3 de noviembre de 2016

From value gap to a new framework of IP law



Record labels and other actors from the old music industry have long complained that the new configuration of music business in internet has created a value gap, i.e., a hole in the value chain of the music. We are in a context in which there is less money to share, and revenues ends up in the hands of the new digital intermediaries, like YouTube, which do not invest in music but mainly in technology.


The holes in the value chain are a classic problem in the industry: musicians have always complained that, to be paid per session, they never see reward if the recording is successful (it is also true that they do not share the hardship if it is not). Producers have complained repeatedly of the same, as it was analyzed (in the Spanish context) in the round table The rights of intellectual property of the artistic producer, organized last year by the Master in Intellectual Property of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.  In the world of music, nobody trusts anyone: the cake is smaller than ever, and the numbers on revenues are not clear.


Protest against intermediaries is not only the reflection of an economic problem. It is the swansong of a system of property intellectual who has been built patch after patch, based on the negotiations between old and new actors to adapt to new interests affecting not too much the status quo (Litman, 2006). A system without the capacity to think about how obsolete are old categories , built from the old bookish paradigm. What is an author today? What is a user? What is an editor? These categories need to be redefined in the age of Google, Facebook, copyleft and the prosumer. The environment has changed, but not the logic of the law.


Academic research may help to clarify what is the real role of each of the parties in this new environment. It is necessary to define, above labels, what each party do, what each party think they do (which are not necessarily equivalent) and what the other actors in the field think that other parties do. This research can only be built crossing the empirical data with a vision from the inside, based on collaborative field work. This research should include all actors, even those whose economic contribution is small or poor: it should deal with the problem of how to include users, whose point of view tends to be despised by the industry, due largely to the difficulty of finding a body that represents users (Drahos and Braithwaite, quoted in Klein, 2015, 115)


How can you contribute academic analysis? First of all, in a context in which each of the parties have conflicting interests, it provides a neutral space, a point of equilibrium where all voices can be heard in search of a balanced position. In addition, since the academy is not a player with economic interests in the field, the research has presumption of objectivity, not to be ballasted by the pursuit of a position of dominance over other actors.


In this way, the research would represent both the public interest and the needs of each of the parties; these only can challenge their views and ways of work being questioned from an external point of view that use different categories and values that the ones assumed by those involved in the music industry.


REFERENCES

Klein, Bethany; Moss, Giles; Edwards, Lee. Understanding copyright. 2015. Sage. London

Litman, Jessica. Digital copyright. 2006. Prometheus Books, Amhers, NY.

1 de noviembre de 2016

Cervantes es nuestro



Un reportero de guerra devenido en escritor de best sellers y un cervantista académico se enzarzan en una guerra que llena de pus las páginas de El País. Se supone que se pelean por un asunto importante: el debate de si la lengua es sexista, lo que revela un nivel de discusión cuanto menos banal: si aceptamos que la sociedad es machista y que la lengua es una construcción social e histórica, la expresión no puede ser sino sexista. Sólo cuando llega la réplica de Pérez Reverte a la primera andanada de Rico nos hacemos a la idea de que la controversia es más banal y más mundana: pelean por los dineros y por las palmaditas en la espalda.

Ambos académicos han editado su propia versión de El Quijote. La de Rico es la versión de referencia, la de Reverte es una versión escolar. La de Rico rinde réditos a su autor, la de Reverte a la RAE, y este presenta lo suyo como una noble cesión patrimonial que pretende paliar, al menos en parte, a la escasa atención que las necesidades de la RAE reciben del erario público.
Para los que sabemos un poco de propiedad intelectual, y leemos esa norma desde una perspectiva política, aquí hay gato encerrado. Me recuerda a aquella noticia de hace algún verano en el que la SGAE reclamaba al pueblo de Zalamaea los derechos por interpretar la obra de Lope de Vega. Que, como Cervantes, nunca fue socio de la SGAE ni conoció la instauración de la Ley de Propiedad Intelectual. Y que lleva algo más de 70 años muerto, de modo que sus posibles derechos de autor ya estarían desintegrados en el dominio público.

Pero resulta que ninguna de nosotros hemos leído a los clásicos de forma directa. Hemos leído las versiones de Lope o Cervantes que hacen otros para facilitarnos la lectura. Deberíamos estarles agradecidos por ese esfuerzo de claridad y limpieza, que nos permite acceder con más frescura e inmediatez a las joyas de la literatura. Y lo estamos: parte del dinerito que nos dejamos al comprar esos libros se va a sus bolsillos, por mucho que su nombre raramente aparezca en la portada. Compramos páginas de Cervantes, pagamos euros a  Rico. Este ha creado una obra derivada: sus réditos deberían ser repartidos con el autor original, que además tiene la potestad de autorizar esa nueva versión. Pero puesto que el autor está muerto y la obra descansa en la placidez del dominio público, no hay ni autorización ni retribución. Sólo queda un autor.

