2 title: "Morphology of a copyright tale"
4 author: 'Aymeric Mansoux'
8 This text is based on the work from [Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Propp)
9 in his 1928 essay “Morphology of the Folktale”. By studying many Russian
10 folktales, Propp was able to break down their narrative structure into
11 several functions, literally exposing an underlying thirty one step
12 recipe to write new and derivative similar stories.
14 The text won the first prize in the contest Future of Copyright 2012 organized by
15 the Modern Poland Foundation.
25 Once upon a time in the wonderful Folklore Valley, a
26 creator wonders about the becoming of her memetic
27 folktale legacy and decides to take some distance from
28 the anonymous creative practices of her community.
33 The creator is warned by a giant caption. It reads: “Do
36 3. Violation of interdiction
39 Despite the viral warning, the creator leaves her community and starts
40 to sign her work as a mean to legitimate her individual contribution to the folktale scene.
45 On her way to authorship, she encounters the Lawyer
51 The Lawyer delivers rights to the creator.
56 The creator becomes the Author.
61 At this point the Author and the Publisher begin to promote copyright laws in the Folklore Valley.
66 With the help of the Lawyer, the Publisher uses the
67 Author as an excuse to transform the Folklore Valley
68 into a profitable folktale factory.
73 The Author receives distressed calls from another
74 creator persecuted by the Publisher for making a derivative work from a copyrighted folktale.
77 -----------------------------
79 The Author hears the sound of a flute. The free melody comes from a campsite, beyond the Folklore Valley.
84 The Author leaves the, now fully copyrighted, Folklore
85 Valley and heads toward the campsite, attracted by the
86 melody of this open invitation. The Lawyer is following
90 -----------------------------
92 Arrived at the campsite, the Author learns from the Man
93 with a Beard, that useful information should be free.
94 And by free he is not referring to its price. The Lawyer,
95 hiding, is listening attentively. The Man with a Beard
96 resumes his flute practice.
101 Leaving the campsite, the Author wonders whether or
102 not cultural expressions can also be free and, some-
103 how, now liberated from copyright.
106 --------------------------------------------
107 The Lawyer appears in front of the Author and hands
108 over free culture licenses.
111 ---------------------------------------------------------
113 With the help of remix culture, the Lawyer uses the
114 Author as an excuse to transform the Folklore Valley
115 into a techno-legal free for all bureaucratic maze.
120 With licensing proliferation, the Author cannot cope
121 with the increasing complexity linked to her practice.
122 She feels that she lost all control over her work, just so
123 it can be used as fuel for the ever expanding information network nurtured by the Lawyer and the Publisher.
128 Regardless of what her true intentions are, her whole
129 body of work gets tattooed with different logos, iconic
130 representations of supposedly human readable deeds
131 that all rein-force the many conflicting ideologies,
132 commercial interests and beliefs now rationalized by
133 copyright laws and their different copyleft-inspired hacks.
138 The only escape left is to ignore copyright, no matter
139 what. Leave everything behind, a small personal victory,
140 over the techno-legal machine, but a first step towards
141 the liberation of the Folklore Valley.
144 -------------------------------------
146 As a result, the Author becomes Pirate of her own work,
147 of any work, once again. She puts on an eyepatch.
152 The Pirate returns to the, now fully copyfreed, copyrighted,
153 copylefted and copyfarlefted incompatible and fragmented
154 Folklore Valley. The Publisher and the Lawyer
155 make sure everything is tidy and sound. Vladimir Propp’s
156 Morphology of the Folktale becomes a patented algorithm
157 for a freemium manufacture that feeds itself
158 automatically from the aggregation of open content
159 produced by the Folklore Valley’s creators.
161 She has something to say about that.
164 ---------------------------
166 The Publisher and the Lawyer, who see the presence
167 of the Pirate as a serious threat to their information
168 empire, start several campaigns of misinformation
169 to question the legitimacy of the Pirate to comment
170 on anything but her unlawful, therefore moralistically
173 This undermining process is strengthen by increasingly
174 aggressive, punitive and gratuitous repression mechanisms
175 towards any creators who might want to follow
179 ---------------------
181 The Pirate escapes for a while from the Publisher and
182 the Lawyer by using the underground networks of tunnels
183 and caverns right under the, now fully tracked, logged,
184 cloudified and gamified, Folklore Valley.
187 ---------------------------
189 Eventually, the Pirate decides to face the surface of the
190 Valley instead of living the rest of her life as some underground
191 rat. She emerges right in the middle of an
192 astonished crowd of brainwashed creators and template-based folktales.
195 -----------------------------
197 The Publisher and the Lawyer steps in and deliver the
198 usual moralistic speech, the one that kept the creators
199 of the Folklore Valley quiet and under control all this
200 time. The fear of being stolen can be felt in all the tales, panic is about to break loose.
205 The publisher and the Lawyer challenges the Pirate.
206 They argue that she has no rights to comment on the
207 situation. She is merely a parasite, a free rider who has
208 no clue of what is at stake.
211 ---------------------
213 The Pirate drops her eyepatch.
218 All of sudden all the creators recognise the Author. The
219 one Author who once started to sign many of the folktales
220 that are now used as licensed templates in the
221 tale factories planted by the Lawyer and the Publisher.
223 And they all listen to her...
226 ----------------------------
228 The Author explains her journey. Since her individualistic
229 awakening she started to initiate many experiments
230 and ways of working with her medium, using others’
231 material directly or indirectly. She was interested in as
232 many collaborative methodologies as there were colours
235 She explains that, as her practice grew, she felt the need
236 to sign and mark her work in a way or another, and was
237 confused about this sudden paradox: on the one hand
238 her desire to be just this simple node in this continuous
239 stream of creativity, and on the other hand she had this
240 instinctive need to stand above her peers, to shine and
241 be visible for her own contribution. She also tells them
242 about her needs to simply make a living and therefore,
243 why she genuinely thought copyright was a fair model,
244 harmless for her audience and peers. She says that
245 she equally failed to understand that the freedom they
246 once had as a community of folktale creators cannot be
247 emulated through contract laws, no matter what good
248 intentions drive them.
250 She concludes that at every stage of her quest to understand
251 the very fabric of culture, the Publisher and
252 the Lawyer were present to enable and support her
253 experiments, yet slowly getting stronger and out of
254 control. If anything at all, she feels responsible for letting
255 them decide how her work, how culture, should
256 be produced and consumed.
263 The Author becomes a creator, once again.
268 The Publisher’s and the Lawyer’s work is undone.
269 Copyright is banned from the Folklore Valley.
274 The creator marries another creator. They live happily
275 ever after, creating many new folktales.
277 As for the Man with a Beard, I was told that he turned
278 his campsite into a brewery, but that’s another story...
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