literary works application
software had copyright and patent protection while embedded and system so-
ftware was only protected by patent law.

VIII. THE LEEMAN HOAX

The Existential Era came to a boil during what is arguably the greatest hoax in
scientific history. On September 2, 2088 a press conference was held by fusion
heir A. Dennis Leeman to announce that a SETI program he funded had de-
tected the ”first continuous extraterrestrial signal marking first contact” within
the Solar System. Independent triangulation confirmed the claim that the si-
gnal came from an orbit around Neptune. Communications with an alien race,
it seemed, wouldn’t be limited by light years of delay. The ”Rooks” as the voice
referred to themselves in broadcasts were only around four light hours away.
The skepticism at first was that the broadcasts were only of one voice. Later
criticism was based on Leeman’s miserly claims that all radio broadcasts from
the”alien ship” were his intellectual property. Any one of Earth’s 11 billion ci-
tizens was free to broadcast to the Rooks. Any response, Leeman insisted, was
his property.
The hoax ended on April 5, 2089. If it hadn’t been for a fault in the beta-
voltaic power supply on Leeman’s orbiting satellite the hoax could have gone
on for years. At the time of the failure Leeman had already initiated 32 copy-
right infringement lawsuits and one patent infringement suit against a group
developing a theoretical Woodward drive described in several broadcasts.
 500 YEARS OF COPYRIGHT LAW 

It was later revealed that the ”broadcast voice” was generated by software cre-
ated by one of Leeman’s employees 8 years earlier. The program was a break-
through in artificial intelligence but due to a waiver in the employee’s contract
she lost all rights to the program and wasn’t able to enter it into the Loebner
Prize contest as she planned.
Criminal charges of perjury were brought against A. Dennis Leeman due to
the false claims he made in the copyright applications for the Rook material.
Leeman’s defense was that despite the Earth origins the artificial intelligence
was programmed to believe it was alien and it’s orbit around Neptune was in-
deed ”extraterrestrial”. However, Leeman’s claims that he deserved copyright
protection of his work to promote further research and development seemed
to contradict his ”autonomous computer” defense.
Leeman was able to negotiate a plea deal in which he plead no contest for
a sentence of probation. All the intellectual property from the hoax, including
the satellite’s artificial intelligence software, was to immediately enter the pu-
blic domain. Three weeks after the deal was finalized Leeman disappeared du-
ring a holiday trip to Gisborne, New Zealand. To this day Leeman’s disappe-
arance is as much an unsolved case as what the mysterious lights were in the
area around the time of his disappearance.

IX. METALEGAL ERA

The Metalegal Era began as a movement which could trace its roots back to the
Access to Knowledge (A2K) movement. The metalegal movement was mainly
orchestrated by the Pirate Parties International to apply a modified version
of metalaw philosophy to copyright law. The goal of the movement was to
weaken if not void the Berne Convention of 1886 by establishing copynorm as
a norm of Jus Cogens.
Metalaw philosophy was first articulated by attorney Andrew Haley in 1956
as a system of law which could be equally applied to all possible intelligent
extraterrestrial species. In the new version of metalaw each sentient mind was
treated equally as if each brain was an alien world.
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

X. FORMATION OF CEDE
On October 4, 2097 seven industrialized countries each gave notice of denun-
ciation to Director General M. Anton under Article 35 of the Berne Conven-
tion. During the next year a set of values and rules was drafted by the seven
countries with supervisory assistance from the Global Commonwealth Tribu-
nal. This drafted set established a fundamental principle of ”peremptory copy-
norm” that would unify all the member countries. On January 28, 2099 all seven
countries ratified the Copynorm Exchange Decentralization Entente (CEDE).
Almost all the values and rules have withstood legal challenge. The one excep-
tion was that CEDE would not originally protect religious works claimed to be
from god or gods. Many remembering Leeman felt that whether it’s God or
alien all their information given should be public domain. That bias was cor-
rected later. It doesn’t matter if you are a creator or the Creator your rights are
just as respected as the consumers of your copyright under CEDE.

The text is from the pamphlet ”An Abridged Copyright History”. First published in
the year 2210. The pamphlet promoted the publication of An Unabridged History of
Copyright Law and looked back at the previous 500 years of copyright as public law.

Originally published: http://www.calpirateparty.org/forums.html#/20130730/500-years-of-copyright-

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In the future of international pacts

There’s no place for creative acts.
Even the most prolific artists and performers
Are controlled by cunning copyright holders.

Freedoms, rights and intangible values

Has become nothing but the manner to abuse
The creators’ own ideas and thoughts
And treat them as easy to control robots.

Everybody wants only money and success

And none remembers the idea of open-access
To acquire knowledge and gather information
That is now the object of companies’ manipulation.

The profits made only by representatives

Can’t beget artists’ and scientists’ motives
To create, discover and satisfy the appetite of hungry
receivers, instead — leaving them frustrated and angry.

In the future full of limitations

Where giving people unpaid art and information
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

Is seen as espionage and crime

It seems that being creative is a waste of time.

