Power failure

For an hour or so reminds me how little is in my life.

As my machines stop working with the whine of fans spinning down I cease to be an artist and a professional. Without the machines I know very little. All my work and art is electronic, and carries no exiztence in and of itself.

My art exists as magnetic fluctuations recorded in plastic with embedded metal alloys to hold the magnetic phase. It tackes countless billions of these for even a little song.

Anyway, the world is facing important choices. The G8(the worlds eight most greedy countries :-)) is going to say something about poverty and climate change. Gee.

I doubt they´ll say anything we want to hear but heck, even a cynical bastard like myself cannot help but to feel a tiny glimmer of hope. Let´s focus our brainwaves in order to change theirs.

And then it´s the EU. They will in all essence decide upon their future on wednesday when they vote over a new patent directive. It might seem like a small matter compared to poverty and global warming but unfortunately it is not.

If it goes through as it stands now it will mean the end of innovation. It will in all practical effects be made illegal. There currently exists around 30000 software patents in the EU, most of which are gibberish from a technological point of view, however -if the directive goes through they will all be made enforcable. Which means whoever can afford the sleaziest lawyers will win. You know, like in america.

It will leave vast corporations with monopoloies on everything from dvd-players and cell-phones to super-computers.

The patentablity of crap will make the patent system be crap and eventually it will collapse under the weight of its own dung. In the meantime, us consumers will pay, and pay, and pay, and...

If I were to get a great idea, a great new product, I will find that Sony patented it in 1972. So they could own that idea. Beacuse that is what they have done, the large corporations of this world. They´ve had all sorts of people brainstorming for decades, smart people, brilliant people, stupid people. And out of all these brainstorming-sessions came ideas, most of which have never been actually made or turned into a product for all their lack of practitcality with current technology. But they´ve been patented.

And now the patent is unenforcable. Worthless. On wednesday it *could* give a single corporation the future control of our economy.

For example, Sony has patented the computer interface of tomorrow. You know, the one where you think about it and it happens. Beacuse the computer is scanning your thoughts and executing as nescessary. Sony have no idea at all how this might work, they are completely clueless as to the technologies involved, because they have not been invented yet. Not by sony, not by anyone. But on wednesday they might find themselves owning the idea. And if I were to invent such a device, I would have to pay Sony for it.

This is exactly as unreasonable as it sounds.

You should not be able to buy ideas. The marketplace is for products.

But ofcourse, modern manufacturing techniques, and the even more modern ones of tomorrow has brought the price of products down. And down, and down, and they´re margins have gone down with it. And they see that if the trend continues they´re not gonna be able to make their shareholders so fat unless they start making money from something else than the manufacture of produtcs.

Computer programs are a great way of doing this, IP(intellectual property) is a great way of making money out of thin air. Like how I wrote about my art in the beginning, it isn´t really there, it doesn´t occupy any significant space in reality. But it could be worth alot. You can sell the nothingness over and over again, like the back-catalogue of the beatles, and ask yourself: Why should you pay a tax to Michael Jackson for the privilige of listening to a beatles song. He wasn´t there was he? He didn´t help them, did he?

But he owns their music.

And we all have to pay him. Would you find it more reasonable if you paid the tax to say, Paul McCartney? He put his heart and soul into it. He deserves something back for that. But all sense of proportion is long lost, I think most of us will agree that mr. McCartney does not suffer any monetary needs.

And such it is with most of the art in the world. It is not owned by those who made it(they could never afford that). And we who wish to enjoy and experience it must pay the taxes to greedy middlemen for the privilige. Maybe the aritist get 10%(considered a good deal), maybe the artist gets nothing(not unusual in the world of music, where *many* have been fooled into signing contracts that forever barred them for getting anything back). Maybe the artist gets a single amount(like film-people often do, precentages is unheard of in the movie-biz where revenue is measured in billions) no matter how much the owners get.

The situation is bad as it is. Extending these draconian rights to software will be *very bad* for all of us.



But how am I gonna make money?

I am an artist, I must sell my work to make money.

Dude, I don´t know -but I am not enamoured with giving 90% of my revenue to some greedy merchants for the privilige of making money at all. Which is the current system. It is flawed and broken and they want to extend it.

But the time draws near, I have signed the first of no doubt many such contracts. I cannot live as I preach here. I have not the resources alone to make money from my work in sufficient quanteties to sustain myself. Such is the state of the art, for most of us.

I want to go to Brussel and protest, but I can´t afford to travel there.

For now, I can only hope the system will ultimately collapse.