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October 7, 2007.
"The Performing Rights Society, one of the UK's royalties collecting societies, has taken a Scottish car servicing company to court because the employees are alleged to have been listening to the radio at work, allowing the music to be 'heard by colleagues and customers'. The PRS is seeking £200,000 in damages for the 'performances of the music' which they claim equates to copyright infringement."
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This happened nearly a hundred years ago, as my father told me. It was the beginning of the end. Perhaps you don't understand me, so I may as well start from the beginning.
I write this in the first week of October, 2137. Let me go back a few hundred years in time, to a world that very few of you have experienced.
There was something called music. Today they're called "sounds". Yes, that word that only the rich can access. Their knowledge and culture are beyond what you can imagine right now.
Also, there was something called "instruments". They made music if you knew how to play them. Did you know that 100 years ago, people could play these sounds (music) for free? Your son, your friend, your neighbor could be a soundmaker.
Have you heard a cricket chirping? Have you heard a bird whistling? Well, music is like many kinds of birds whistling, many kinds of crickets chirping, but it's much more than these words can describe. I would have to talk to you about tones, chords, progressions, rythm, these things have no meaning for you right now. It would be useless to explain them to you. You would have to EXPERIENCE them to understand them.
I can only give you a glimpse of what was the world before the governments took control of sounds and pictures.
Many centuries ago, there were famous soundmakers, they were called "musicians" (don't forget that word). Vivaldi, Strauss, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovski. And picture makers. Picaso, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, but these are alien names for you. You don't know what they mean and how significant they are in themselves - it's like saying "rain" or "fire" or "mountain", but for sounds. And pictures.
These things - pictures, sounds ("music", as my dad calls it) were known as "arts". Now you HAVE heard that word. But very few people know what that means. Sooner or later some people are invited to see it, but then their memory is being altered so they are unable to reproduce or even describe what they experienced. They just want more, and only the government is able to give it to them.
People think that if the government is defeated, art will vanish. Not true at all, there are soundmaking devices scattered all around the world, but the few people who have them are hidden, and keep them in secret vaults. They don't want to be executed for massive copyright infringement.
But I disgress.
In the 20th century, there was this concept called "copyright". Now it has changed meaning, but it had a sense back then. It was not part of "copyright infringement". It gave the author of certain kind of art, the exclusive rights to copy that art. Hence the name, "copy-right". Now, there came the "recording industry". People would record the sounds they made into things called "discs". They were sold and transmitted by radio, with commercials to support them.
But then the recording companies got too powerful, and became the exclusive distributors. Soundmakers ("musicians", also called "bands") were paid less than a coin for each disc (it was called a "record") they sold, and the 99% of the money went to the recording companies.
Later came an enormous, but brief period of freedom where people could get their music from the internet. The internet wasn't like it is now. It had animated drawings called "video", and pictures, and music, sounds. Anyway, they got their music by "downloading" it. It was crunched with something called "mp3 compression", which allowed everyone to listen to it. This was without the recording industry's permission, and people suddenly got sued, and jailed for it. They weren't executed like they are now. And it wasn't seen as treason to the state, either. It was normal.
What happened? The recording companies bought the government. They BECAME the government. They soon banned radio transmissions of music - only authorized players were allowed.
What happened in the 21st century? Well, this happened. Music cartels started mutating into a monster that swallowed all creativity. Only by paying you could let a little bit of it out - but at the same time, the fee made them grow.
Today, as you can see, "music" is a secret word mentioned by a few outside authorized communication channels. It is some kind of secret drug, a legal one, that only the fortunate would be able to experience.
My father remembered the time his brother was imprisoned. He was too careless and hummed a tune (perhaps you don't understand - well, he was trying to imitate the sound with his voice), but was caught by the copyright police. His vocal chords were removed - he couldn't infringe copyright anymore.
In the 21st century, there was also this thing called "fanpages". They were information pages dedicated to the artists, or the copyrighted works themselves. They reproduced a bit of it, and it was legal, and good. It was called "fair use".
My father also remembered when fair use disappeared - he wouldn't tell me the date, he said he wouldn't recall that part of his life - he seemed to suffer a lot back then. He just told me how fanpages began getting censored by the copyright police. Art companies began asking for money so one could see the actual artwork in these fanpages. The paintings and sounds were replaced by clickable boxes (what's clickable? Well, you moved some kind of arrow called "mouse pointer" on them, and pressed a button on a device called "mouse") where you paid to see or hear the actual work.
As time passed, the raison d'etre for webpages was gone, and then these became replaced by news teletypes (text only). This became the internet that you and I know.
Did you know that in the 21st century, houses in Cities had colors like trees, and the sky, and fire, and many others? Now there is only one color, grey. When it was that the world became grey?
My father wouldn't tell me that, either.
To the people that will read this piece of information (if they decipher it correctly, that is), please don't make the same mistake. I may as well release this paper and be executed - I don't fear death now, I'm too old to appreciate life. I have been banned from experiencing art, anyway. I can only hope to die and join my father's remains.
Tonight the resistance (maybe you know them under the government-given name "terrorists") is going to have a meeting about art. I warned them about the copyright police (they know about tonight), but they won't listen. I may as well join them and die freely.
But I don't want to die without sharing with you about art, expression and fair use. I may be the last living person in the world who knows about it.
Sigh. If only the people in the past had listened. They let an tragedy happen to artistic expression. Art died. Free expression died. Creativity died.
Mozart had been trapped in a soundproof cage.