Originally published: https://sites.google.com/site/anotherscratchpad/

 
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Translation from Polish: Kuba Kwiatkowski

The law is respected if it ful ills one elementary condition: it has to be bene icial to
everyone it applies to…
When I came back home, my son was watching a movie. I noticed that the
video was strangely blurry.
— What’re you watching? — I asked. He turned to me and replied:
— ”Unbelievable 6”. The new one!
— I don’t think it’s available in the web yet — I responded, astonished. — It
premiered in the cinemas last week. Let me guess… I paused. — You’ve down-
loaded a pirated copy?
He looked at me, confused.
— I…
— Yes, I’ve downloaded it. But I didn’t have to pay anything. It was for free.
I shook my head and responded harshly. — Son, you’ll be 14 years old in
a month. I don’t want you to become a small time crook in a the future.
— How about a big time crook? — he asked ironically.
— I’m not joking. — I said. — Putting that aside, what if you eventually have
to pay a lot for this movie? It’s an old pirate trick. Do you want me to end up
in court?
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

We’re not rich, but we can afford a cinema ticket, or to pay a small amount
for downloading a movie.
He hung his head.
— You have two options: either I will confiscate your credit card for two
weeks, not to mention there’ll be no allowance, or I’ll give you a lecture on
ethics.
— Lecture me — he replied bleakly. — You know I don’t have choice.

— A few years ago, I wrote a specialist book, in my field. First, I registered it

in ICO: the International Copyright Organization. — I began. — There, I had
to pay for a review, the book received an ID number which was then inscribed
in the book’s source code. Then my work was added to the ICO catalogue, so
that everyone could share the book on their website, provided that the file is
original.
— I remember that — said my son with a vicious smile. — Mom was yelling at
you that we need new jackets, and instead you’re paying for some crazy book,
for which they should be paying you.
— Well — I responded — Mom has the right to her own opinion, but we
don’t have to agree with her. Let’s move on.
— I published a book. A studio made a movie. Someone wrote a game, and
someone else takes photos. Everything goes through ICO. Artists register the-
ir works there, and ICO enables them to make money by selling those works
online. The procedure is exactly the same as in the case of my book. And now
comes the best part: every company and every individual, like me or you, who
buys the file on ICO’s website, can share it for downloading on their own we-
bsite and make money on that.
— So why do we buy movies on some other sites, and not on the ICO one?
— my son asked.
— On the seller’s site we pay 1 dollar for a movie. We download it on our
hard drive, watch it as many times as we want, and that’s it. On ICO’s site,
 COPYRIGHT — REAL VISION OR FANTASTIC VISION? 

for the same movie we pay 15 dollars, because we pay for the movie and the
license. ICO inserts our customer number in the movie’s source code. Without
the costumer number, we can’t get paid if someone downloads the movie from
our website. Who can be a member of ICO?
He looked startled for a moment — Well… only states.
— Exactly. Because they establish laws and make sure they are respected. So,
we bought this movie with a license for sale from ICO. This is the first step.
We posted it on our website and… What will you see under the movie title?
— Well, there is always a price there.
— Now, the price is hidden in the movie’s code and it appears automatically
when you post the movie on your site. The thing is that the movie has a fixed
price. We can’t sell it for more or for less. This is the basic rule. ICO imposes
its prices on copyright holders because it has to make sure that an average Joe
Blow can afford a movie.
— And film studios don’t rebel against it? — asked my son.
— In the beginning they did. But it quickly turned out that the studios which
decided to go with ICO’s conditions, sold over 1 million movies in a year and
earned a few million, despite the fact that each movie had cost only a dollar. The
studios that demanded over a dozen dollars for a movie, sold a few thousand
copies and only earned a few hundred dollars. 2 years after its foundation, there
wasn’t a single company and studio which didn’t have a deal with ICO.
— Selling something for a low price makes you sell a lot more, so you earn.
I get it — my son nodded.
— Prices are a weird thing. If you buy a movie from us, you pay a dollar. You
go to England, and after a conversion to dollars, this purchase costs you almost
2 dollars. In a small, poor country, you’ll buy the same movie for 15 cents…
— And they call this a fixed price?
— The file doesn’t contain a price, only points. In other words, the price is
quoted in points. A point has a different monetary value for every country.
Here, the minimum wage is about 1000 dollars. We divide the minimum wage
by one thousand and receive the amount value of 1 point. If you download
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