Nosotros, los lectores, no solo ganamos claridad y frescura en la lectura. También perdemos algo: nuestro dominio público, algo que es de todos, donde cada uno estaría en su derecho de servirse de obras y textos a su antojo. Rico y Pérez Reverte han tenido a bien hacerse con algo que es de todos, darle un barniz y hacerlo suyo. Y exigirnos a los demás el pago por su uso.  Cierto que hay un trabajo y una dedicación y un conocimiento movilizados (la doctrina inglesa del “sudor de la frente” como base del derecho de autor) para generar esa versión que nosotros leemos en el sofá, pero lo cierto es que todo esto se ha movilizado sobre algo que era de todos y cuyo uso no hemos autorizado. Por usar una analogía inmobiliaria, tan del gusto de la visión mercantilista de la propiedad intelectual que predomina en España, es como si compartiésemos una casa entre varios, y uno decide pintarla y cambiar los muebles y las cortinas. Y. cuando volvemos los demás a la casa, nos exige que paguemos un alquiler por el uso, porque él ha trabajado mucho y ha invertido sus dineros.  ¿Se lo hemos pedido? ¿Nacen esos gastos de una decisión común y consensuada de los propietarios? 

Un dominio público que es simplemente un repositorio de material que puede volver a ser privatizado según criterios personales no es un dominio público: es un limbo al que van a morir las obras intrascendentes mientras las grandes obras esperan a la enésima reedición de la mano de los derechos de transformación. Transformen lo que quieran, señores; pero recuerden que Cervantes nunca será suyo, simplemente porque es nuestro.

29 de abril de 2016

Social networks and political turbulence



How social networks are changing the way people is involved in politics?  That was the main questions   @HelenMargetts, director of the Oxford Internet Institute, developed in her talk at CRASSH on “Social networks and political turbulence”. Margetts was presenting her book Political turbulence (co-writen with Peter John, Scott Hale and Taha Yasseri) in Cambridge on April 26th in a seminar organized by the "Technology and Democracy" project directed by John Naughton (@jjn1)






Social networks and reseach methods 
 
The arousal of social networks allows a more accurate approach to politics from political sciences. Untill now, the only way to research on the political interactions at the micro levels was the use of surveys. Now, the combination of big data and social networks give academics acces to what is  really happening. This is important since one of the findings of Political turbulence is that the time of social networks, also in politics, in “now”. As happens in YouTube viral videos, the successful campaigns tend to grow very quickly from the very beginning.

But, as use to happen when quantitative methods are used, big data approaches are unable to answer the key question of social science, the one that refers to how people make sense to their own behavior and the social environment they live by. Classical indicators from social sciences, as demographics, don't explain pwople’s t involvement in politics  through social media.



Participation, efficiency and pluralism
 
Because of this “surveillance” of what other people is doing politically in social networks, “social media reinforces reinforces (un)popularity". People tend to support popular causes. When the British government gave the people the chance to know which petitions were more popular when they access the petitions web page, most people tended to support the one on the top. The dream of an internet that will minority proposal a high visibility is increasingly being questioned. Popular artist in “classical” media are the ones with more followers in twitter and YouTube. Which chances do we have to built a new public sphere, more dynamic, more democratic, more participatory, if the old rules of big numbers are still rulin communications?






So, popular people and images are central to understand  social media politics.  I will say, this is the same as in TV networks, for instance. For many political theorist, this new politics are in the realm of sentimentalism and populism. Margetts is not pessimistic: social networks are building a new kind of pluralistic democracy; she called “chaotic pluralism”, more disorganized and fast-moving that classical pluralism.  

Another criticism to the social networks-policy based is their practical inefficiency. It is true that social networks had a basic role in the Arab Spring that reached to depose some goverments, but it is also true that the new stablished regimes are not the ones people was expecting while demonstrating in Tahir square. Margetts agree that is is inefficient to have mobilization with no political consequences, but she considered that social networks participacion is a tool to release the seeds of social change.  

 I was thinking about the arousal of Podemos (@ahorapodemos) in Spain, nearly four years after theoccupation of Puerta del Sol by the 15M in 2011. The time of the networks, but also the time of all communications, is real time. It's happening, you're watching it, was the motto of CNN Spanish branch. Probably we need to research in deep how this short times of the media interact with the long times of policy making and social change.This will allow us to move toward another revevant question: how this participation through socil networks is changing politics?