Copyright vs. Copyleft

It's curious how things change for somebody's own benefit. Walt Disney started its success by copying some of the features of Buster Keaton's "Steamoat Bill" and, if I remember correctly, it was the first company to ask for Copyright.

I don't know how do australian laws work but in Spain we have a very particular system. In the past few years there's been a national discussion about what to do with intellectual property. Should it be legal to download every single song or movie?What about those authors who are not well known for most of the audience?

So the Government decided to give special power to a private society: SGAE (Sociedad General de Autores = Author's Society). They would charge a percentage/canon for every single virgin CD/DVD, every song played on the radio/TV, songs played in restaurants and bars, for every copying device, DVD players, and so on.

So, in the case of CD's and DVD's, the SGAE collected money by arguing that someone could record any copyright material in them. To me it's like if you could put a person in probation because they bought a knife and...who knows what could they do with it!

So what many shops and bars have decided to do is put Copyleft music so no one could charge them. And many artists (spanish Nacho Vegas) are selling, or giving away, their music as Copyleft and it's been a success for them. They are playing live more than ever and earning the same amount of money as before. The ones to lose: music companies, not bands. But copyright is about creativity and ownership, as the US copyright policy says: copyright is to promote the progress of science and useful arts, so companies should think about rebuilding their industry.

Small explanation of Copyright vs. Copyleft

Are we aware of how our future might be?

These week's readings are making me think. Think about my possible/most likely future and think about my uncle's and my former boss life.

My uncle is an executive TV producer and he has been recieving calls, work calls, every weekend since I was a little girl. And Internet was still small but getting stronger when all these work calls started. I couldn't understand why would he be on a sunday afternoon/evening answering these calls instead of turning off the phone and just let the voicemail do its work. And, even worse, two years ago, while New Year's Eve dinner...a colleague from work was texting him asking for some work issues!!!On NEW YEAR'S EVE!!

The concept of 'presence bleed' of Function creep article describes perfectly what people are starting to get used to and see it as 'normal', to see work as non-work but just 'e-mail checking' amongs some other things. And one of its' effects is, as written in this paper, "a growing amount of "environmental stress" in the work place". And again, another person pops into mi mind.

My former boss, also the best boss anyone could imagine, would live connected permanently. Of course, her work is related to information and communication, but still, is it really necessary to be connected 24 hours a day? She would sleep, of course, but the first thing she would do was turn on the computer, check twitter, e-mail, send some work updates before going "to work" and will repeat the process when she got home. And she did a wonderful job, but is this the life that we are expected to live? Being 24/7 avaliable for our bosses and having little time to spend with our -future- kids, enjoy an evening at the movies without thinking "oh,i have to tweet this for work""i have to write this e-mail to the office in Los Angeles"... At least her case wasn't as severe as the woman from the text, the one who said she couldn't even go to the gym. I'm not sure but I think my boss won the office's paddle tournament (a sport that only seems to be played in Spain; somehow similar to tennis/squash)!! So yeah, she's the best.

But still, I think that people, specially the ones involved in the media industry or the internal communications department of any company, depend more and more on their Blackberries/iPhones/Android phones and they would drive mad if something went wrong for more than 10 minutes. But, is there something SO important that can't wait even 1 hour?2 hours?2 days? Of course, the insecurity of losing your job is the main reason for being connected all the time but if we're always avaliable...will we still be avaliable for our family?for our friends?for living? you should work to be able to live, not live to be able to work.

That's why I'm thinking on making money and then just retire in a desert island. Have my own bar and sell a few drinks a day. No stress. Just a hammock and the sun. Wouldn't it be nice?

Cyberspace identity

Barlow states in his "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" that "our identities have no boides, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion". But, who created and lives the Cyberspace if not humans? And don't humans and their computers leave some kind of trace? (TCP/IP)

17 years ago, when this declaration was written, it seemed that the net would allow people to be anonimous. But this has been proven wrong. We can try to be anonimous and make comments without using our real names but it is easy to follow the data trace that every computer leaves behind. It's true that it's easier to hide on the net than in real life and it's still hard to be found, but not impossible. If they can show you advertisements from the place you are connected to Internet, how come can it be hard dor the Police/some-other-person to find you?

Banks or online stores have access to a lot of data when you purchase something on their webs or do some kind of transaction. Everything is kept and there's no way out. We have to pay for the ADSL and phone bill, we have an IP address for that bill and our credit cards can tell our Bank what we buy, where and how much we spend. So...does anyone still think that we are completely anonimous?

Barlow also mentions that "your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement and context do not apply to us" because they are based on matter that doesn't exist in Cyberspace. This is not completely true. They might not be the same concepts and it may not be physical matter but there's cyber-matter (if it could be called like that). Every person who publishes or posts something under his real name or pseudonym has the property and it's responsible for that material. Even though that post is "nowhere and everywhere", it is alive on the net, so it somehow exists.

In this week's readings also found interesting the appearance of a new word: prosuming. In "New rules for the New Economy", Kevin Kelly declares that "in the network economy, producing and consuming fuse into a single verb: prosuming". I had never heard about it and I think it's a sign of the way economy and society is changing.

And it's happening the same in the Internet. Anyone can be the author of some information and consume some other information. A few years ago we didn't have the possibility to be heard if we were not politicians or journalists mainly, but now we can. Blogs, like these ones that we are writing, allow people to speak their minds, be a bit more free and, sometimes, say things they wouldn't say in their everyday lives.

Prosumer. The future of Internet. Prometeus

Social movements

I wake up every morning and the first thing I do is turn my computer on and read the newspaper. A spanish newspaper.

If we went back only 20 years, this would seem impossible to do. But nowadays, I'm sure we wouldn't manage to live without online international news.

I happen to be spanish. I don't know if many of you have heard about the Spanish Revolution, but it started in may 2011 and it's still going on. Mainly in the capital of the country, Madrid, and Barcelona, the second biggest city. How did it all start? Some people, tired of politicians and the way the government is managing the huge crisis that Spain is suffering, started to talk about it online. Twitter, Facebook, Tuenti (a spanish social network very similar to Facebook) suddenly became the tools to make everyone join at one place. At first they were few, but the message expanded rapidly and every day there were more and more "indignados" (angry because of the system).

This is how "la puerta del Sol" -city centre of Madrid- looked like in may:

Could this have happened without the help of social networks? Of global networks?

People used to think that there was no way to fight against the established power but...is that premise still valid? People have find a way to be heard and to be noticed. We are not puppets anymore.

This movement, known as "Democracia Real Ya" - Real Democracy Now- was in every spanish city and all over the spanish embassies during the months of may and till the 15 of june. It expanded and started a similar movement in Greece. It may seem that it has ended, but it's not. It's still alive and will keep on living thanks to Internet. The network of networks.

I started talking about newspapers because I wanted to talk about this movement and how things have changed. The economic situation of my country scares me more every day. I've been reading terrible predictions about what could happen and I could do it because of the global system that we live in. Even though I'm 20.000 km away from home, I can feel what's going on, I can feel that people are terrified because they don't know what's gonna happen. We could be the next ones needing to be saved. And, of course, not the last ones. Europe would...how to say this...be over.

That's global networks. If one gets affected, be careful...you could be next.

I don't really know what I wanted to say with this but I'm just scared. Don't hear any good news.