a movie, the server checks in which country you are, and converts the points
into the appropriate price.
— Sounds smart. — my son said. — That way almost everyone can afford
downloading movies or music.
— There’re still countries, where people earn about 100–150 dollars a month.
— I confirmed. — This way we all have equal rights. Now, listen what happens
next… Imagine we start our own website and we buy books and movies from
ICO. Remember that every file contains our costumer number — it’s very im-
portant. We put the website on a server and wait for clients. Someone buys
a file through our site. And now listen. The dollar our client pays, lands on the
ICO’s account. The owner of the server gets 10 cents. What do you think such
an owner would do, if he found out that we give away movies etc., for which
people have to pay elsewhere?
My son shrugged. — It’s simple. They’d block this site, because it’s a waste of
money for someone who runs the server. It’s like stealing from him.
— That’s exactly how it is. See what happens with that money further on. 50
cents lands in the pocket of a person who has the rights to a movie or a book,
you know what I mean…
We still have 40 cents. 20 cents are ours, because the file was sold through
our site. How much remains?
— 20 cents. — replied son.
— 10 cents goes to the company via which you downloaded the file. It’s called
the provider. Why do you think cities want everyone to use free networks,
although they are slower than the commercial ones?
My son smiled. — Because then those 10 cents land in their pockets.
— The last 10 cents goes to the country of residence of the person who bo-
ught the file. To be exact, the provider takes 20 cents, but gives 10 cents to the
state treasury. You see son, today the copyright law is respected only because
everyone has their ”share” to collect and everyone counts on that money. The
file with a movie costs a dollar, but there are over two billion downloads of
those files per day. It’s a huge amount of money for those who own servers,
 COPYRIGHT — REAL VISION OR FANTASTIC VISION? 

sell files, provide networks and, of course, each country’s treasury also makes
sure that it gets its share.
— And the average Joe Blow pays for it all?
— Two weeks ago I bought a brand new game with you. ”Future-something”.
I remember that we paid 5 dollars for it. It’s a price imposed by ICO. Otherwise
the game would have cost 70 dollars and I don’t know if I had bought buy it
for you. We’re not that rich. Thanks to those prices, which are expressed in
points, Joe Blow from every country can afford it. Nothing is for free.
— But there is one more catch I didn’t tell you about. Anyone can start a site
and sell whatever they want, under the condition that they bought the file with
the ICO’s license. If it’s a company, then the ICO transfers money to its bank
account. But let’s say it’s me, and I don’t have a company. I’ll also get the money,
but in a different way.
— Why not to your account?
— A company pays taxes, while the money Joe Blow makes isn’t taxed, the
state doesn’t take any part of it. You don’t have to include it in your tax revenue.
Imagine that I have a site like this and I’ve made 100 dollars in a month by
selling files. I don’t have a company. My 100 dollars lands in my provider’s
account, who deducts the fee from the bill I have to pay for their services. The
provider works the other way too: the bill we pay for the Internet is a fee for the
Internet, as well as for downloaded files. Let’s say we have to pay the provider
105 dollars for all that. He will deduct the 100 dollars we’ve earned, and we’ll
get charged 5 dollars.
So it pays off, right?
— Sure — nodded my son. — And if there’s more than what’s on the bill, we’ll
just download more in the following month, basically for free.
— Something like that. That’s why in our times, pirates are at on the verge
of extinction. Most frequently, they’re maniacs or followers of some strange
ideologies.
— OK dad, but I listen to the radio on the Internet every day, sometimes
I watch movies, videos, e-cinema, Internet TV… What about that?
 FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT 2.0 ANTHOLOGY

— You also pay for it, but you don’t notice it. The difference is as follows:
you pay a dollar for downloading a movie, but the quality is great. You pay
5 cents for watching it in e-cinema, and you know what’s the quality like… For
listening to the radio online you pay 0, 05 cents per each song. A whole month
of listening to the radio costs merely 2–3 dollars, and you would have to listen
to it a lot. In ICO there are special licenses for those who host Internet radios,
e-cinema, Internet TV…
— And YouTube?
— Similar. The thing is, that when sharing a file, an Internet user doesn’t
know that it goes through a number of filters before it lands in ICO and comes
back from there. When you publish a file, you have to describe its content. If
you made a video yourself, then the ICO states that it’s free of charge. If it’s
someone else’s work, then robots check if it matches the description and com-
pare it with database. Once they check it, the video comes back to YouTube,
and the copyright holder is inscribed in the video’s source code. If you publish
X’s music video, and you’ll write that this is their work, the robots will check
it and everything will be fine. But if you write that the video is solely yours,
YouTube won’t publish it and will send it back to you for correction. And the
last thing: every file you want to share with people for free, also has to go thro-
ugh the ICO, and then it costs nothing. Sellers who download it to their sites,
will also get it for free — as well as Joe Blow. But if you publish a file you made
on your site and won’t register it in the ICO, you could be charged with piracy
and get into trouble. Ok, enough of this lecture, I’m tired.
— And I feel like talking… — my son laughed.
— I’ll say one more, most important thing: Joe Blow doesn’t face any charges
for downloading a pirated file. No one will hunt you, because you downloaded
a pirated movie. The one who shared this pirated file for downloading faces
charges. Anyway, there is no sense in risking sharing a pirated file, when you
can do it legally without any problems and earn some money at the same time…
— Right. I just realized that I could start a site like this and make something
out of it. Dad, can you give me about 100 dollars for those licensed files?
 COPYRIGHT — REAL VISION OR FANTASTIC VISION? 

The work is a literary version of original project, containing proposals of legislative

regulations from the scope of the copyright. The project also contains proposals to im-
plement these legislative regulations, based on principles of openness and the lack of
the compulsion.
Originally published: http://okiemlogika.salon24.pl/524622,copyright-real-vision-or-fantastic-
vision