elixir that mitigates stagnation and awakens generative action.
NOTES
1 See Avital, M. and Te’eni, D, ‘From Generative Fit to Generative Capacity: Exploring an Emerging Dimension of Information Systems Design and Task Performance’, Information Systems Journal, 19(4), 2009, p. 345-367.
AUTHORS AND OWNERS
ANDREW KATZ
Andrew Katz traces the origins of the problems of copyright legislation and practice when confronted with the natural, human, social mode of creative endeavour. Building on developments in open source software, he outlines how designers could benefit from a similar model and reveals the differences between the digital and the analogue realm.
Andrew Katz is a former software engineer and partner at Moorcrofts LLP in Marlow, Bucks, UK, specializing in advising clients on intellectual property and other aspects of open source software. For Andrew, “a design is an open design if it bears four freedoms. One: The freedom to use the design, including making items based on it, for any purpose. Two: The freedom to study how the design works, and change it to make it do what you wish. Three: The freedom to redistribute copies of the design so you can help your neighbour. Four: The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions of the design to others so the whole community can benefit from your changes. Access to the design documents is a precondition for these freedoms.”
We are reaching the end of a great historical experiment. Printing (starting with Gutenberg-style presses PRINTING and leading to huge industrial Heidelberg printing machines), radio broadcasting, 78s, vinyl, CDs, cinema, television: all these discoveries formed the technological backdrop for this experiment. All are (or were) media based on the principle of one-to-many distribution. To understand how this experiment was initiated, and how it is reaching its end, we need to understand a little of the nature of the businesses involved in these activities, and how the law enabled them to attain, and retain, that nature. WYS ≠ WYG
AS THE PUBLIC GREW ACCUSTOMED TO THE IDEA OF PASSIVE CONSUMPTION, CREATIVITY BECAME INCREASINGLY MARGINALIZED.
The one-to-many broadcast distribution model distorted our perception of creativity. A key characteristic of one-to-many distribution is the role of the gatekeeper: the corporation which decides what we, the public, get to read, watch or listen to. The roles of creator and consumer are starkly defined and contrasted. As the public grew accustomed to the idea of passive consumption, creativity became increasingly marginalized, at least in those areas covered by copyright. ACTIVISM Creativity was perceived as capable of flourishing only through the patronage of the movie studios, the record companies or the TV stations.
The industrial technology behind printing, broadcasting and vinyl duplication is expensive. Copyright law grants a monopoly which enables the distributors of media to invest in the capital infrastructure required for their packaging and distribution. These are the businesses which grew fat on the monopolies so granted, and they succeeded in convincing the public that it was the corporations’ role to provide, and the public’s role to pay and consume.
The original social approach to creativity did not become extinct as the dominant producer/consumer mode became established, even for media (like music, for example) where it applied. Andrew Douglas’s film Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus shows that a visitor to the late 20th century Appalachians of the American South may well be asked: “What instrument do you play?” If the visitor answers: “I don’t play any”, the questioner will go on to say: “Ok, so you must sing.”
Steven Johnson in Where Good Ideas Come From makes the convincing case, based on a mass of evidence, that the social mode is more effective at maximizing creativity than relying on lone inventors and creators sitting in their garrets and sheds. Lone creators make good central figures in a compelling narrative – one reason why this meme is so popular. However, examining the truth behind the narrative often reveals that any creative work has much broader parentage than the story suggests. James Boyle in The Public Domain reveals the story behind the Ray Charles song I Got a Woman, tracing it backwards to Gospel roots, and forwards to the YouTube mashup George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People, which sprang to prominence in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. To be sure, companies sometimes tried to foster a social model within the organization, but as Johnson points out, the benefits of social creation increase very dramatically with the size of the pool of participants, due to network effects. Until company silos are able to combine, the beneficial effects are relatively small.
Technology is Expensive
The internet has proved hugely disruptive. TREND: NETWORK SOCIETY The sharing and social nature of Web 2.0 has enabled the rediscovery of the natural, human, social mode of creative endeavour. The social side of the internet is dominated by individuals acting in their private capacity, outside the scope of businesses. Companies were initially wary of losing control over the activities of their staff, and regarded internet social activities as time-wasting at best. In the worst-case scenario, businesses saw online social networking as a potential channel for employees to leak the company’s valuable intellectual property, and were therefore often slow to see the benefits of social interaction in terms of benefits to their creativity. As they have seen the benefits accrue to their competitors, however, companies are starting to embrace a more open mode of business.
A return to the social mode is not without its setbacks. The internet radically lowered the barrier to entry for collaborative participation, and consequently increased the number of potential contacts that an entrant can make. SHARING This immensely powerful engine of creativity comes with a brake that inhibits its full capacity: the effect of unfit-for-purpose copyright laws.
The copyright laws of the broadcast era do more to assist the incumbent gatekeepers (the film companies, music companies and so on) than to promote the social mode of CO-CREATION collaboration. A side effect of the digital world is that almost every form of digital interaction involves copying of some sort. Whereas copyright law had nothing to say about sharing a book with a friend by lending it to her, in the digital realm, lending her a digital copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four to read on her e-book reader or computer involves a form of copying which may potentially violate copyright law.
The broadcast-model gatekeepers have used this unintended side effect of copyright law to their advantage, taking action against private individuals who had no intention of monetary gain, including mash-up artists, REMIX home video enthusiasts and slash fiction authors. Incumbent rights holders, fearful of losing their profitable monopoly-based businesses, have sought to extend their rights ever further by lobbying governments (frequently successfully) to legislate for new and increased intellectual property rights, extending such rights far beyond their original purpose and intention. To put the issue in context, it is necessary to ask a fundamental question: what is copyright for?
Thomas Jefferson was one of the most lucid writers on the topic. He understood well the unique nature of knowledge:
“If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction
