Today – 6 May 2009 – was an important day for the online community in the European Union. An revamped telecom legislation passed through the European Parliament containing a ‘three-strikes-and-you’re-out’ measure to permanently deny Internet access to copyright offenders in the EU members states.
An amendment was accepted by the parliament that undid this part of the broader telecom legislation, putting a new vote on how to deal with copyright offenders in the EU off for at least a couple of months. I was personally relieved when the news broke today, but what caught my attention was a press release issued by IFPI chief Frances Moore.
It said (edit and emphasis mine):
Many of the recommendations in this [legislation] stress the need to protect intellectual property as a driver of growth in the creative sector.
This is an example of Business 1.o: growth is measured in terms national currency (USD, EURO, Yen, …). Growth is the accumulation of more wealth. Wealth however only has to be measured in national currency if you want to measure value in national currency. Wealth could also be measured in terms of personal development, learning, building new relationships or improving existing ones, … . Wealth can be measured in all kinds of ways which makes that this measurement is inherently personal.
Only Business 1.0 measures growth and wealth in an impersonal way: through the accumulation of more impersonal national currency. Today’s vote – for now – protects the EU’s online community from being bullied by the entertainment industry (without any means of defense). But is also – clearly – draws a line in the sand. This line will become the battle front for many future conflicts and separates those who measure wealth in terms of converting creative works into impersonal national currency from those that measure wealth from a personal point of view.
Regarding today’s vote, the fractions in the European parliament obviously want to avoid upsetting voters with European elections just one month away (June 2009). But six months or one year from now this proposal will be presented again, and what will be outcome then be? The RIAA has announced it will stop suing individual users for copyright infringements. It is obvious what their alternative strategy is: bully the online community through national and international legislation. The current proposal circumvents national judicial systems, hence does not even attempt to guarantee due process. Instead, the entertainment industry will prosecute individuals and forces ISP’s to collaborate. Obviously this creates a process that is open for abuse and where collateral damage is unavoidable. And obviously the entertainment industry has no more use for prosecuting citizens through national judicial systems. Something has to give.
I’m convinced that this kind of legislation will pass one way or the other and this is bad news not for the online community but for nation-states. The debate over what is growth and what is wealth will not be settled through legislation. If anything, bad legislation will only start that debate.
The battle over how copyright and intellectual property should be protected online is now a decade old and it’s exactly in this domain that the personal definition of wealth differs the most from the national and/or international definition. It is my conviction that the debate on what is growth and what is wealth in the domain of intellectual property is one that is not going to end well for nation-states. By pushing this issues through the European legislative process the entertainment industry is paving the way for massive ‘creative destruction’ that will spread to domains other than the entertainment sector.
For one, more and more people are starting to realize that the way copyright is enforced in the domain of entertainment is very similar to the way patents are enforced in the pharmaceutical industry. It’s ironic that Girl Talk – the archetypical remixer – used to be a bio-engineer in his day job. In part 11 of RIP: the Remix Manifesto he comments on how similar the copyright issues are in the entertainment and pharmaceutical industries, and how innovation in the pharmaceutical industry is crippled by patents.
The debate on what is wealth, and which kind society needs in order to grow is one that will be unavoidably pushed to it’s logical conclusion by the entertainment lobby, and when that happens the fallout will cause tremendous havoc. There are no obvious reasons why nation-states and national economies cannot fall victim to creative destruction.
There can be only one – prelimary – conclusion to future events that are going to unfold between the online community and the national bureaucracies that try to control that community over the freedom of culture: impersonal society will pass the point of no return where its proponents will have to go into the defensive (regardless or because of their aggressiveness). The discussion on how (or whether) culture has to be controlled by national bureaucracies will once and for all put nation-states on the wrong side of the debate, in direct opposition of 99% of its citizens. Through their desire to let the past control the future of our cultures the entertainment lobby will lure national bureaucracies into a trap, one they will only be able to escape from if they dissolve themselves – and thus the nation-states they represent – to a large degree by abandoning attempts to control culture.
Compared to just a decade ago western nation-states find themselves in a situation where the majority of their citizens are now producers of content and culture (digital cameras and mobile phones are to a large extend responsible for this). Virtually none of these citizens however expect to get compensated in national currency by consumers of their content and culture. Very few of these citizens will accept legislation that restricts their personal freedom as creators and consumers of culture (for no obvious reason apart from greed). Although these citizens may not articulate their demands in this way, they won’t allow the past to control the future.
During the 1980’s and 1990’s nation-states have always considered that their job was to control their national economies and national currencies. Now – it seems – their üntergang will be caused by the question: who controls culture? To which extends can anybody expect to regulate and control the usage of culture they own? To which extend can culture be owned? It will be fascinating to see how national bureaucracies will collaborate in the creation of their own demise.
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