at the last stage a system is formed which allows to control access to cultural achievements appropriated by means of corporate mafias, and consequently to control the direction of cultural development by means of disseminating some information and prosecuting those who disseminate other information under the pretext of breach of «copyright» or allied rights.
This is not our imagination. H. Ford confronted this system when he was defending in court his right to manufacture cars in spite of the patent issued to some man called G. Selden. H. Ford describes that as follows:
«The way was not easy. We were harried by a big suit brought against the company[435] to try to force us into line with an association of automobile manufactures, who were operating under the false principle that there was only a limited market for automobiles and that a monopoly of that market was essential. This was the famous Selden Patent suit. At times the support of our defense severely strained our resources. Mr. Selden, who has but recently died, had little to do with the suit. It was the association which sought a monopoly under the patent. The situation was this:
George B. Selden, a paten attorney, filed an application as far back as 1879 for a paten the object of which was stated to be «The production of a safe, simple. And cheap road locomotive, light in weight, easy to control, possessed of sufficient power to overcome an ordinary inclination». This application was kept alive in the Patent Office, by methods which are perfectly legal, until 1895, when the paten was granted. In 1879, when the application was filed, the automobile was practically unknown to the general public, but by the time the patent was issued everybody was familiar with self-propelled vehicles, and most of the men, including myself, who had been for years working on motor propulsion, were surprised to learn that what we had made practicable was covered by an application of years before, although the applicant had kept his idea merely as an idea. He had done nothing to put it into practice». (“My Life and Work”, Henry Ford, chapter 3 “Starting the real business”).
H. Ford won the case, that is why now we know about a car-manufacturing company called «Ford Motors». The business of «protecting» «copyright and allied rights» has moved very much forward. Let us turn to an interview given to the Pravda.ru web-site by the «World of Internet» magazine content editor and one of the founders of the iFREE[436] public initiative Alexander Sergeyev.
«A. Sergeyev: Under the pretext of protecting the interests of the author information distribution of all kinds is artificially limited by insurmountable financial and legal barriers, — says the iFREE manifesto. As a result, creation outside the corporate framework that provides legal and financial support is doomed to be either illegal or marginal.
(…)
Now on the threat to culture. Copyright strengthens the principal division of all people into authors and consumers of cultures. But such a division is contrary to the modern tendencies of cultural and scientific development.[437] Of course, traditional forms of authored creative activity will remain, yet a different, non-authored culture is becoming more and more significant in comparison to it. It includes fan clubs, happenings, joint musical performance, public discussions, teleconference, network projects with undefined or changing number of participants.[438]
Non-authored culture has always existed, for example, as folklore. Its main difference from authored culture is in having no strict division into consumers and authors. Rather, it has participants and leaders. With the introduction of book-printing, sound records, radio, television non-authored culture receded into the background, as only professional authors and editors were able to manage expensive printing space and no less expensive broadcast time properly.
The Internet creates entirely new opportunities for developing non-authored culture. But in the 500 years since the times of Guttenberg and especially in the 20th century we have almost entirely forgotten that it exists. Modern copyright legislation provides authored culture many advantages over non-authored one. It creates an effective way of appropriating cultural values[439] and limits broad public access to them.
But the future belongs to non-authored culture. And one should not think that non-authored culture will be necessarily marginal. Professional authorship formed as a response to the challenge of publishers. The dominating form of cultural interaction is changing. After the era of broadcast we are entering the era of communication. And this must be certainly reflected in the legal procedures which regulate cultural activities. Above all the law on copyright — the main obstacle in the way of non-authored culture.
Question: Copyright has yet had little chance to go on the spree in post-Soviet countries. But it seems that Russia has prepared an analogue of Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998 (DMCA) — the amendments to the RF Law «On copyright and allied rights». The bill on the amendments contains amenability for by-passing copyright protection hardware, as well as the ban on manufacturing and distributing devices used for by-passing or facilitating the by-pass of protection hardware… Among many other things. What will happen if the bill is passed?[440]
A. Sergeyev: If the bill is passed, our legislature will become even worse than that of America, which has almost reached the level of totalitarian regimes in the aspect of freedom of information distribution (put in bold type by the authors of the book). By the way, the next bill is being discussed in the US, concerning the ban on manufacture and sale of hardware and software not equipped with the means of copyright information control.[441]
The number of information activities and information relations is limitless. Any of them may appear unprofitable to someone. And if the corresponding lobby is powerful enough, this activity is banned. While the lobby of freedom is often the weaker side. Freedom is lost gradually, almost imperceptibly. Every such step in itself seems insignificant. But constant dropping wears away the stone.
Recently I received news — some companies are trying to prohibit through court placing links leading to pages other than the homepages of their sites as it may create a different impression with the user than the author originally intended. Even in the Soviet times[442] nobody thought of banning reference to particular pages of books. Yet now to someone this practice became unprofitable.
Actually, the more bans are introduced, the easier it is to make money on them. The scheme is a very simple one and has been known since the times of Inquisition: you introduce a public ban — a moral, legal, political one — and then you start selling pardons…»
Though the problem has been discovered by the society, it is clear that A. Sergeyev is speaking only about selling «pardons» to the end of making profit. The crucial issue has not been understood and clearly expressed. It has been left in silence, as it is necessary for the bosses of the Biblical project on enslaving the mankind:
A kind of mafia regime controlling the society is being formed and is becoming more powerful. Its power is exercised not by actual dictatorship, but indirectly — through controlling the distribution of information favorable to the Biblical project bosses and persecuting those who distribute unfavorable information, under the pretext of copyright breach. As an interim result, the direction of cultural development on the whole and of scientific and technological development in particular to a very large extent comes under legalized control of the international mafia of usurers who have started to buy up © copyrights.
Thus, substituting the issue of providing public access to all cultural accomplishments with the issue of presumably protecting the interests of creators from the attempts to parasitize on their work, the Biblical «world backstage» is trying to pursue its slave-owning ambition by new means.