The Netizen's Journal

Over the entire course of human history, information, culture, and their movement have been controlled and regulated by the all-powerful minority. In the 14th century, it was kings and princes - in modern times, it's governments, publishing houses, and broadcasting corporations. If you don't go through the proper steps (usually making payment), you're not allowed to use or transfer information or bits of culture.

Never in time has man been able to communicate freely or share ideas, thoughts, or culture without censorship, and I suspect this will always be the case. Hand-written books were destroyed regularly, owners of printing presses were harassed and harangued into cooperation, and even today, there are a very small amount of people that control the information and culture that surround us.

The ideas that we see in newspapers are approved by a small group of people. The news stories that we see on television are slanted to fit a particular point of view. The music we hear on the radio is created and controlled by a select few individuals. Our culture is, in essence, designed and created by a handful of powerful and rich people.

A Shift in Techniques

But there's not much that we can really do about it. We are not rich and powerful, we don't control a Hollywood film studio, and we don't have a popular recording label. But we have the means to produce our own media outside of the traditional channels. We have computers, we have the internet, and we have the global community!

Even already, just after the Internet has made its way to the majority of the globe, we are seeing people taking things into their own hands. Where we were strictly consumers, we now have the ability to become producers.

We need to conserve resources anyway!

Where our only source of written news was formerly a newspaper, we now have blogs. Hundreds, thousands, even millions of them. They're efficient, easy, and above all, they are cost effective. Free, in some cases! Everybody has the ability to make their ideas published and read the world over. Publishing written ideas isn't just for the rich and powerful anymore.

No longer just the music you hear on the radio

When you buy a music album from the record store, odds are not good that you will be able to re-mix it and re-publish it. The odds of legality are definitely not in your favor, if you decide that you want to make copies for your friends. This is yet another way that today's culture is controlled and limited to a relative few: those who pony up the $20 for the CD, or for the one-time, restricted use, digital download from iTunes.

Relax, though. We're no longer restricted by whatever the teenagers of today are listening to, or whatever market research is telling the corporate executives to sell. With computers, the cost of production of a piece of music is almost down to the pure cost of the instruments - and if you get the right tools, you don't even need instruments!

With advances in technology, equipment that was owned only by the very biggest radio stations or recording companies is now found in ordinary people's basements, spare rooms, or garages. People now have the ability to make the switch from music consumer to music producer, and it works out brilliantly for consumers.

And people are starting to realize this. Jamendo (written about here) is a virtual stockpile of user-created and published music, and released outside of traditional copyrights. People are contributing culture to the community, and they are making it possible for everybody to take full advantage of it.

What of mass-produced culture?

There are people that believe that we are headed for a cultural shift unlike anything ever seen before. The League Of Noble Peers have produced a documentary called Steal This Film, in which they describe the movement against intellectual property. They predict that we are headed for an age in which people are no longer restricted by copyrights on their culture, and I hope they are right.

Sebastian Lutgert, of Pirate Cinema, and interviewed in Steal This Film, says this:

The panic of the movie and music industry is that people could actually start to produce, that file-sharing networks and technology enable them to produce stuff.

Oh, how I hope he's right - they need a good panicking.

For some time now, I've seen a growing movement towards community-created content, and I realized that in order to be a part of the society, you have to contribute something. That is the single reason that I started this blog - to be a part of this growing society where everybody does something valuable, and nobody controls it all.

And I strongly recommend that you do the same. It's time that we decided to take our culture back - after all, it belongs to us! You have the ability to be a producer, not just a consumer. You have the means to contribute to society. You have everything you need to help us remove the cultural control from the powerful minority, and give it to the majority.

If you've got something to share, share it. We are the new producers.

(By the way, if you do "steal" Steal This Film, you won't be prosecuted. They have links for BitTorrent downloads right on their website. And I strongly recommend you watch it - it's only 45 minutes long, and is the primary inspiration for this article.)