Recently, a twelve-year-old acquaintance wanted to talk to me about politics. It was not about the climate, about Europe or populism. But a much more complex and, I think, much drier matter: the EU copyright reform.
Until then, to my knowledge, the teenager's interests were limited to Korean pop, "DSDS," any influencers, and Harry Potter. Now she explained with sparkling eyes, "the policy" would prohibit the uploading of important fan videos on Youtube! A whole culture is in danger! And only because in these movies would use strange music, but "only in the background, ey, and very quiet!"
I do not know myself. Matt, I dreaded that this music definitely belongs to someone who lives on it. An author. Quietly, I wondered at the angry vehemence with which she represented the business interests of powerful Silicon Valley companies anyway.
External hard drive of general education
Whereupon the twelve-year-old refuted my objections so violently and effortlessly, as if she had been apprenticed to Sascha Lobo.
Since today I know what made her so mad. When trying to learn more about Korean Pop, I encountered all of their arguments - at Wikipedia.
Since there was nothing about K-pop, there was a dramatic warning on a black background: "The planned reform could lead to the free Internet is considerably restricted!" As it stood, it could "the freedom of opinion, art and press considerably" be affected! It said that the "free knowledge" would suffer! It read: "CONTACT YOUR ABORTED"!
So, like most other people, I practice deceleration today. If Wikipedia does not work, as it does today, in protest, that feels dramatic at first. Like a little foreshadowing the post-apocalyptic powerlessness. What I want to access, it does not exist anymore. It is, so to speak, the external hard drive of my general education failed. What to do?
I do not like to contact my DEPUTY. I have to do, my DEPUTY probably too. I want to try to spend that day on board. Where did people get the knowledge from before the famous online encyclopedia? Just look at Wikipedia ... oh, well. Hm. Wait! A dictionary!
Determined, I walk over to my bookcase, where it occupies almost two meters: "Brockhaus' Conservation Lexicon", sixteen leather-bound Wackersteine with the weight of several cement sacks, stored on the most classic of all data carriers (pulp) and published in "Leipzig, Berlin and Vienna ". Wikipedia, where is your sting? I have the collected world knowledge of 1895.
Progressive, almost digital
So quickly purged the dust and read into the Gothic font, you're ready to go. Who already trusts the opinions of anonymous Grottenolme in their darkened youth rooms, if he can draw on the expertise of Wilhelmine scholars? There it already stands between "originator (Latin auctor or author), the person, who does an act" and "Uri, river in Africa, s. Limpopo". Well, copyright.
To begin with, it is plainly clear that "the thought once revealed and the spiritual creation once revealed, according to the rule, are made available to everyone to whom they are accessible, understandable, enjoyable and usable". Very progressive, almost digital. But what is that? This freedom is given "a barrier". It has "recognized the modern peoples" that in commercial usability "the author is initially entitled to receive the price."
So yesterday it continues, especially since the "U." mainly includes issues of duplication of "photographs" and "lithographs". Not very encouraging. After all, it is about recordings, and recordings are not recordings? Here: "Illustration of the original photograph finds a protection against reproduction only if it or the box bears the name or the company of the publisher and their place of residence as well as the calendar year in which the lawful figure first appeared".
Enjoy the Falk city map
Movies or music are still as remote as their storage on media. I have to learn to read between the lines. Of course, a "medium" in 1895 is not a polymer-based disk or a flighty "cloud". It is a person who uses séance to connect to the spirit world. All the more redeeming a sentence that has lost none of its relevance 124 years later: "The existing legislation on copyright has received many criticisms." Missing only the advice: CONTACT YOUR REICHSTAGSABEARDER.
No, without Wikipedia it does not work. Good that they do something. Use your power. So let's look forward to it when corporations like Facebook, Twitter or Google are finally using a good cause by switching off their services. You want from A to B? Enjoy your Falk city map! By the way, extortion, that is, the "infliction of justified concerns", was punished at that time "with a heavy dungeon of 6 months to 1 year".
Incidentally, Korea was still a secluded kingdom in 1895. The "Brockhaus" knows nothing about K-Pop. So I'll have to do something completely bizarre: ask someone who knows , my twelve-year-old acquaintances, for example. And hope that WhatsApp still works.