 }})
+
+The first pivot is political power shaped by public policies that are decided on by both domestic and European
+politicians and officials. They disburse funds through
+various institutions, among other things, ministries, institutes of culture, competitions, grants, scholarships.
+They also create laws that regulate culture circulation,
+for instance copyright1.
+
+Public policies relating to culture may be founded on
+the belief that culture is a unique sphere, constructing
+social ties, supporting tradition, but also responding
+creatively to new challenges of reality. Thus it is worth
+supporting and protecting against mere profit and loss
+account, for example, through subsidizing creative work
+with a large amount of public funds. Such cultural policy we called âpro-communityâ.
+
+But the cultural sphere may also be treated as a modern sector of the economy, with a very favorable rate
+of return (because it does not require large expenditures for materials and production technology), which
+must be verified up to the liberated market. We called
+such way of shaping public cultural policy âpro-marketâ.
+
+The economic power that will shape future culture
+circulation consists of mass market intermediaries in
+the circulation of other peopleâs work, i.e. distributors
+of cultural works â or rather âcontent providersâ. That
+is why we called the second pivot âposition of intermediariesâ. It seems that the crucial technology for future
+culture distribution will be the Internet. Thus looking
+at market relationships we outlined two possible tendencies: convergence and divergence.
+
+Internet, similarly to other communication networks, is
+subject to the so-called network effect, with large hubs,
+attracting new users precisely because they are large
+(they have a lot of content, or - in the case of social networks - there are a lot of our friends there), each new
+user increasing the attractiveness to other potential users.
+This model of services and capital accumulation usually
+leads to the formation of oligopolies. Intermediaries in
+the culture circulation also aspire to the convergence of
+their services, which means the concentration within a
+single ownership structure of the various âstagesâ of the
+circulation of culture, as well as products and services
+targeted to different audiences. In the case of the Internet
+circulation of content in Europe it is primarily Google
+(which owns YouTube and Google Books) and Amazon,
+and, perhaps less obviously, Facebook.
+
+But we can also imagine another scenario in which tendency toward convergence would not be replaced by
+divergence. In the internet the opposite of centralized
+distribution are peer-2-peer networks, allowing their
+users to connect directly with each other and share resources accumulated on their own computers/servers
+(in such model works for example The Pirate Bay). Their
+popularity as providers of content continues unabated
+even though they are illegal. A divergence seems to be
+possible if each user would be able to use legally peer-2-peer, the formation of oligopolies was prevented by
+the antitrust policy of the state, taking care of the actual
+balance of the market and the establishment of protocols to handle communication among tools of different
+service providers (e.g. today one can call subscribers of
+another mobile network but there is no connection between the user of Facebook and gmail chat).
+
+The circulation of culture is not just a matter of personal access to content (or lack thereof). It affects different spheres of social life, among other things, the
+level of empowerment of citizens, dominant discourse
+pattern defining a successful life, state of culture, art,
+education and the creative sector. Therefore, in each
+of the four scenarios for the future we tried to describe how each of these spheres would look like and how
+will be look like copyright, the law that regulates the
+culture circulation.
+
+We tried to determine what the position of the three
+âplayersâ in the field of culture - authors, users and intermediaries - would be. This position is defined by legal
+categories such as: the duration of property copyright,
+scope of moral rights of an author, permitted personal use (fair use), educational and âartisticâ exceptions,
+enforcement of violations of the law, role of collective
+management organizations. We also pondered over
+the issue of social security for artists, not recognized
+in the copyright acts.
+
+We have made an assumption ordering our work on
+different scenarios that these two factors - the public
+policies and the level of convergence of intermediaries - would determine the scope of the copyright law
+operation. But one could reverse the logic adopted for
+study and recognize that it is the copyright law that has
+provoked the specific (in)balance of power in the cultural field. Then the scenarios could be read as models
+describing the effects of the proposed regulation. We
+hope that interactive webpage scenarios.prawokultury.pl
+would make it easier. The aim of the study is not to
+predict the future. It is rather an invitation to reflect on
+what it could be. We would like to encourage each of
+us to think which scenario is consistent with her or his
+idea of a successful life and proper social relations, i.e.
+what world we would like for ourselves and for others.
+
+
+
+---
+
+