Culture vs. Copyright

Acknowledgements

• Sponsors of this book
  Total Knowledge (www.total-knowledge.com), the company I run with my son Ilya.
  
• Sources
  The first drafts of all chapters were published/posted on the Anti-DMCA and bNg mailing lists, the Open Studios Newsletter, the Song Storm web site, and the Duialogue of Cultures web site.
  
• Major Contributors
  These are the fine people whose active participation in discussion, extensive knowledge, powerful emotional charge, plain help and advise caused the book to emerge. I do not dare to distinguish between co-thinkers and opponents to all or any of the ideas which I am trying to assemble in my message. I also do not distinguish between those I argued with directly and those whose posts I just read, finding them interesting, helpful, or thought provoking.
  I want to express my very special thanks to the following people:
  Tom Poe, founder of Open Studios, who was the major disciplining force for me. Tom was the very first who encouraged me to put together the Authoright license, one of the central points of this book. Tom helped me to overcome my own laziness and to put in writing most of the book chapters. Most of them appeared for the very first time in my column, 'Culture vs. Copyright,' in the Open Studios Newsletter, published by Tom.
  The late Cookie Holley, founder of bNg Records, an enthusiastic, artistic, absolutely unique personality of a unique fate. Cookie was able to invoke the highest sense of personal responsibility, while being wise and gentle. She was another driving force in my quest. It is truly tragic that she is no longer with us.
  Ilya Volynets, my dear son and the most intensive interlocutor in discussing of all the ideas elaborated on in this book. It was he who quickly and clearly grasped the essence of many issues. Ilya was actually that brave man, a hero of thought, who consistently denied any direct, legally backed money to reward creativity... Yes, it was Ilya, who helped me to tear piece-by-piece the flesh of copyright related prejudices off of my bones until I felt completely free to think about the subject and apply my extensive cultural-studies related knowledge to so-called "Intellectual Property" related issues.
  Sasha Volynets, my lovely daughter, the brilliant literary editor and illustrator of this book. She contributed greatly in refining and fine tuning of my work in terms of content, wording, and style.
  Miriam Rainsford-Clinton (iriXx), my very first and so far the very best reader, a dream reader for any writer. I did not have to urge that the elaborated in the book ideas are practical -- the text itself was convincing enough for Miriam. She also provided some significant advice for this work.
  Robert F. Bodi, a fierce opponent, and defender of the status quo. In understanding the minute details, no co-thinker helped me as much as his diverse argumentation.
  Many participants of the above mentioned mailing lists (mostly Anti-DMCA), without whom the book would never have come to existence. I want to list some of them (as I know them, either by name, or by nick, or by both): Seth Johnson, Jon O., Roy Garris, Jean-Michel Smith, James S. Huggins, Matthew T. Russotto, DeBug, Kevin Marks, Michael Weishaar, Jim Bauer, Pieter Hulshoff, Andrey V. Khavryuchenko, David Haworth, Miguel Dias, Jay Sulzberger, Dr. John Raymond Baker, Dan-redball, Steven C. Barr, Chuck McKay and again, many others. Thanks to you all.
  

Word to My Reader
This book is written many times
At once.
That is,
A scrupulous reader
Will easily extract
Every idea
Many times
From chaotic dialogues, that
Five wonder kids conducted
And
From deliberations
I have done,
As well.
What do I want?
It's to remind you
What you know already very well
About human life,
And ask
Why don't we put
Two and two together
?!.

...A few more notes
This is neither a strictly scientific investigation, nor is it purely fictional, nor political, nor autobiographical, nor.., nor.., nor... It is what it is. If I wanted very badly to label this book, I would call it the diary of a naive philosopher. A diary of what events? - you may ask.
It all started accidently. One time, I was talking to some of my colleagues and happened to mention an educational experiment I had participated in in the past. It was one of the series of experiments within the so-called The School Of The Dialogue Of Cultures (SDC), the theory of which has been and is being developed in a cooperative effort between philosophers, scientists and educators in Ukraine and Russia. One major element of the educational process in that school is dialogue. That translates to at least two aspects of the educational process. Firstly, a subject is presented to the students not as the firm and absolute truth, but as a source of questions. Secondly, a teacher does not teach in the traditional manner, but organizes an environment for dialogue and exploration of the subject between the students. These generic ideas may sound pretty casual for the contemporary ear, but the theory and practice of the SDC immediately appeared very unusual, effective and interesting to my interlocutors when I continued with the details. They were allured and intrigued by stories of the experiments; for instance, the story of first graders enthusiastically debating with Plato... This conversation with my collegues started a chain of events, which ended in another experiment. This was a smaller scale one. It was conducted with five first graders in the form of an after-school activity in a Bay Area elementary school. The experiment, in turn, resulted in this diary, where my thoughts alternate with shorthand records of students' discussions.
Of course, in my deliberations I used many ideas of prominent philosophers, psychologists, philologists, artists, poets: Vladimir Bibler, Michael Bachtin, Lev Vygotsky, Josef Brodsky, Osip Mandelstam, Diego Rivera, Thomas Jefferson... but I barely quoted or cited anyone. That was intentional - I just wrote as I understood the subject matter of the book, and thus I take all responsibility for it on myself. I also wanted this book to be readable and understandable for people whose school major was not philosophy. I thought it was necessary, because it's nearly impossible to find a person unaffected by copyright-related turmoils nowadays. Nonetheless, if some bits of the book seem too philosophical, you can safely skip them. Remember, each idea is repeated many times over.
I am compelled to pay a special tribute to the first thinker on my list, Vladimir Bibler, a Russian philosopher of Jewish origin (or vise versa?), who felt that ancient Greece was his cultural motherland. I was lucky to communicate with him for years. Vladimir Bibler developed a vision of the culture of the XX - XXI centuries, which is ''The Dialogue Of Cultures''. The concept of The Dialogue of Cultures is interrelated with ''Dia-logic,'' the logic of dialogue (or, in other words, logic of thinking and communication), and ''Paradoxologic,'' the logic of the transmutation of ideas. A special application of this triad to education gave birth to the concept of The School Of The Dialogue Of Cultures, mentioned above. Vladimir Bibler passed away in 2002. He left dozen of books and many articles, written and published in Russian, which are not that easy to understand, but are impossible not to accept. I believe he is one of the greatest philosophers of the XX-XXI centuries and of mankind. Unfortunately, no works of Bibler have been translated so far, but his ideas were what mostly guided my quest...
And so, on to our dialogues with the first graders!