[Upd-discuss] Re: Thoughts regarding Copyright and Public Domain

[Andrius Kulikauskas]

Thank you, Benoit Couture, for your report from Alberta, Canada, where 
you must have stayed up very late to watch us!  Thank you also to Sasha 
Mrkailo in Serbia, Surya Prakash Vinjamuri in India, Josephat Ndibalema 
and Paul Leonard in Tanzania, Fred Kayiwa in Uganda, Mina from Germany 
!  It's great to know that you have watched our video (thanks to the 
live feed by Zenonas Anusauskas).  Our chat transcript is here:
http://www.worknets.org/archive/index.pl?mon=2&mday=31&year=2008
and thank you, Benoit for sharing parts.  Thank you to Eric Wanjamah and 
Markus Petz for keeping us connected from Lithuania!  I wish you all 
could have seen the wonderful performance by the Nafsi Afrika Acrobats 
in the evening!  I share with the COMMUNIA group and the Union for the 
Public Domain.  Andrius Kulikauskas, ms@ms.lt

Benoit wrote:
> Salut everyone, 
>
> Here are some thoughts from the chat line between Sasha, Surya and I, 
> written during and after COMMUNIA:
>
> Benoit: Here is a thought regarding copyright. Because of the 
> unlimited capacity to record any and all use of digital material, why 
> not bring the Public Domain and Copyright in a complementary position 
> to one another. This way, the Public Domain could access all the 
> benefitss of knowledge and when profit begins, the owners of the 
> Copyrights could get their due. Google is on its way to produce such 
> poss :: possibility. Thank you.
>
> Sasha: now I think , isnt copyrighted material just a special case of 
> public domain? :: but now the processes going on are developing in 
> the direction that pblic domain is just a special case of 
> copyright :: even more true, by todays law public domain is almost 
> not posible to create and cherish (eg everything you wrote or draw is 
> automaticly in copyrighted domain)
>
> Benoit: Yes Sasha. Until a framework can be accepted, it will remain 
> quite confusing. :: I think that the framework should make use of 
> Cpyright, Creative Commons and Public Domain. :: I like the analogy 
> of Andrius when he said: Copyright is like hard liquor, Creative 
> Commons is like beer or wine and Public Domain is like water. :: No 
> beer, wine nor hard liquor without good, pure water to start with and 
> to finish with.
>
> Sasha: exactly :: but now "they " want us all to use and buy only 
> hard liquors :: its like few decades ago, the cigarretes commercial 
> sugested that its good to smoke cigaretes :: I feel we have a 
> political economimcal lobby which is pushing the copyright agenda :: 
> and the public is to slow and inert to react more actively
>
> Benoit: The public is in fact, an artificial entity, made to serve 
> the private interest that hold the capital power to decide and to do 
> as they please. :: The common denominator upon which private and 
> public interest can join, is the personal interest that serves both, 
> private and public with the clarity of transparency, where high-trust 
> can grow freely. :: By eliminating the possibility of misuse, then 
> distrust vanishes. :: To me, that is the number one role and duty of 
> communication and the thecnology that can contribute to such 
> potential of the Open Source :: That is why I write to see the 
> emergence of The Personal Sector from out the Official Secrecy of the 
> Public Sector and from out of The Codes of Silence of The Private 
> Sector. Then we shall see the end of decisions getting made in back 
> rooms deals amongst those few people who control official secrecy and 
> the codes of silence. :: ...at the expense of the masses! :: The 
> sooner that we learn to live for what we need as humans, the sooner 
> that we will be free from the conflicting differences of what we 
> want :: 
>
> Suryaprakashvinjamu ri: I had opportunity to view few proceedings and 
> I felt it's a good beginning.:: Need to draw some parallels and also 
> draw similar experiences and come back again.
>
> Benoit: Yes Surya, like a refinig process of mind interaction: :
> Andrius used the word cahotic but I think that it might have been 
> more from his own apprehension as he is very perfectionist :: I 
> thought it was very orderly. 
>
> Suryaprakashvinjamu ri: from my side if we had participants profile 
> and the proceedings schedule it would help us to understand the 
> context with less effort.
>
> Benoit: There is, I think, the possibility to tap into a thought 
> interaction that becomes so intimately personal, that we can become 
> free from individualism. 
> ------------ --------- -------
>
> I would like to clarify that what I mean by being free from 
> individualism does not mean that the individual becomes eliminated, 
> but on the contrary, it means that the individual finds her/his own 
> completion of relationship and relevancy to such extent, that the 
> limits of indivudualism are no longer hindrances to personal growth 
> and participation.
> This is how and what I understand to be the deep accomplishment being 
> sought by what the word COMMUNIA intends to mean.
>
> With hope,
> Benoit
>
>