www.liukuma.net

Professor Lawrence Lessig is new acquaintance to me which I am very shamed of. Particularly about the "new" part of it. Where have I been the last 10 years? However, I must thank the course facilitators to guide me to his ideas.
 
Lessig's ideas fell right into me. I have been aware for example about the software patent feuds but I have not had the total meaning of it explained to me before. When Lessig quoted Bill Gates in his speech I got a bit frightened - this is the way that all the corporations work, they try to prevent competition. It is all about creating a monopoly. It got me thinking about the American way... capitalism and "democracy"... that everyone could make a million. Consumption. Controlling the natural resources. Power.
 
Why are they doing it? Because they can. Because we let them. And why we let them do it? Because they have told us that there is no other way.
 
I think it is the same with copyright. They must have the power to sell their products again and again. And copyright is the tool to it. Of course they are collecting enormous profits as a side effect.
 
Lessig talks about owning ideas... Thoughts are our natural resources. Thoughts and what comes out of them. Innovation. But what is innovation? Human brain works in a way that it connects new experiences to older already memorized ones. Once in a while these connections give birth to new inner experiences, ideas. Any artistic, scientific or educational output requires some kind of idea. If they can put a copyright tag to an idea, patent it and gather all the patents, they are just not preventing new ideas from forming but they are preventing thinking. And when they are preventing thinking they are denying our humanity. We become just consumers... that we already are.
 
Openness is a way to fight this progress. But we are so accustomed to ownership and consumption that even educated people have difficulties to stand against them. I remember a collegue of mine, a teacher, from whom I asked to show her course materials that I would not teach the same things (we were teaching a same class). I was struck by her answer as she said that she COULD show her materials only if everyone else showed theirs to her. I believe this kind of behaviour is common in Finland. Teachers work part time and are afraid of others stealing their jobs. There is some point to it. Similar fears exist in other areas of innovative work too. What about academic plagiarism? Does the current Finnish academic research practices support openness or secrecy?  Because of the patenting and copyright laws research has to be kept in secrecy. It is the way research is done.  That no one would not steal  your idea, that you own.  Hovever, there is always a way to track the trail of thoughts.  So It  is  a question of ethics but also  the principle.  Why research is done?  How is it funded?  Who benefits from  it? What happens  if  research was  open and  somebody else would make  the  final breakthrough? Who gets  all the glory?
 
This might be shooting to my own leg but to enlighten the idea of consistency in Finland today. The University of Tampere (Hey, anyone here from Tampere?), is a part of University Network for Communication sciences (http://viesverk.uta.fi/). Which UIAH's Media Lab is also a participant. I have reason to believe that this Network of organizations has strong urges for providing free and open course materials. Facilitating this course for example. As an example, on their web site they state that the students of the participant organizations are allowed to take part of this course (Heck, I thought this course was free for all?). But what irritates me is for example this material about semiotics of images, which I found to be very useful (http://www.uta.fi/viesverk/kuvanluku/index.php?b=tekijat, in Finnish sorry). On this page they state the material is intended ONLY for the students of the participant organizations. My translation is not accurate, I have added the "only" there the reason being that Finnish is a language that does not need the negative to be negative. So it doesn't say that the material is ment to be free for all. This in the public web? Of course this material is presented under copyright law.  So did it make me criminal to look at this? It certainly did when I linked the material to my own course materials. As a reminder, my organization NCUAS (http://www.pkamk.fi) is not a member of this consortium B-)

 
I am not a master of copyright law, which has also changed recently here in Finland. I am not aware how it relates to other European or US copyright laws. However, it seems to me that it is "case sensitive", as strong as it is interpreted. Which is insane by the way... There are always fears of piracy and missuse. I believe that people should get paid from what they have done, of course. But when copyright laws starts to dictate the way of living it is plain wrong. If I cannot make mp3:s from a CD that I legally own to listen with my iPod it is ridiculous. Or if I buy a DVD to my kids that I know they will scratch immediately and cannot make a backup of it. Plain crazy. I have a permission to copy some pages to my students from a book, but I cannot make a pdf from the scans. Horrificly wrong. I am encouraged to consume more paper... well Finland lives from the forests. Taxi driver playd a CD in his car that the passenger heard. This was an act of public presentation and was banned. Hello! What if he had sung it? Would that have been a public performance?
 
Like Lessig put it, what have you done? They have put a price tag on our souls. What have we done about it?