The key point to me bears repeating:
"Property is something that can be taken from me. If I don’t have it, somebody else does. Expression is not like that. The notion that expression is like that is entirely a consequence of taking a system of expression and transporting it around, which was necessary before there was the internet, which has the capacity to do this infinitely at almost no cost."
Copyfight: EFF Co-Founder Enters e-G8 ‘Lion’s Den,’ Rips Into Lions
“I just arrived at the Tuileries for the #eG8, already a hoot. Unfounded smugness to rival the World Economic Forum.”
John Perry Barlow—EFF co-founder, Grateful Dead lyricist, and, improbably, now a rancher—arrived in Paris and began tweeting up a storm from the e-G8 summit gathered there this week to discuss the future of the internet.
After listening to French President Nicolas Sarkozy call repeatedly for internet regulation and more copyright protection, Barlow added, “You’d have thought from Sarkozy’s talk he was addressing a convocation of Anonymous and the Pirate Party. He wasn’t.”
Barlow was a late addition to a panel on intellectual property; his name wasn’t even included on the schedule. But he accepted the invitation even as colleagues begged him not to go and activists like Cory Doctorow turned down invitations to the event, which was seen as an industry/government cabal bent on regulating the ‘Net for its own ends.
Barlow made the most of his opportunity. On stage with the French culture minister and the heads of 20th Century Fox, Universal Music France, Bertelsmann, and a French publisher, he waited though 30 minutes of opening statements filled with comments like:
- “We do not believe that you can remove ‘content’ from the internet, and if you do this, what is there left? Basically, the internet then is a set of empty pieces and boxes.” (Bertelsmann)
- “When someone comes to you and says I need a few hundred million dollars to make a movie about 10 foot tall blue people on another planet, that’s not an easy decision to make. But if you do make that decision and it does turn out to be Avatar, then you’d like to be compensated.” (20th Century Fox; Avatar set the world box office record)
- “In France, there are still people who maintain their criticism of this [three strikes authority HADOPI], who view it as a repressive body, whereas in actual fact it creates momentum from a pedagogical standpoint.” (Minster of Culture)
When Barlow had a chance to speak, he expressed his own surprise at being on the panel, “because I don’t think I’m from the same planet, actually.” He then proceeded to trash the foundational assumptions of everyone who had just spoken.
I may be one of very few people in this room who actually makes his living personally by creating what these gentlemen are pleased to call “intellectual property.” I don’t regard my expression as a form of property. Property is something that can be taken from me. If I don’t have it, somebody else does.
Expression is not like that. The notion that expression is like that is entirely a consequence of taking a system of expression and transporting it around, which was necessary before there was the internet, which has the capacity to do this infinitely at almost no cost.
In Barlow’s view, the e-G8 has been about “imposing the standards of some business practices and institutional power centers that come from another era on the future, whether they are actually productive of new ideas or not.”
He added that he was more interested in talking about “incentivizing creativity by people who create things, and not large institutions who prey on them and have for years.”
Barlow’s biggest contribution to the e-G8 may have been the reminder that this illusion of calm is only possible in a setting where one screens the dissenting voices—and that those voices are still raging outside.
No comments:
Post a Comment